Historical Artifacts

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CHF holds an array of fascinating historical artifacts related to chemistry, from a world-class collection of children’s chemistry sets to computer chips and consumer products. Many of these artifacts can be seen in our permanent exhibition, Making Modernity.

Chemistry sets
CHF houses one of the best public collections of chemistry sets, with approximately 100 different sets from all over the world, including Australia and Germany. Learn more and view a slide show >

Plastics
CHF has a unique collection of artifacts related to plastics, such as nylon objects from the early days of nylon production at DuPont, Bakelite objects, and celluloid objects.

Electrochemical artifacts
Artifacts related to electrochemistry include early batteries, light bulbs, vacuum tubes, transistors, computer chips, and samples of elements discovered by electrolysis. CHF’s collection also features consumer products made possible by electrochemical processes, such as aluminum jewelry, early telephones, transistor radios, hearing aids, and an electroplated tea set. View a slide show of early batteries >

Other artifacts of historical significance
Other artifacts in our collection include vintage advertising and trade cards for the chemical industry, trade show memorabilia, chemical test kits, chemical samples, and molecular models.

And more....
Wondering if we have it? View more examples from CHF’s historical artifacts collection in our searchable database. Or contact us at artifacts@chemheritage.org to find out more about what’s in the collection.