National Museum of Scotland gets proto-television, DIY gramophone

Made in England by Sutcliffe Pressings in 1963, this toy was named after the USS Seawolf, the second nuclear submarine after Nautilus. While the front of the box says the submarine is atomic, the side panel admits that this version is actually clockwork. It has been loaned to the museum by one of its curators, who owned the submarine as a child.

National Museum of Scotland

The National
Museum of Scotland has been showcasing exhibits which have
pushed the frontiers of science and technology since the 18th
century. Now, thanks to a multi-million pound investment, the
institution has redeveloped a gallery to display mini atomic power stations, DIY Cold War gramophones and the world's
earliest colour TV.

Our gallery below shows some of the material which has been
moved from the "big Argos store" of the museum's archives on the
outskirts of Edinburgh to the museum. Most notable, Principal
Curator of Communications, Alison Talbman tells Wired.co.uk, is the
General Electric Model 950 colour television, "one of the big stars
of the re-display".

The television is very rare because it never made it into
production and exists solely as a prototype. Interestingly,
however, it uses a hybrid mechanism between a colour and a
mechanical system devised by John Logie Baird which has
subsequently appeared in later, smaller technologies also on show
in the museum.

Of the hundred or so technological objects which are being
exhibited at the museum, the Cold War Phonograph would have to get
the prize for the most bizarre. As featured in a 1956 edition of
Radio Age, this flat-pack hand-powered gramophone was designed as a "Cold War weapon for 50
cents". The plan was for the US Government to drop these
little packages on the other side of the Iron Curtain for the recipients to construct and play a
message-encoded record on. A bit like propoganda crossed with a Kinder
Egg.

All the exhibits pictured in our gallery, and many more, are
currently being placed in the National
Museum of Scotland, ready for the museum's big launch on 29th
July.