History of Science Museum

Upon entry we were welcomed by the friendly staff. Even though it featured a wide array of old instruments in an old school museum style way without much interaction we were still amazed by some of the gems we found. My personal favorit was a calculator to exchange units in a pre-metric era where sometimes even cities like Hamburg would have their own means of measurement.
They also have a section about vaccine development and the current pandemic which gives a good background about the history and breakthroughs.

In short: Small, free museum that is worth a short visit.

A lovely little museum. We spent an hour or so there. As an adult, I found the exhibits fascinating. My daughter (9) found it a little dry.

Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area!

Cool little museum to go around.
My favourite exhibit was Einstein's handwriting on a chalk board. Really Cool.

Not a large museum but quite a wide variety of historic devices, clocks, instruments, and emergent technology.

Organization was okay but exhibits were unevenly lit. I'm a senior citizen and I was using a flashlight to read the explanatory cards. Especially in the basement.

And the historic electrical devices were in a case with metal lattice / glass doors which made them harder to see. With no explanatory cards, at all! Just a single binder with paper grids and names.

C'mon people! You have such a fascinating collection. But it needs some love.

One more suggestion. The way Einstein's chalkboard is displayed, and especially illuminated, almost guarantees personal pictures will have the reflection of a spotlight in them. Moving the spotlights to below the chalkboard (on the two nearby glass cases?) might be a simple solution.

This is a lovely place with much to see (but not so much that your brain overloads!) There are lots of real treasures here, beautiful engineering pieces, 'Einstein's blackboard' and many other curiosities. The staff were helpful and kind. We would return to take a little more time to look at every piece.

Wonderful museum of the history of science to look around during your visit to Oxford. Lots of amazing scientific things to look at and learn about all the fascinating people involved in making discoveries that shaped the way we live now.

Note - it’s free but you need to book your tickets and time slots online in advance.

This structure was used as the Ashmolean Museum's first building in the 17th century. When its current building was constructed with Neo-Greek architectural style in the 19th century, this building was turned into a science history museum. The museum has a wonderful collection of scientific inventions- such as the first computer invented by Charles Babbage, the laboratory equipment and periodic table of Henry Mosoley, the blackboard used by Albert Einstein, some of the first examples of microscopes and telescopes, compasses and more.

Staff, we're really friendly, really knew their stuff, not like your typical museum that you can spend hours and hours in, it's the perfect size, can do the entire thing in just under a hour! Absolutely stunning building, the stain glass is worth seeing just on their own!!! Highly recommended it to anyone as a must see in Oxford