Webster Institute

History of the Webster Institute

In 1930, Adler purchased a collection of about 500 astronomical, navigational, and mathematical instruments from Anton Mensing in the Netherlands. The Scientific Instrument Collection today contains about 2000 instruments and models from the 12th through the 20th centuries. Representing many types of astronomical instruments, it is the largest collection of such material in the Western Hemisphere and one of the most significant in the world.

At the Adler

Webster Institute staff care for, study, and interpret the collections for both the general public and the scholarly community. We reach these audiences through a variety of projects.

Learn more about the Webster Institute staff on the Our Researchers page.  Have a question about making a research visit or scheduling a group tour? Visit our Contact Us page to learn more.

Research and Publications

Webster Institute staff collaborate with scholars from around the world to study scientific instruments and the cultural significance of astronomy.

The Webster Institute has produced several publications about the Adler's Collections. Learn more on our Publications page. 

Exhibitions

Our continuing series of temporary exhibitions, Special Topics in the History of Astronomy, allows returning visitors to see new collection materials in thematic displays every three months. Permanent exhibitions include The Universe in Your Hands, about the Earth-centered view of the universe; Bringing the Heavens to Earth , about the cultural uses of astronomy; and Telescopes: Through the Looking Glass , which shows how this most important of astronomical tools has evolved over four centuries. Past exhibitions have covered Asian astronomy, comets, the connections between art and astronomy, William Herschel's discovery of the planet Uranus, Galileo's telescopes, celestial navigation, and early American surveying.

Educational Programs and Lectures

The annual Fall Webster Lecture focuses on astronomy and archaeology. This free public lecture is sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America and was endowed by the late Marjorie Webster in memory of Roderick Webster. The Websters were trustees and longtime curators of the Adler collections.

Webster Institute staff also work on other lectures, educational programs, and courses throughout the year.

Current Projects

The Physical Cosmology of Johannes Kepler

Bruce Stephenson, Ph.D.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was the most creative astronomer of the transitional period from ancient to modern astronomy. Bruce Stephenson, who has published monographs on Kepler’s physical astronomy and his harmonic speculations, continues his investigations of the role played by physical analysis in Kepler's astronomy.

Stephenson summarized his views on this subject in an invited paper at the 2009 annual meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Rio de Janeiro.

Widening the Scope of Knowledge

Marvin Bolt, Ph.D.

From its invention in 1608, the telescope played significant roles in astronomy, navigation, surveying, and warfare. In this project, Marvin Bolt, Duane Jaecks, and Eugene Rudd (University of Nebraska) used 17th and 18th century telescopes to determine how well they worked for their original users.

They looked at telescopes at the Adler Planetarium, the Smithsonian Institution Museum of American History, and the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon in Dresden, Germany, and in two private collections.

The study investigated the technical evolution of early telescopes, and looked to untangle the influences on their development and history. "Widening the Scope of Knowledge" was funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant.

Past Projects

International Partnerships Among Museums Grant

Marvin Bolt, Ph.D., Michael Korey

The Adler and the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon at the Dresden State Art Collections in Germany were  awarded an International Partnerships Among Museums (IPAM) Grant from the American Association of Museums. This research enriched our general knowledge of these types of instruments and informed two volumes of our Collections Catalogue, Optical Instruments and Mathematical Instruments.

The IPAM Grant supported Salon curator Michael Korey's research on mathematical instruments at the Adler, and Marvin Bolt's research on optical instruments at the Salon. It  renewed and intensified the historic relationship between the two institutions, which had been largely broken by events.

The Dresden museum holds one of the oldest and most prominent European collections of historic scientific instruments. Max Adler's 1920s visit to the Mathematisch-Physikalisher Salon inspired him to purchase the Mensing Collection for our museum.

Astrolabe Metallurgy (2002-2006)

Bruce Stephenson, Ph.D., Prof. Michael Notis, Brian Newbury

Brian Newbury's collaborative, interdisciplinary study of the metallurgical characteristics of astrolabes used a high-energy X-ray beam at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. Begun in 2002, the project was funded by the Adler Planetarium, Argonne National Laboratory, and the DOE Basic Energy Sciences Office, and guided by Professor Michael Notis (Lehigh University) and Bruce Stephenson, Ph.D. (Adler curator). Newbury's resulting dissertation is “A Non-Destructive Synchrotron X-Ray Study of the Metallurgy and Manufacturing Processes of Eastern and Western Astrolabes in the Adler Planetarium Collection” (Lehigh University, 2004). An article summarizing new discoveries from this research appeared in Annals of Science (Vol. 63, No. 2, April 2006).

Methodological aspects of a synchrotron study of astrolabe metallurgy (2001-2002)

Bruce Stephenson, Ph.D., Brian Stephenson, Dean Haeffner

Adler Curator Bruce Stephenson, Ph.D., Brian Stephenson (Argonne National Laboratory), and Dean Haeffner (Argonne National Laboratory) conducted a feasibility study for using a synchrotron beam at Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Photon Source to study the metallurgy of astrolabes in the Adler collection. The investigation clarified the advantages of three analytical techniques later used in the Newbury study (see above), and re-established the authenticity of an astrolabe that had been called into question by science historian Derek Price in 1956.