As a conservator at a glass museum, most of the conservation treatments I do are on glass, but sometimes we are faced with other, less expected materials. One of the more unusual treatments I’ve done recently was repairing the straws (dried plant stalks) of an 18th century Volta’s Straw Electroscope – an object invented by Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist, chemist, and inventor who was fascinated by electricity; interestingly the term “volt” was named in his honor.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, curiosity and experimentation around electrical phenomenon abounded. Instruments such as this one were invented to show and later measure electrostatic attraction and repulsion. When an electrically charged object (such as a balloon that has been rubbed on your hair) is moved near the conductive brass top of the instrument, electrons move freely between the top and the dangling straws, leaving both straws with either a positive or negative charge. Because each straw has the same charge, they repel each other and physically separate. Glass plays a critical role in this instrument not only because it allows us to see this separation, but also because its insulative properties make the phenomena possible by isolating the straws from the surrounding environment.