Magical giant: The story of a much-loved museum whale
Today marks the 75th anniversary of the life-size model blue whale at London’s Natural History Museum. The folks over at New Scientist have a great article telling the story of this giant replica.
This month, thousands of people will fall under the spell of a giant.
But this is no fairy tale or pantomime giant. It’s a life-size model of the blue whale, the world’s largest mammal. Now celebrating its 75th birthday, the 28.3-metre-long model dominates the mammal gallery at London’s Natural History Museum, dwarfing whale skeletons and other mammals.
Richard Sabin, the NHM’s principal curator of vertebrate collections, says the model was “incredibly ambitious” when it was built in the 1930s. He saw it as a 10-year-old on his first trip to London, nearly 40 years ago. “I was absolutely blown away,” he recalls. Back home, he raided school and local libraries for whale books.
When the model was unveiled at the end of 1938, it was the world’s only life-size replica of a blue whale. But other museums soon wanted to copy it. Some museums in the US made a point of making their version fractionally longer.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython 7.3.0 RC0 Out and Much More! #Python #CircuitPython @micropython @ThePSF
