The first object in this tour dates from Roman Britain (43-409AD) and was produced using early technological processes.  Tiles were shaped then left to dry outside, sometimes under a cover or in a shed. Often tiles were made by individuals. These small scale production systems meant that tiles were often imprinted with finger prints and other imperfections. In this case, a dog stepped in the tile at the drying stage. Many tiles were produced on farms and in more rural areas outside of towns, and in fact many other tiles with animal prints have been found from different sites in Britain. The UCL Institute of Archaeology also has a similar tile with deer prints on in its teaching collection.

Roman Britain was a time of much construction: many new civilisations created, Hadrian’s Wall was built, and a number of forts have since been discovered. The tile represents this new construction in Britain and the influence of Roman engineering in society.

Jeremiah Rich published the first guide to his form of shorthand in 1642, although produced numerous reworkings of it, most notably Semigraphy or Arts Rarity in 1654. This New Testament and Psalm book were produced in the years following Arts Rarity by Rich and a team of scholars, eventually published in 1659, a year before Rich’s death. It is believed that they were purchased by a consumer in 1688 from Vintners Hall, the only location the books were sold from. They were acquired by Charles K. Ogden at some point during the 1930s and 40s (the period in which Ogden was building up his collection of books and texts that he saw as linguistically or cryptographically relevant), after which he donated the books and case to UCL as part of their Special Collections in 1953.

The object was invented by Galton, sometime most likely between 1852 and 1858. This is suggested by the instruction manual listing the European morse code as correct of 1859, suggesting that this is when this object was produced.

In 1844, Galton’s father died leaving him a great inheritance. He then joined the Royal Geographical Society in 1850 and got a grant to charter and explore Africa. He spent between April 1850 and January 1852 in Damaraland and Ovamboland in modern day Namibia.   The first record of the sun signal is from Galton describing it  to the British Association in 1958. This suggests that the sun signal was invented in Britain, based on Galton’s experiences in Africa.

However, the heliostat is not mentioned in the “signalling” section of Galton’s book “The Art of Travel” until its 1872 fifth edition. In this book, Galton says that he invented the instrument “some years ago”. Galton’s design of the sun signal is still in use, however signalling has been eclipsed as a method of communication since the mid 1900s.

The queen termite was most likely captured when a Czech explorer, Enriko Vráz, was in colonial West Africa, asked by the Czech natural historian Vaclav Frič to collect termites, and to send them back to Europe in alcohol-filled glass containers. Alcohol was the more primitive method of preserving natural history specimens - later, a chemical solution called formalin was created, and in 1897, Bouin’s solution, an effective fixative for specimens, was invented. The specimen was probably brought to London following the Paris World Fair of 1889, where termites were sold for educational purposes. The specimen was added to the Grant Museum of Zoology’s catalogue around the year 1906. Interestingly, the two main technologies used for preserving fluid specimens have not developed greatly, and are still used to date. In the future, new technologies may develop so that the specimens can be handled more easily, or be rendered more portable, as the current liquid technologies make the specimens heavy.

After being rolled out experimentally in Brittany during the 1970s, Minitel terminals began to be distributed throughout France in 1981 by France Telecom. This particular model was introduced in 1986 by Intelmatique, a subsidiary of France Telecom, as part of an attempt to sell the Minitel System abroad, specifically in the United States. At its height in the mid-1990s, there were 9 million Minitel terminals in use throughout France, with 25 million users and 26,000 services on offer. However, over time, the system was overtaken by the Internet and was finally shut down for good on the 30th of June 2012, sparking a surge of nostalgia throughout France for those who grew up with the little brown box.