Powerhouse Ultimo

The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney is the central component of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences and is considered the largest and best-known museum in Australia. Spread over roughly 20,000 square meters, it presents more than 20 permanent exhibitions and several special exhibitions covering history, science, technology, design, transportation, space exploration, and music. Although only about 385,000 inventory numbers are officially recorded, because larger collections were often counted as a single object, the actual number of collected objects is estimated at more than one million. The museum's history dates back to 1879, when the foundation for a permanent collection was laid at Australia's first international exhibition, held in the Garden Palace. After fires and several relocations, the museum moved into its current home on Harris Street in 1988. It occupies a former power station that was built between 1899 and 1902 to power the city's tramway and was expanded with the addition of the Wran Building.

At the Powerhouse, you can marvel at a wide range of historic and technical masterpieces. Among the highlights is the oldest surviving working steam engine by Boulton & Watt, dating from 1785. In the transportation section, you can see, among other things, steam locomotive No. 3830, the heaviest exhibit in the museum, as well as the first locomotive to run in New South Wales, built by Robert Stephenson in 1854. Automotive history is also documented, with vehicles such as a 1913 Sheffield-Simplex. A particular crowd-pleaser is the working model of the astronomical clock from Strasbourg Cathedral, built by Richard Bartholomew Smith between 1887 and 1889. In addition to the regular time, this intricate piece shows the positions of the sun, moon, and planets as well as the local time in various world cities. The clock is decorated with allegorical figures and portraits of scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus. The collection is rounded out by a large part of the private collection of computer historian Allan G. Bromley on the history of calculating machines.