Niagara County, New York | Strange Science
When Nick Dalacu was a 17-year-old science student in Bucharest, he began collecting old scientific equipment. There was plenty to be found in the dusty halls of his Romanian university. “Collecting has been my lifelong obsession,” says Dalacu, now 67. Dalacu has made good on that lifelong obsession in his Niagara Science Museum, located in the former National Carbon office building of Union Carbide, where he displays his collection of many thousands of beautiful antique science instruments.
Among many other rooms and objects, the museum contains a recreated 1930s medical office, a galvanometer collection, a collection of antique optical instruments, microscopes and radios, and – most intriguing of all – a high-voltage laboratory. Amazingly, almost everything in the museum has been restored to working order so that Dalacu can demonstrate how each item works.
Part of the motive behind the museum was to display the items in a “Wunderkammer” style, grouped by aesthetic and curiosity, and eschewing the info-graphic, interactivity-heavy style of most modern museums. The aim of the museum is to evoke the same “sense of awe and discovery” that the great cabinets of wonder once did.
This does not mean the museum isn’t modern; in fact, the museum is entirely powered by solar panels produced by Dalacu’s current company. The museum isn’t just a showcase of antique science equipment either: one can buy anything from a used Flammable Cabinet to an Antique Vacuum Chamber from the museum’s online store at http://www.scienceline.net/index.php/cPath/54.
Join us on Obscura Day – Marth 20th, 2010 – at the Niagara Science Museum for an afternoon of classic, historical experiments conducted with restored antique scientific equipment!
