A Note from the Author
Though I learned much about the physics behind cycling and other scientific topics, it would take months of archival research and hours of in-person interviews before I started to understand the history behind the displays and the people who made them possible. The story was a long one, beginning far earlier than the 1970 legislative act that created the Museum. It was full of twists and turns, ups and downs, successes and failures. I, like many of the historical actors in the pages that follow, learned an invaluable, and less-than-obvious, lesson: legislating a state agency does not make it so. People, through countless waves of trial and error, build and operate a museum, state funding aside (if it exists in the first place). The six chapters of this text attempt to tell their story. While it is impossible to mention every individual who contributed to the SMV throughout its existence, I have tried to emphasize the human touch behind significant events, exhibits, and programs. Whether it be the idea that sparked an initiative or months of letter writing to secure donations, I characterized moments in the Museum’s history as dynamic ones with, admittedly sometimes nameless, people on the ground making change happen. I hope that readers can picture even a fraction of the hard work revealed to me by thousands of archival documents.
Finally, I would like to thank several individuals who made this project possible. I feel particularly indebted to those who wrote shorter histories of the Science Museum or conducted oral history interviews in the past. To James O’Brien, thank you for recommending my name to the Virginia Academy of Science and for recording and preserving what memories remain of the Museum. Milton J. Elliott III and Thomas Driscoll also shared documents and memories with me, including Driscoll’s 1992 A Brief History of Broad Street Station and the Science Museum of Virginia, which is cited several times in the footnotes that follow. Thank you to the Virginia Academy of Science for funding this project and the William and Mary Department of History for allowing me to write a book while preparing for comprehensive examinations. The graduate director was right; it was very difficult. Special thanks to the staff at the Science Museum of Virginia for allowing me to explore institutional archives. Elizabeth Voelkel, Summer Pearce, and Richard Conti were particularly generous with their time. Thank you to the dozens of people who sat down with me for interviews, sometimes lasting hours longer than expected. Your words made the Museum come alive, helping me contextualize the evidence I found in physical documents. It was a privilege to speak with each of you. Special thanks to Charles D. Smith who lent me bags of relevant documents after our interview in Richmond. Lastly, I would like to thank my friends and family for supporting me throughout the project. In particular, I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to my partner, John N. Roach, Jr., who read every word of this manuscript and watched me despair when I feared failure. He now knows more about the Science Museum of Virginia than he ever dreamed possible.