One of the best permanent shows in London is the Science Museum’s collection of electrical and magnetic instruments commissioned by George III. Here, gathered in one room, you can see orreries, Leyden jars, air pumps and – my favourite – electrostatic spangles flickering like lightning in the glass pillars of a temple intended to stand as the centrepiece of a dining-table.
You could, until 1993, combine the joys of this collection with a visit to the museum’s history of electricity, laid out in darkened tableaux to make theatre of the lacemaker’s pin-pricked candleshade, the shock of the first arc-light. I mourn its passing; these are the places which bring us into imaginative connection with the extraordinary world of the Lunar men.
The Lunar men were anything but lunatics, although the line between brilliance and plain eccentricity was often thin.
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