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When his small office became filled to overflowing with “foundlings,”
Mr. Wheatland sought a new space for the assemblage. He was assisted in
this effort by Paul H. Buck, the Provost of Harvard College, I. Bernard
Cohen, then an Assistant Professor of the History of Science, and William
A. Jackson, the founding curator of Houghton Library, and Samuel Eliot
Morison, the historian. The group gathered together an introductory
exhibition of the collection in February 1949, and the following year, the
Provost found space in the basement of the Semitic Museum (today
known as the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East ) to serve as the
home of the now officially recognized Collection of Historical Scientific
Instruments. Mr. Wheatland was appointed curator and generously agreed
to work for $1 per year. He held this post until 1964 when he became
honorary curator.
Galileo’s geometrical and military compass,
A SAVER OF THINGS Marc’Antonio Mazzoleni, circa 1604
Inv. #DW0950, Rendition number D008708
Mr. Wheatland was tireless in watching out for wayward parts of
Harvard’s scientific heritage. On a visit to the university’s photographer, In 1968, Mr. Wheatland published The Apparatus of Science at
he noticed a “nice little brass bubble level” in his photo lab. The Harvard, 1765-1800 and by the 1970s, he and Gay were showing off some
photographer confessed that he had picked it up somewhere in the physics of the instruments in the annual lectures that Professor Cohen delivered to
labs, and let Mr. Wheatland have it. Over time he recognized that this was sophomores concentrating in History and Science. In 1976, I attended one
part of a surveyor’s level by Benjamin Martin of London. He found the of these lectures and decided to stop by Allston Burr the next week to learn
magnetic compass with arms in a case in the Jefferson Laboratory, the more about the instruments. Apparently, I was the first student to do this.
telescope that clamped to the arms in a cabinet of teaching apparatus for I was thoroughly charmed by the two curators, who invited me to come
Physics B, and the tripod of wood and a brass cap with fittings to set and again. When I returned the following week, I was greeted with “Looks like
level the compass in a pile of discarded parts in the attic. This significant we have a live one here, Eben!” – “Better sign her up, Mr. Wheat.” And
brass instrument had arrived at Harvard in 1765 with Franklin’s help and so I became their apprentice.
was loaned in 1775 to the Massachusetts militia to survey the line between Mr. Wheatland had a longstanding belief in the value of the Collection
its encampment and the British position. as a resource for the understanding of the past and a vision for its use in
research and teaching. In this belief and vision, he was way ahead of his
time. By the time of his death in 1993, thousands of scientific instruments,
books, maker’s catalogs, and manuals had been donated to the Collection
of Historical Scientific Instruments and another 4,600 rare imprints had
been given to Houghton Library. Even more critically, he ensured the
future of the Collection by establishing an endowment, the income from
which supports a curator and other operating costs.
Approximately ninety-five percent of the apparatus, books, and other
items in the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments were touched
by David P. Wheatland. They were rescued, conserved, documented, and
housed, bought, donated, treasured, and shared. Without his vision and
unstinting generosity, this Collection would not exist.
Surveyor’s Y level, Benjamin Martin, circa 1765
Although its free public galleries are presently closed due to the
Mr. Wheatland made another spectacular find on top of an apparatus COVID-19 pandemic, visitors may go to our website, chsi.harvard.edu,
cabinet in the laboratory of physicist Kenneth Bainbridge. It was a divided and explore the online database of the Collection.
brass circle mounted vertically, which Bainbridge claimed he was saving to Sara J. Schechner, PhD is the David P. Wheatland Curator of the
make a student spectrograph. It turned out to be a fine dip circle Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments and on the faculty of the
hand-picked by Benjamin Franklin for Harvard at the shop of Edward History of Science Department, Harvard University.
Nairne in London.
Rescue missions became a regular and legendary part of Mr.
Wheatland’s curatorial program. He was often joined in them by his wife
Elizabeth (Betty) Hinckley Wheatland, and beginning in the 1960s by
Ebenezer Gay, the devoted assistant curator for the Collection.
Mr. Wheatland also began his own private collection of instruments
with the idea of supplementing and filling in the gaps in the Harvard
Collection. His collection included over 700 sundials and a similar num-
ber of dialing books, over 3,000 early vacuum tubes and some of the first
transistors, many radios and radar devices, telephone prototypes and mete-
orological firsts, as well as significant instruments related to the history of
astronomy, navigation, surveying, and physics. He had a real knack for
knowing what would be of fundamental historical importance long before
anyone else thought to save it. These items were stored in a stone house,
barn, and Quonset hut dubbed the Radar-Radio Shed on Mr. Wheatland’s
farm in Topsfield, MA. Today they are part of the Collection of Historical
Scientific Instruments.

THE WHEATLAND LEGACY
The quality and importance of the Wheatland gift cannot be overstated.
Let me single out one example. This is the geometrical and military
compass invented by Galileo, made by his personal instrument maker, and
Globe electric machine,
given to the Duke of Mantua in 1604. It is one of only three extant Benjamin Martin, 1766
examples in the world.

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