The Powerhouse Museum is the main division of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sci Sciences in Sydney. The other branch of the museum is the Sydney Observatory. Despite the fact the museum is often described as a science museum, it houses a very diverse collections, among which can be emphasised Applied Arts, Science, Communications, Transport, Media, Computer Technology, Space Technology, Steam Engines, etc.
In various versions, the Power Plant Museum has existed for more than 125 years, in the It keeps about 400 thousand exhibits. Most of them are housed in the building, which the museum occupied in 1988 and because of which it was named. Previously it used to be a substation for electric trams, but today it's a popular tourist attraction in Sidney.
The history of the museum dates back to the Sydney International Exhibition, held in 1879, some of the exhibits of which formed the basis of the Museum of Technology. For a time the collections were housed in the Sydney Hospital in the same room as the morgue, and in 1893 the museum moved into its own building, where it remained until 1988.
Today, unique items can be seen among the museum's exhibits - for example, the world's oldest operating steam engine, created in 1785, and the first steam locomotive, built in New South Wales in 1854. Аnd, perhaps the museum's most popular exhibit is a model of the Strasbourg Clock, built in 1887 by a 25-year-old clockmaker from Sydney, Richard Smith. It is a working model of the famous Strasbourg Astronomical Clock. Smith himself had never seen the original, and based his model on a pamphlet describing the timekeeping and astronomical functions of the clock. In the exhibition "Space Technologies" exposition presents a life-size model of a space shuttle cabin. Children are particularly fond of the "Experiments" exposition, where with the help of interactive displays to learn about various aspects of magnetism, electricity, light, motion, etc. For example, here you can learn how chocolate is made chocolate and taste it at each of the four stages of making it.
