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198th Session (2018-2019) Excursions

Summer Visits 2019

The Society is arranging a programme of summer visits for Fellows (and their guests). Details will appear here and email will be sent to Fellows as they become available.

Further details about the visits will then be emailed to those wishing to attend.

Peter Jones
23 Queen's Crescent
Edinburgh EH9 2BB
Telephone: 0131 622 0428

National Museum of Flight
East Fortune

On Thursday 19th September at 12 noon

The second summer visit will be on Thursday 19th September and will be a bespoke afternoon visit to the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune, hosted once again by Dr Sam Alberti, Keeper of Science and Technology NMS. Final details and costs will shortly be advertised to Fellows, and on the RSSA website. However, it is anticipated that a minibus will be provided to transport Fellows and guests to East Fortune, leaving Waterloo Place in Edinburgh at about 12 noon. Lunch will be available from the Museum cafe at East Fortune.

The visit, which will commence at 2pm and include a bespoke curatorial guided tour through the hangars devoted to Concorde, military and civil aviation, drawing out the rationale and stories behind the display; as well as special access to the stored material including the splendid ‘engine room’. Tea and coffee will be available during the course of the visit, which will involve some gentle walking between buildings.

The visit should finish by about 4.30pm when the minibus will take the party back to Edinburgh.

If you are interested in this visit to the National Museum of Flight please contact the Secretary, Peter Jones on secretary@rssa.org.uk or by telephone on 0131 622 0428.

Previous Visits

National Museum of Scotland Collection Centre
242 West Granton Road, Edinburgh

On Thursday 6th June 2019 at 2.00pm

During the afternoon of 6th June, 18 Fellows and their guests were able to enjoy a visit to the National Museum of Scotland Collection Centre in Granton. What was immediately event was the vast array and quantity of objects held in the store, ranging from steam driven mechanical diggers, horse drawn agricultural machinery, models of boats and ships, and early gramophones, and computers to name but a few. Only about ten per cent of the stock is actually displayed in the Museums themselves and there was a sense of adventure going round the vast store as you never knew just what was to be found round the corner in the next bay. Disconcertingly many of the objects were ones that Fellows remembered in daily use in their younger days! Apart from the objects themselves members were also able to visit the area where conservation and restoration is undertaken, a major item at the moment being the optic from the Tod Head lighthouse in Aberdeenshire which was constructed in 1897 by A Henri-Lepaute of Paris, with a clockwork mechanism by John Milne of Edinburgh.

Fellows were also able to see the recently acquired Bruce-Oosterwijck longitude pendulum sea clock c 1662, constructed almost a hundred years before the more widely known Harrison clocks.