The “CERN Heritage Collection Team” has contacted the GAC-EPA Committee to ask us to invite our retired CERN members to help identify unknown objects in CERN’s heritage collections.
CERN’s heritage collections include more than 350 objects that tell the story of CERN’s scientific and technical achievements. Many of these objects are on display at the Science Portal and are on loan to museums around the world.
For some of them, key information is missing: what they were used for, who used them, when, and why. In other cases, the location of an object is unknown.
This is where the CERN community can help. Objects whose context is not documented lose their meaning over time and eventually get classified as “unknown,” but for each one, there may be someone today who knows exactly what it is. You can view the list of missing and unknown objects here, and explore the entire collection of exhibited objects here. The file on CERNbox contains some of the posters that have been exhibited at CERN, as well as a PowerPoint presentation featuring many other objects that have yet to be identified.
Please contact heritage.collections@cern.ch if you can:
- Identify an unlabeled or mislabeled object.
- Specify how an item was used and who used it (person or experiment).
- Share photos, documents, or memories related to an object.
- Let us know about an object whose location is unknown.
Preserving CERN’s heritage relies on the memories and knowledge of the people who built, operated, and used this equipment.
Help the CERN Heritage Collections Team pass this history on to future generations.
P.S.: You can post comments on the GAC-EPA Forum: https://gac-epa.org/community/cern-heritage-collection-collection-du-patrimoine-du-cern/
