Museum of Science and Industry

Gifts

People often give the Museum objects that they no longer need or use. They may be small personal objects such as hairdryers, large industrial machines such as lathes, or company archives. For example, we collected a Trident nose cone (see above) in 1986 when Trident airliners were taken out of service. The tobacco spinning machine (below) was offered to the Museum when the Co-operative Wholesale Society's tobacco factory in central Manchester closed down in 1990. 

Purchases and loans

Sometimes we have to purchase objects, such as microscopes or vintage cars, at auction or through private dealers. We bought the dressing gown (to the left) in March 2007 at an auction of the stock of the theatrical costume hire company Angels. It was worn by Jeremy Brett in the role of Sherlock Holmes for the television series made by Granada Television in Manchester. The dressing gown will be displayed in our forthcoming Connecting Manchester Gallery. We also seek out things that will improve the collections. If we cannot find what we want, we sometimes borrow objects, particularly for exhibitions.