From awe to experience, from artefacts to edufacts? On the post-war revolution in the objects of science communication

Abstract The central message of this paper is that in the 20 th century there was a revolution in the way science was presented. It became most visible in a significant change in the kinds of objects used to explain science to a wider public. For centuries the objects came from the academy, university, laboratory or industry. Either directly as artefacts or as modifications and simplifications that might work better in lectures and demonstrations, they inhabited the display cases in schools, universities, science collections and museums. It was not until the 1960s in North America that science museums – or rather science centres, as they soon became known – began to build their own exhibits in such a way as to present scientific phenomena as vividly as possible. How did this turn from artefacts to ‘edufacts’ come about and what implications did it have?