Lidia Kozhina

Guren Grigorian

Museums of science and technology now come in many guises — ranging from large, multi-functional institutions to small outfits. The proliferation of such museums reflects the growth of science and technology’s role in social life and the social consequences of their influence. These museums therefore operate at several levels: they document and display for the public the historical development of science and technology, collect and preserve scientific and technological artifacts, and undertake the massive task of popularizing the fundamentals of technological and scientific knowledge. The Polytechnic Museum in Moscow numbers among the ten most prominent, multi-functional museums of technology in the world, and today it possesses one of the most extensive collections of technological artifacts in Russia, consisting of more than 160,000 individual items. The museum contains more than a hundred collections, many of which are among the best in the world, and they illustrate the development of technological devices in great detail. The museum also search es systematically for scientific and technological artifacts, develops fundamental methods of collecting, and produces scientific descriptions of the unique artifacts from the museums collections.