Now til January 21st, 2009, a renaissance exhibition of museums for technological history is at the Transport Museum. The exhibition created as a joint effort of the leading Hungarian museums for technology, focuses on the technical accomplishments and discoveries of the renaissance age.

Offering a review of the technical innovations of the Renaissance centuries, it also highlights events leading up to these and their direct and long-term effects. The exhibition shows how the message of renaissance renews present-day technical sciences and through these, our everyday lives.

The artefacts are on display in a space of 400 square metres, and are organised around the following themes: measuring distance and time, the secrets of flight, transportation, medical science, and the development of writing. Among others, the exhibition introduces the map considered to be the work of scribe Lázár - the first map to show Hungary’s towns and villages correctly - and also ingenious and impossible bridge models, and an ‘automatic’ carriage from the 17th century. We present one of the most important technical developments of the era of great discoveries, the ocean-faring sailing ship, the galleon. Visitors may have a look inside a renaissance writing room, study the model of Gutenberg’s printing press, and familiarise with the working principle of the pantograph, a drawing machine from the 16th century.

The renewing human thinking and approach in the renaissance era gradually transformed everyday life. Several ideas of the era could only be realised centuries later due to a lack of technical and technological knowledge at the time, such as for example Leonardo’s parachute and helicopter model. The exhibition draws a parallel between the curiosity of man in the renaissance era and today’s innovative research-approach, highlighting the course of technological development starting in the renaissance and arching through the centuries. Present-day inventions are an answer to the different developments of renaissance, and this is how we get from the first globes to space research, from ancient prints to e-books.

The organisers have made their selections from the vast collection of artefacts from the last six hundred years on a subjective basis:
peculiarities of the history of technology and revolutionary inventions are on display side-by-side offering evidence of the diversity and creative force characteristic of renaissance minds and their heirs. You can also test some of the artefacts of the exhibition at the Transport Museum on true-to-scale models. True to its traditions, the museum also makes sure that younger visitors experience the exhibits in a playful manner by offering a series of weekend programmes and museum pedagogy activities.
(photo www.km.iif.hu)