Virtual Laboratory
The online project Virtual Laboratory. Essays and Resources on the Experimentalization of Life, 1830-1930, located at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, is dedicated to research in the history of the experimentalization of life. The term experimentalization describes the interaction between the life sciences, the arts, architecture, media and technology within the experimental paradigm, ca. 1830 to 1930. The Virtual Laboratory is a platform that not only presents work on this topic but also acts as a research environment for new studies. History. In 1977, the first version of the Virtual Laboratory was presented , titled Virtual Laboratory of Physiology. At this time, the main focus lay on the development of technological preconditions of physiological research in the 19th century. Therefore, a database with relevant texts and images was created. In 1998, the concept still used today was created after a series of modifications, followed by the publication of a cd-ROM in 1999. At this time, the focus had been expanded from physiology to the life sciences in general, as well as the arts and literature. As the project had been extended from a sole database to a platform for historiographical research, it was  presented at the conference "Using the World Wide Web for Historical Research in Science and Technology" organized by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation at Stanford University. In 2000, the project was incorporated into the research project "The Experimentalization of Life", funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. This was followed by another presentation at the conference "Virtual Research? The impact of new technologies on scientific practices" at the ETH Zurich. In 2002, the first version of the Virtual Laboratory went online. Since 2008, the Virtual Laboratory is listed as a journal under the ISSN number 1866-4784. Structure. The Virtual Laboratory consists  of two parts: The archive holds a large number of digitized texts and images as well as data sheets compiled from these resources, the laboratory holds historiographical work on the experimentalization of life as well as a working environment to enable new ways of writing history. The Virtual Laboratory is composed of 8 sections: All materials are available as pdf downloads. Apart from these thematical sections, "tools" and "myLab" offer the possibility to use the Virtual Laboratory as a research environment. It is possible to create specific collections from the available materials, work on them and share them with other  users.