Lin Chapman collects whistles: some small, the size of your thumb, some that tower over a tall man. On June 18th, a display of his collection will open at the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden. Mr. Chapman's fascination with whistles began a dozen years ago. He was completing a model of a steam engine. His wife asked "where's the whistle?" and the pursuit was begun. He was unprepared for the variety and character of whistles he would discover. The Wallingford resident has collected over 150 whistles from trains, factories, and boats.
The collection marks the great age of steam. By the middle of the 1800's, factory whistles announced the hour of work to whole valleys. In the 1940's, great locomotives still breathed raw steam to announce their arrival. In brass, steel and iron, these whistles gave machines voices, each with its own character.
"A whistle is a simple device" notes Chapman, "no moving parts." But this simple idea takes many forms. The Whistles exhibition explores this idea of variations on a single theme. Patrick Smith, the exhibition's science curator, has devised experiments to allow visitors to sort out what they know about this everyday phenomenon. "We whistle without thinking" Smith points out. "In the exhibition we encourage visitors to stop and think, to ask what's going on."
