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The idea of storing instruments in a museum is disappointing.
So many efforts in collecting information about instruments, so many photographs, so many admirations, and than putting them in the glass wards. Why?
It is like making exhibition of phonograph records. How boring. Looking at records without playing them.
Play your "records", listen to the music and help others hear the same beauty as you do.
Pure looking at scientific instruments could be interesting only for the few experts, and others will not find anything absorbing. I admit that someone can consider old instruments a work of applied art and craftsmanship. They have nice design, curious materials like brass, wood, glass, enamel, but that is not the reason to expose them under glass in cabinets with descriptions of their purpose, dimensions and makers.
Let me explain.
Instruments for demonstration of science experiments could be old, but they could not be outdated!
Because the very purpose of every instrument is to keep inherently one natural principle or physical law, and the laws of nature could not be outdated. How a free fall of feather in the vacuum tube could be out of date? How the rainbow colors coming out of prism could be out of date? So do not make a museum. Rather make a demo room or a theater. Repair all your instruments, and perform revivals of experiments for which your instruments are intended. Every week make a show for the audience. Invite the pupils, students, friends and neighbors. Show them and explain them the beauty of natural laws hidden in your collection. Make them deeply affected with old but not outdated instruments. Put some life in your collection, do not bury it.
Can you imagine a man so fond of butterflies to pin them on the board?
Do not nail down your butterflies!
Let them fly.
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