Welcome
The Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation is glad to host the 4th edition of the International Seminar on Material Culture and Cultural Heritage of Science and Technology.
The conference is open to all interested in the preservation, documentation, history and use of cultural heritage of science and technology, understood in a wide spectrum, including scientific and technological knowledge produced by man, and all those objects (including paper documents), archaeological and ethnographic collections, and specimens of biological collections that are testimonies of scientific processes and technological development.
The Conference will take place between 05 and 08 december 2016, at the MAST auditorium, Rua General Bruce, 586 - São Cristóvão. The texts of conferences, round tables and papers selected for oral presentation will be made available in full via electronic proceedings.
DEADLINES
Submission of Abstracts: until June 27, 2016
Resposta do Comitê Científico: untill July 20, 2016
Response of the Scientific Committee: untill September 16, 2016
Response of the evaluation of texts by the Scientific Committee: untill October 07, 2016
Submission of the final texts by authors: untill October 31, 2016
The Host: The Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences
Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins (MAST), which opened to the public in 1985, is a research institute pertaining to the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. One of its main activities is to preserve its collections, especially the most important, its collection of scientific instruments, which grants MAST its identity as a museum of science and technology. The museum stands in the grounds of the old National Observatory, and occupies a number of buildings belonging to it. These historic buildings, as well as the collections that originated within them, are preserved by a Federal Law passed in 1986 (IPHAN). MAST’s main building houses the museum’s visitable technical store opened to the public, where much of the collection of historical scientific instruments is kept.
The MAST collection is one of the most important of its kind in South America. It contains 2000 objects. Around 1700 belong to the old National Observatory, and were used in service and research of great importance to the country, like determining and broadcasting the official time in Brazil, forecasting the weather, astronomical phenomena, delimiting Brazilian borders, magnetic mapping of Brazilian soil, and others. Most of these instruments date back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though some of the more aesthetically interesting pieces, like the quadrant by J. Sisson and the G Adams theodolite, are from the 1700s. Many of the objects are connected to astronomy, topography, geodetics, geophysics, meteorology, weather and optical measurements. They are typical of this kind of institution, but the collection also touches on other scientific areas, like electricity, magnetism and chemistry.
