“This is not a museum …

… it’s a conservation and storage facility.” The first words of our guide on a tour of the Hawking Building at the Science and Innovation Park at the former RAF Wroughton airfield. The Hawking Building is a vast purpose-built warehouse box that, along with a number of old aircraft hangars, holds the reserve collection of the Science Museum. Over 300,000 objects, large and small have been moved in from their old home in Earl’s Court, most of which are stored on pallets or open shelving in carefully controlled temperature and humidity settings.  The tour is focused on “the grid”, a large open space on the ground floor mainly occupied by a spectacular display of road vehicles from bicycles and milk floats to trucks and buses.  Collecting policy is not to collect an example of every known vehicle but to look for items that represent a technological step change or have a strong association with an individual of interest or an important historical event.

Conservation is aimed at the preservation of exhibits in the condition when acquired. Making them safe is a priority, removing hazardous materials - where vehicles are concerned this involves extracting batteries, draining oil and petrol, and degreasing components to protect against further deterioration. Restoration is never undertaken, partly because of the frequently inordinate expense, partly because, in many cases, restored examples already exist thanks to individual and group efforts and not least, the problem of finding agreement on the chronological point in the long life of the object to which it should be returned.

In the first image we see the balloon gondola used by Swiss physicist, Auguste Piccard on his altitude record-breaking ascent of 16,201 m (53,153 ft) using a hydrogen balloon becoming the first human to enter the upper atmosphere.  This gondola was presented to the Science Museum in 1935. In a triumph of adaptive re-use, Piccard went on to convert his gondola into a vehicle for deep sea exploration.

There’s a group of vintage cars from the first decade of the last century, an era of experimentation with three forms of motive power - steam, electricity and petrol - battling for supremacy. Steam power was the first to be eliminated despite surviving just into the 1950s for heavy haulage.  Electricity foundered quickly due the weight of the batteries although it clung on in the form of lightweight delivery vehicles where lower speeds were more acceptable. The race was easily won by petrol and diesel, greatly assisted by the predatory instincts of the American oil barons of the period. Lithium battery technology has brought the electric vehicle back into contention although it remains locked in mortal combat with the descendants of the oil baronetcy and their political enablers.