What a day! The Queen opened our Information Age gallery with her first Tweet https://t.co/MDoAn8SmLU #TheQueenTweets #smInfoAge
— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) October 24, 2014
On the 24th October, The Queen opened a new gallery at The Science Museum, called “The Information Age”. The Information Age gallery takes visitors on a journey through the history of modern communications, from the telegraph to the smartphone. Exhibits on show include the broadcast equipment behind the BBC's first radio programme in 1922, and Sir Tim Berners-Lee's NeXT computer, which hosted the first website.
We were in South Kensington the following day and decided to have a look around the exhibition. You can see the photos here:
I spotted a number of user guides in the display windows. The earliest one was from 1673, describing Samuel Morland's Adding Machine.
It seems clear that the only way we know how to use (and reconstruct) these pieces of equipment is because we can read the equipments' manuals. Indeed, The Science Museum is struggling to recreate one of Babbage's Difference Engines, because no instructions exist.
The Science Museum has also created some User Assistance of its own, such as how to use a rotary phone and an electric telegraph. These include videos displayed on glass that superimposes itself onto the device.
It's good to see the documentation included in the exhibition, even if their importance isn't explicitly mentioned.
Ellis Pratt is director at Cherryleaf, a UK technical writing services company. Ranked the most influential blogger on technical communication in Europe, Ellis is a specialist in the field of creating clear and simple information users will love.