SECRETARY'S REPORT 29 



Scienza e della Tecnica, Milan, Deutsches Museum, Munich, Technische 

 Museum, Vienna, and Science Museum, London, are undertaking en- 

 largement of existing facilities and that similar plans had been made 

 for the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris. This ac- 

 tivity conveys some indication of the present lively interest in the 

 history of technology in Europe. The museums in Munich and Milan 

 are housed in buildings heavily damaged by war, but since repaired. 

 The exhibits techniques at Munich were very effective and represent 

 a marked improvement over the prewar museum. Many novel tech- 

 niques were noted which can be adopted advantageously. The follow- 

 ing museums feature physical science and the history of science : Palais 

 de la Decouverte, Paris; Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence; 

 Liebig Museum, Giessen; Scientific Collections, Landesmuseum, 

 Kassel; Museum of History of Science, Leiden; Teyler's Museum, 

 Haarlem ; Whipple Museum, Cambridge ; History of Science Museum, 

 Oxford; and Berzelius Museum, Stockholm. The Palais de la 

 Decouverte is a unique example of a museum that aims to instruct 

 in the principles of science from the simplest to its most abstruse 

 aspects through pushbutton and demonstration exhibits. The above- 

 listed museums possess unusual materials representing the science of 

 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Of the three marine muse- 

 ums visited, the Scheepvaarts Museum, Amsterdam, exihibits many 

 unique navigational instruments, books, and maps. The Musee de 

 Marine, Paris, has been renovated recently, but seems to have sacrificed 

 maritime history to the exigencies of exhibits technique. In the 

 Greenwich Naval Museum, England, the history of the British Navy 

 is effectively and logically shown in spacious rooms. 



Print storage methods and exhibition furniture were inspected by 

 Jacob Kainen, curator of graphic arts, in California institutions 

 during March 1956. On the same trip his research on the life and work 

 of John Baptist Jackson was advanced by examination of chiaroscuro 

 color prints in the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts in San 

 Francisco. The collection of eighteenth-century color prints in the 

 M. H. de Young Memorial Museum and late nineteenth- and twentieth- 

 century color prints in the San Francisco Museum of Art, as well as 

 reference works in the library of the Art Room of the San Francisco 

 Public Library, were consulted. Jackson prints and other pertinent 

 material were inspected in the Los Angeles County Museum, as well 

 as the collections of fine and decorative arts. Early books printed in 

 color were examined in the Huntington Library and Art Gallery in 

 San Marino. 



Dr. George S. Switzer, associate curator of mineralogy and petrol- 

 ogy, inspected the John B. Jago mineral collection in San Francisco, 

 Calif., during July 1955 and conferred with the owner regarding his 



