page_title: Science History Institute
section_title: Creating a public museum
hierarchical_section_title: Science History Institute / History / Chemical Heritage Foundation / Creating a public museum
caption_attribution_description: Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum, January 2017. "Old Faithful" bakelite cooker.
context_page_description: The Science History Institute is an institution that preserves and promotes understanding of the history of science. Located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, it includes a library, museum, archive, research center and conference center.
  It was founded in 1982 as a joint venture of the American Chemical Society and the University of Pennsylvania, as the Center for the History of Chemistry. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers became a co-founder in 1984. It was renamed the Chemical Heritage Foundation in 1992, and moved two years later to the institution's current location, 315 Chestnut Street in Old City.
  On December 1, 2015, CHF merged with the Life Sciences Foundation, creating an organization that covers "the history of the life sciences and biotechnology together with the history of the chemical sciences and engineering." As of February 1, 2018, the organization was renamed the Science History Institute, to reflect its wider range of historical interests, from chemical sciences and engineering to the life sciences and biotechnology.
context_section_description: Acquisition of a permanent building finally made it possible for the institution to develop "a public museum and display area".  One possible focus was the history of instrumentation. As early as 1989, the Beckman Center had requested the loan or gift of Beckman Instruments such as the Beckman pH meter and the DU spectrophotometer for display at the Center. Some of those instruments were included in an instrumentation exhibition organized by W. Richard Howe of the University of Pittsburgh for the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (PITTCON) in 1994, and expanded in 1999. In the early 1990s, inspired by John Ferraro, a committee was formed within the Society for Applied Spectroscopy (SAS), to pursue the creation of an instrumentation museum. Edward Brame and other members of that committee connected with Arnold Thackray and formed the nucleus of the institution's Chemical Instrumentation Museum Group (CIMG) in 1994. In 1997, on the recommendation of the CIMG, the Chemical Heritage Foundation's board approved a collections policy for the acquisition of "historically significant chemical instruments and apparatus".  Instrumentation, however, was only one of several areas of interest as the institution began to expand its collections.
caption: "Old Faithful" bakelite cooker model, in museum
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