Banquet Venue: The Science Museum
The Science Museum has been in existence for about a century and a half.
It has its origins in the Great Exhibition of 1851, held in Hyde Park in the huge glass building known as the Crystal Palace.
The popularity of the exhibition ensured a large financial surplus, which its patron Prince Albert suggested should be used to found a number of educational establishments on the land available nearby. The Museums of South Kensington – and Imperial College London for that matter – are all established on the land bought as a result of the Great Exhibition.
The PowerMEMS conference banquet will take place in the "Making of the Modern World Gallery". This gallery displays a series of exceptional objects which mark new departures in technology and science – the events that have framed our world.
In this gallery you'll find such iconic items as Stephenson's original Rocket locomotive, Babbage's Difference Engine No. 1 and Crick and Watson's DNA model. These objects and many others are laid out in a chronological sequence that, in effect, comprises a cultural history of industrialisation from 1750 to the present day.
