IHPST

For several decades, the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST) was at the forefront of efforts to establish a science museum at the University of Toronto. During this period, it accepted donations of various artefacts from the public and acquired material from across the U of T in anticipation of establishing a museum collection. This assemblage of artefacts is now grouped together as the IHPST collection.

This collection notably includes several important items from the Academy of Medicine Collection that were left behind at the Toronto General Hospital after the Museum of Healthcare and the Canada Science and Technology Museum had made their acquisitions. These include an early EEG machine constructed in the mid- to late-1930s at the Banting Institute.

The collection is especially useful because it is accessible. For this reason, objects in the IHPST collection have been used extensively in outreach activities. Artefacts donated to the UTSIC project are accessioned to the IHPST collection when there is no other obvious home for them.

Contact: Erich Weidenhammer, Curator, UTSIC. (erich.weidenhammer@utoronto.ca)