The Musée des Arts et Métiers (“Arts and Trades”) is an historical museum of engineering, communications, construction, transportation, materials and scientific instruments. Nowadays we’d call it technology but the word wasn’t in use when the museum was founded in 1794. The term arts et métiers dates back to the middle ages and meant any kind of economic activity that isn’t agriculture or trade.
Main hall with multilevel display of cars
Car cut in half
The very first motor vehicle in history by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot from 1769
Mechanical music machine; she actually plays the dulcimer
Mechanical music machine
Telegraph
Concentric spheres carved from a single piece of ivory
I wonder if anyone still knows how to make glassware like this
Camera watch
Masks and models from ‘Phantasmagorie’ lantern-projection shows c. 1850
Wind-up mechanical leopard with lifelike creeping motion (there was a video). Mechanism is on the right
Watch springs
This is a calculator made from 1947 to 1970. It was manufactured in Liechtenstein, a country the size of Brooklyn (and one of only two countries on earth that is both landlocked and entirely surrounded by other landlocked countries).
18th century geometry models
Sextant for sale in the shop
Miniature cameras
Life-size lion and snake made entirely of glass
Lion fur made of glass
Exhibit on the difficulties in restoring decayed materials such as plastics.
Reading room open to the public all day every day. They sure don’t have anything like this in the museums in Berlin.
The bookstore had treasures such as books on the history of woodworking tools and one just on planes.
