A museum was founded in 1857 under Bennet Woodcroft from the collection of the Royal Society of Arts and surplus items from the Great Exhibition. It was initially part of the South Kensington Museum, together with what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum, but was separated and became the Museum of Patents in 1858, the Patent Office Museum in 1863. This museum contained many of the most famous exhibits of what is now the Science Museum. In 1885, the Science Collections were renamed the Science Museum and in 1893 a separate Director was appointed. The Art Collections were renamed the Art Museum, which became the Victoria and Albert Museum nearby. The Patent Office Museum was merged into the Science Museum in 1909.
The Science Museum now holds a collection of over 300,000 items, including such famous items as Stephenson's Rocket, Puffing Billy (the oldest surviving steam locomotive), the first jet engine, a reconstructionof Francis Crick and James Watson's model of DNA, some of the earliest remaining steam engines, a working example of Charles Babbage's Difference engine, and the first prototype of the 10,000-year Clock of the Long Now. It also contains hundreds of interactive exhibits. A recent addition is the IMAX 3D Cinema showing science and nature documentaries, some of them in 3-D. Entrance has been free since 1 December 2001. The museum also houses some of the many objects collected by Henry Wellcome around a medical theme. These are displayed up on the 4th and 5th floors, although the objects on display are a fraction of the overall collection. The Science Museum has a dedicated library, and until the 1960s was Britain's National Library for Science, Medicine and Technology. It holds runs of periodicals, early books and manuscripts, and is used by scholars world-wide. It has for a number of years been run in conjunction with the Library of Imperial College, but in 2004 the Museum was unable to bear its share of the cost, so options are being discussed for the library's break-up and dispersal.
The museum is adjacent to the Natural History Museum and used to be connected to it by a public corridor, which is now closed. The closest London Underground station is South Kensington, which connects the museums to the subway via pedestrian tunnels.
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