A Moray museum will unveil an exhibition celebrating one of Scotland’s greatest inventors when it opens for the season tomorrow.
Volunteers at the Falconer Museum in Forres have crafted a display entitled Power to the People, which explains how advances pioneered by James Watt shaped the industrial revolution and how people live today.
Visitors will be invited to learn about kinetic energy by pedalling a bicycle enough to inflate and illuminate a giant light bulb in one of the collection’s more hands-on exhibits.
The display will also feature a wind-up gramophone from the 1930s and a Singer sewing machine.
The museum will outline the history and future of power generation and consumption, an issue organisers say has a particular relevancy in Moray.
Moray Council museums officer, Anne Owens, said: “Windfarms and the future of energy is such a talking point in this area, and something a lot of people have an interest in.
“We hope people will therefore be keen to learn more about how that industry formed.
“On the exterior of the Falconer Museum we have 12 carved figureheads, each celebrating eminent enlightenment and Victorian scientists, and James Watt is one of those.
“As this is the national year of innovation, architecture and design, it seemed quite right for us to recognise his work with a display in his honour.”
James Watt, who lived between 1736-1819, was an inventor, mechanical engineer and chemist renowned for his improvements in steam engineering technology.
He developed the concept of horsepower, and the SI unit of power, the watt, was named after him.
The Friends of the Falconer Museum recently secured a grant of £5,000 from the Berryburn Community Fund, which will pay for a series of special events in connection with the energy exhibit.
On Saturday and Sunday May 14 and 15, the Hands on Science group will run family friendly workshops about solar and wind energy.
And in September, representatives from the Science Museum in London will visit Forres to stage shows about electricity.
The Falconer Museum and local information point is open from tomorrow until the end of October, between 10am-5pm from Tuesday to Saturday and from 1pm-5pm on Sundays.
