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Accession Record : Extract from Annual Report for 1957-58

'COMMITTEE OF THE MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
Report for 1957-8 (including the Thirty-fifth Annual Report of the Lewis Evans Collection)

The outstanding event of the year under review has been the gift of the Billmeir Collection of scientific instruments. This most generous donation, which Congregation accepted on 22 October 1957, consists of some two hundred and eighty items, mostly objects of great value and beauty. The collection includes fifty astrolabes, of which eighteen are of European and thirty-two of Near-Eastern and Indian origin, a hundred and thirty-five sundials of almost every conceivable type, many topographical and drawing instruments, as well as armillary spheres, globes (mostly Islamic), nocturnals, quadrants, compasses, and telescopes. The Billmeir Collection was the largest and finest collection in this field remaining in private hands; so rich a collection of early instruments as Oxford now possesses is not found anywhere else. All scholars interested in the history of instrument-making are indebted to Mr. Billmeir for having presented his collection to a museum where they will be readily accessible.
The steps connecting the gate in Broad Street with the original main entrance and with the basement of the Museum - also the gift of Mr. J. A. Billmeir - were completed on 8 November 1957. A slab of black slate, with an inscription in Latin commemorating Mr. Billmeir's gift, was placed at the foot of the upper steps. At the beginning of 1958, the doorcase on the inside of the east entrance of the Museum was demolished, and the wooden moulding of the seventeenth century east door restored. A new doorcase of aluminium and glass was erected on the inside of the new north entrance.
On 13 March 1958, the new entrance was opened by the Chancellor of the University, the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Halifax, in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Billmeir and of fifty-one other guests of the Vice-Chancellor. After the ceremony, the company was entertained at luncheon in All Souls College.
During April 1958, the Billmeir Collection was exhibited at the Baltic Exchange, London.
On 1 May 1958, the University conferred on Mr. Billmeir, the honorary degree of Master of Arts.
The collection of physical apparatus, hitherto displayed in the upper gallery, was moved in April 1958 to new cases which have been built against the walls of the area adjoining the bottom of the staircase. The collection of drawing instruments and calculating devices was moved to the upper landing of the staircase. The space thus vacated in the upper gallery has been given over to the Billmeir Collection. The revision and supplementation of labels in the upper gallery has been continued.'

Under "Accessions"

'I. Gifts.

By Mr. J. A. Billmeir:

A collection of old scientific instruments described in A Catalogue of Scientific Instruments from the 13th to the 19th Centuries, prepared by C. H. Josten, 2nd edition 1955, and in A Supplement to a Catalogue of Scientific Instruments, prepared by F. R. Maddison, 1957.'

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