Ingenium’s collection includes a lot of intriguing artifacts — and some of them even have star power!

In 1997 Jerry Fielder contacted the then-director of the Collection and Research Division of the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Geoff Rider, with an offer of a donation. Each year the Museum receives several hundred offers from across Canada, yet Geoff immediately recognized that this was not an average proposal. Since 1979 Jerry had been a curator and an assistant to prominent Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh.

The Petrovic Collection at the Canada Science and Technology Museum is a collection of over 130 mathematical instruments from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries. These instruments came to the museum in 1980 from Dr. George Petrovic, a Serbian-born architect who collected them in order to document the connections between mathematical practice and architecture in the eastern Mediterranean regions, as well as countries that were once part of the Ottoman Empire. The collection is now at the centre

The Ingenium’s collection of ranges, includes a variety of appliances — fireboxes, table stoves, cooking plates, buffet stoves — and illustrates the main innovations made to these electric household cooking appliances between 1900 and 2000.

Industrial transfers were a form of decal commonly used in Canada, and around the world, replacing the expensive method of hand painting coats of arms, trademarks, signs, ornaments, letters and numbers on railway equipment, ships and industrial machinery.

Curators do many things at our three museums – research, develop exhibits, respond to research requests, provide content for museum programs, and host the public, scholars and students in our collections. Collecting, however, is our most important activity. Through collecting we create a material legacy for Canadians; through the act of collecting we connect with Canadians and help connect Canadians with each other. Collecting is not just collection building, it is community building.