Throughout 2011, Museums right across Cornwall, from the Atlantic coast to the Tamar, are telling ‘A History of Cornwall in 100 Objects’ - a project inspired by HOTW - and these objects are now being posted onto the History of the World website.

The project is being run by the Museum Development Officer team who are based at the Royal Cornwall Museum, in Truro.  The selection process has involved museums of all sizes – of which there are over 60 in the county - from tiny volunteer-run museums to major high-profile organisations.  The aim is to get local people and visitors alike to see these unique objects and learn more about Cornwall’s history. 

There has been some heated debate along the way and the final choice has not been without controversy, but it has certainly generated a lot of interest and brought to light some wonderful, unexpected and quintessentially Cornish objects.

One of those 100 objects is a surfboard from Perranzabuloe Museum at Perranporth.  Bellyboard surfing became popular at Perranporth soon after the end of World War I when George Tamlyn and William Saunders returned from the western front. There they had met South African surfers and decided to bring the sport to Cornwall. 

The local coffin maker and builder, Tom Tremewan knocked up surf boards at 2 shillings a time. The first boards were flat and made from two pieces of tongue-and-groove deal screwed to three wooden cross pieces.

Old floorboards and nails were used, to keep costs down and additional supplies were sometimes brought to Perranporth on the top of the local bus.  Hundreds of surf boards were made each year at Tremewans in Perranporth.   Better types of boards, with curved ends, evolved over time, at a higher price of course. 

Another very Cornish and very strange object is the Padstow Obby Oss which can be seen in the town’s volunteer-run museum.  Padstow is not only famous for Rick Stein’s cooking but also for one of Cornwall's most famous and enduring May Day folk customs. The Obby Oss looks very much like an African mask – it’s very similar to that of the Duck Dancers of New Guinea.

Over the coming year the 100 objects project will be used to generate media and community interest in museums and Cornwall’s unique heritage. 

It’s great to see the museums in Cornwall joining together to do this. Perhaps, I’ll make it down there next year to hunt down some of the objects – I particularly like the look of Elliot's shop. In the meantime, you can look through all 100 Cornwall objects here, including Trengrouse's Rocket, Gorsedd robes and  Alfred Nobel’s stool.

 

However, we do have two other awards that we have won. The team at VML, the digital media agency who worked with our BBC technical and design teams to build the site for us, have won the Golden Stiletto which is awarded to women for exceptional achievement in the digital media.

The other award was picked up by CBBC’s Relic: Guardians of the Museum, which won Best Entertainment at the Children’s BAFTA Awards. Congratulations to all the teams at CBBC and the British Museum – and to the kids that successfully became Guardians of the Museum. (Actually has anyone seen that happen? I swear every episode I’ve seen the kids have been defeated by the Dark Lord and locked in that display case for eternity.)

It’s been great to have a section of the History of the World project just for children and the huge success of Relic has inspired museums all over the country to run special Relic Trails. Each trail lets families try their hand at solving puzzles and unlocking local history. Many of the trails will be running through into next year, so it’s not too late to see if there is one near you.

BBC Learning made some great short videos with Kay Topping from Haslemere Education Museum to give teachers an idea of the power of of objects in the classroom.

Watching the videos again, I thought they would be of interest to more than just teachers, so I've put one of them at the bottom of this post. And to introduce it, I asked Kay to explain why she believes objects can be such powerful educational tools:

When the BBC contacted us about doing some filming here at Haslemere Educational Museum around the Relic Challenge I was very happy to say yes, as I really believe in the power of the object and this was a great opportunity to show this in action.

School subjects can be learnt through books, film and the Internet but, however good these resources are, they are unlikely to be as powerful as an actual object. Children especially like to be able to touch things and by telling stories through objects history itself becomes more tangible and easier for children to understand.

As a museum educator I have the privilege of using objects everyday, but although I have a real familiarity with some objects, for example the ancient Egyptian shabti that I use regularly, they still have a special wow factor.

When I explain that this object was made for a real ancient Egyptian by another real ancient Egyptian I can see the kids faces reflecting this ‘Wow’.  Only objects and the actual places where events happened are able to do this.

It is often hard to see the children’s reactions while you are actually delivering a session but watching the film clips and listening to the children as they were discussing the objects confirmed the power of objects for me.

Watching them become really animated and discussing the objects with such passion just proved what I already knew – that I am very privileged to be able to use objects to bring history alive and spark kids imaginations.

You can see more videos about using obects to teach history and find out how to upload them to the site on our Schools page, including one about Kay's Egyptian shabti.

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So last night was the launch of the official book of the series. I managed to snag a ticket to the event at the British Museum in which Neil MacGregor and Mark Damazer looked back at how the series happened and what they feel it managed to achieve.

As Neil put it: “None of us can quite remember how it all began; there is a certain creation myth that has grown around it at the museum.” Mark Damazer admitted that the germ of the project had appeared around five years ago – and I thought that just the last year had been exhausting.

There were some insights into the process at the museum that led to the selection of the objects. It seems that half the museum must have been involved in the decisions at some point.

Neil said the process involved himself and the three main series curators meeting up with at least five other “curators of the week”, who represented individual collections within the museum. Between them they would then thrash out “what theme you might choose around, say, the year 800 AD that would allow you to talk about objects from Europe, Asia, the Americas and the Middle East.” (You can find out what they settled on here.)

What I took away from the evening is that the scale of the project and the decisions that arose from the central concept, that this had to be a world history, took even the museum team by surprise. Or, as Neil put it, “The shock when we realised that the Roman Empire would have one object; the Renaissance would have one object.”

 

Those decisions led to a series that looks at cultures some of which I certainly knew little or nothing about. So it was gratifying to hear that the same had happened to the team behind it, including Neil:

I don’t know about your education but mine had very little about the Yemen in the early Christian era. It had simply never occurred to me to think: ‘what was happening in Yemen in 200-300AD?’

Me neither, but now I have some idea thanks to the Arabian bronze hand that was chosen among the 100 objects. Similarly, I now know something about the Huastecs, the Indus civilisation and the Tang dynasty. It has been a very long journey of discovery.

And now it’s a book. The thing that struck me is the size of it; around 650 pages plus another 50 pages of bibliography, index, references, etc. Just the weight of it reminds you of the epic nature of the series.

Fortunately, just like the radio series, it’s in bite-sized chunks, so you can rest your arms every 400 years or so.

Since the series ended on Friday, we’ve had a few questions about how long the programmes will be available for and the best way to get hold of them.

The good news is that all the programmes – every single episode – are going to be available online for at least the next two years.

That means you can listen again on the page for each object, or via iPlayer, or download an episode to your pc or media player. Of course the great thing about downloading them is that they are then yours to keep.

Several people have also been asking if there is any way for them to download all 100 episodes without having to right-click on each one and ‘Save as’.

I can see how that might quickly get a little tiresome but I have good news for you here too. You can indeed download them all in one go by subscribing to A History of the World as a podcast. That way you can choose to ‘Get all’ episodes and all them will be downloaded in one big rush.

The BBC Podcasts pages have help with subscribing to podcasts – as well the ever-present terms and conditions.

So you’ve no excuse not to catch up on the ones you’ve missed and indeed collect them all and start all over again - two million years ago in the Olduvai gorge.

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So which was your favourite object? You can't remember? Well luckily for you we have something to nudge your memory.

For those of you struggling to think as far back as the clovis spear point or King Den's sandal label, here is a reminder for you. Allow us to present: A History of the World in Five Minutes.

We’ve had a number of curators on the blog over the last few months looking at objects from their own collection as well as ones added by you. Then someone pointed out that the BBC has its own collection and we should get some of those objects onto the site.

 

Robert Seatter, the Head of BBC History, kindly responded to our call and has uploaded some of the objects from the BBC’s long broadcasting history. He’s also picked out a few of his favourites and the stories behind them.

Collections are funny things – occasionally purpose-built, but all too often accrued organically by happenstance.

The BBC has been a bit of a schizophrenic ‘collector’ in its long history. Its written archives reflect an essentially bureaucratic set up, with scrupulously stored minutes of meetings, annual reports and correspondence, while its TV and radio programmes were ephemeral, here-and-gone products. The early radio programmes were saved, for example, only by being stashed in a conscientious producer’s bottom drawer!

As for BBC artworks and artefacts, these have only latterly been collected with coherence, as interest in them has grown and grown. Here are a few gems from that collection…

Of course, we’d have to begin with the iconic BBC microphone, with its rather grand nomenclature: AXBT! Now, it’s a very symbol of the BBC, from its multiple depictions in the early days of radio - as announcers and singers, often be-suited and bow-tied, appeared behind them.

We had one out latterly at the behest of the President Sarkozy and the French Embassy, who were after the microphone used by General de Gaulle in his famous BBC broadcast to occupied France in June 1940. They gasped as we produced its pristine and shiny metallic form!

 

A little earlier in 1933, Eric Gill captured the new magic of broadcasting in the lyrical  statuary of Ariel and Prospero.

This stands above the entrance to Broadcasting House in London, and is one of the loveliest artworks commissioned by the BBC. Notorious in its day for the brazen nakedness of the boy Ariel, the statue attracted mythologies all of its own.

Like the story of the sculpture behind the sculpture…When the statue was being cleaned, we tested this one, and found to our delight that there was indeed something carved on the flat back of Prospero: the head of a beautiful girl. No-one knows who she was.

And of course, the collection also fascinates itself with the evolution of the BBC brand. It’s hard to believe now that in the BBC’s early days there was no formal BBC logo. It grew out of a sequence of decorative motifs – via the first TV on-air branding: the famous Bat’s wings logo (designed by Festival of Britain designer, Abram Games in 1953).

 

We also have in the collection that famous revolving globe, which so many of us grew up watching.

Here’s the simple mechanical box which created it in 1963, when the world was still black and white, and when we saw the globe turning and reflected flat behind it via a simple mirror wall.

• Take a look at the rest of the BBC objects, including the various Blue Peter badges, a Dalek mould, the Mastermind buzzer and a Blattnerphone.

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Watch a video of Neil MacGregor unveiling the 100th object in the British Museum and live on the Today programme.

=======================   UPDATE - 07.45AM 14.10.2010    ========================

 

The 100th object is the solar-powered lamp and charger.

It's an object that can bring electricity those who have never had it before, and may point the way towards a more sustainable source of power for all of us in the future.

==========================================================================

 

The British Museum is revealing their 100th object at 7:45am on this morning’s Today programme. We’ve been looking at the five contenders this week but the final choice is still a mystery. All we know is that it’s “an object that tells the story of the ingenuity and the challenges that shape humanity in the 21st century.”

Looking at the five contenders, which of them best fits that description? You can argue that they all show some degree of ingenuity, though in the case of the pestle and mortar it’s the pretty basic kind of hitting rocks together, so I’m not sure that the ingenuity part is going to help us much.

I feel like it’s the ‘challenges of the 21st century’ that is going to be key to the final choice, so what challenges do each of these objects help define?

The football shirt has attracted a lot of discussion from football fans about whether it should have been a British footballer, such as Ryan Giggs or Steven Gerrard, but the 21st century challenge that it describes is the one of a globalised economy. This is an English football shirt for an Ivory Coast footballer made by a German sportswear company in China. That is a lot of nations with an investment in one shirt.

On the other hand, the pestle and mortar can also tell a story about globalisation. It tells us how it’s more than just goods and currencies that move between countries in a global economy; cultures and traditions travel too.

Then there’s the mobile phone, which shows how the large parts of the world currently left out of globalisation might be given access to the instant communication and spread of knowledge that the global market relies on.

Meanwhile, I think the solar-powered lamp and the Antarctic clothing both represent a different challenge of the 21st century: climate change.

The Antarctic clothing is needed by the scientists who are taking the climate measurements that may be driving the political and economic landscape by the end of the century.

But perhaps the solar-powered lamp and charger shows a route forward with technology that can bring us electricity from more sustainable, less polluting sources.

As a comment on the blog pointed out, the solar lamp also highlights how our entire modern infrastructure is built around electrical power.

From manufacturing plants, to computer design, to mobile communication, to a simple light for reading; without electricity there is no modern world. For that reason, from the contenders I would pick the solar-powered lamp as the 100th object.

But I also know that ‘global trade’ has been one of the key themes of A History of the World in 100 Objects, so I have a feeling that the final object might be the mobile phone. As David said on the blog on Saturday:

Now fishermen in Kerala, India, can use mobiles to check out where the best prices might be paid for their catch; farmers in Tanzania can sign-up to a text-messaging service that’ll keep them updated on the weather forecast, and small businesses across Africa can transfer their money through the air.

The mobile phone has also been the most popular choice by you in the suggestions for your 100th object, so maybe there is a nice synchronicity going on.

The announcement is around 7:45am and I’ll be there to see what Neil MacGregor reveals as the 100th object in our series. I’ll let you know as soon as that sheet comes off the display box.

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Tomorrow we will find out what the British Museum has chosen for its 100th object. It will be one of the five contenders that have been announced over the course of the last week: a football shirt, a mobile phone, some Antarctic clothing, a solar-powered lamp and charger and a pestle & mortar.

However, while we’ve been waiting to find out what the British Museum’s 100th object is, we’ve been asking you what your 100th object would be.

We’ve had a great response, and people have been discussing the idea of an object that sums up life today across BBC radio; from Greg James’s listeners on Radio 1 to Collins and Herring’s Nerd Army on Six Music.

Broadcasting House kicked us off on Radio 4 on a Sunday with objects including an International Red Cross collection box, an iPad and a botox needle.

That seems like a pretty good summary of the fantastic suggestions that you’ve given us; from the thought-provoking, to the zeitgeist grabbing, to the satirical.

I wanted to give a flavour of what you’ve been sending in, so I thought I’d list a few of our favourite suggestions in similar sets of three. So here you go:

A sheet of foam rubber from a flip-flop factory in China (which is now part of a worker’s roof), a grain of genetically modified wheat and an empty purse.

A UN helmet, the large hadron collider and some Jedward merchandise.

An antibiotic pill, a memory stick and the cap on the BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

An AK-47 rifle, a cctv camera and a can of energy drink.

I think that gives a taste of the range of objects that you have nominated. However, there are a few that have clearly been more popular than others.

Plastic bags and bottles of mineral water were regularly suggested as examples of our wasteful lifestyles, and the wind turbine was a popular nomination as an object that could define our future.

But the two suggestions that have been made most frequently are a mobile phone - or smartphone - and a pc or laptop. And, as you may have guessed, the reasons given for these choices were mostly about connecting to the internet.

It’s easy to understand why. The internet is undoubtably one of the transformative technologies of our age. It’s already had a huge impact on our lives and yet we are really only just beginning to understand the effects that 24-hour access to unlimited information and a permenant record of our lives online may have over the coming decades.

We already see how it’s quickly become an important part of many people's daily life but we don’t yet know how important or where it will lead. Who knows what that smartphone or pc will enable us to do next year?

Tomorrow we find out what the British Museum’s choice of object is and there is a mobile phone among the five contenders. So maybe the power of the web even extends to predicting the future.

• The photo of people using their phones and laptops in a park is by FaceMePLS and it's used under licence.

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The Gardeners' Question Time team are taking a quick look at some gardening objects today in the potting shed. We've already had a range of horticultural objects added to the site.

Here Bob Flowerdew takes a look at a few that have caught his eye - plus he gives us his thoughts on the gardening objects that the team have kindly added. So over to Bob:

The A History of the World site is full of fascinating, and more everyday objects. 

One that caught my eye is the model of the indigo factory, which appeared in the 2008 Plants and People exhibition at Kew. A model unfortunately cannot convey the most impressive thing about these places: apparently, the stench from indigo manufacture was so great that many refused to approach, let alone visit places where the trade was carried on. The rotting smell of decay, as the plants were turned to dye, was said to be truly stomach churning.

The Yorkshire Museum of Farming’s hand-pushed seed drill looks hard work. Would not a hand-pulled drill have been easier? Incidentally, Jethro Tull’s seed drill was only part of his method, as it allowed a horse-drawn multiple hoe to be used for weeding. It was this that made him so successful - although when the French Academy came they took away only the drill and not the hoe; not perceiving that both were intrinsic to the tool’s functionality.

Within the Gardener’s Question Time section of this virtual museum, I love Bunny’s mud hut - though I’m not sure if it will pass muster for long, given our damp climate. Then again my ancient ancestors lived in similar ones.

 

Chris Beardshaw nominated the lawnmower – and no history of gardening would be complete without it. It’s a device that allowed the common people to have their turf as neat as the great gardens without the need for skill with a scythe -  if only they were still all such push models instead of the infernal, noisey, motorised ones today.

Stroud Museum’s entry claims to be the oldest lawnmower - but you know I reckon I’ve got one not quite as new, well at least not in quite as good condition.

Eric Robson also entered a lawnmower of sorts, an Allen Scythe, a kind of giant powered shaver on wheels, a dangerous device even if working properly, and which he reckons a prime example of inbuilt unreliability. I wish I had a photo of my old Vauxhall Viva, it was even more unreliable. Indeed I never got three consecutive uneventful trips out of it, then it was stolen – and,of course, broke down so the thieves had to abandon it.

Conversely, Peter Gibbs's seed dibber is about as reliable a tool as one can find- and one that people continually re-invent and believe unique. The dock lifter was somewhat rustic in manufacture, I have another as old and better made, and a modern one that is all space frame and looks like something from a space expedition. Ann Swithinbanks’ book about Kew is a good choice, as this is the pinnacle of horticultural gardens without which we would be much impoverished.

I rather thought Matthew Biggs's mattock showed a history of hard work - I hope he doesn’t have to do too much with it.

Obviously many objects get discarded and found in gardens such as the decorated clay pipe, the coldstream cap star, a silver penny and even a sundial - though I suppose that lived there anyway.

I’m not sure I should even countenance mentioning the first garden gnome from Lamport hall - not totally tasteless itself it sadly has been followed by too many and too much similar tat since.

One object I was envious of is the steam soil steriliser, I have real use for that, though I’d also really really like that Hove amber cup, gorgeous. And most bizarre of all the objects my trawl threw up: the Lloyds Bank turd from York.

No, not another vitriolic quip, quite justifiably, at the heads of bankers, but an actual turd, thought to be ancient Viking. Now I wonder what value would they give that on the Antiques Roadshow?

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In a corner of one of my sheds is a machine which I keep as a rusting reminder of the fallibility of professional engineers and designers. What my object demonstrates is that failure as well as success has changed the way we do things. For me the Allen Scythe is quite simply the worst horticultural machine ever made. OK, a quarter of a million of them were sold between 1935 and 1973 but that just goes to prove that one is born every minute.

I can, of course, feel the vibes already. In the furthest corners of the land men with missing fingers and dodgy backs are muttering and attempting to leap from their bed of pain to the Allen Scythe’s defence. Like the Reliant Robin and the earth closet it has its aficionados. But you wouldn’t want to let your daughter marry one.

So let me put them right. The Allen Scythe was a monstrous and useless machine. To make it start needed divine intervention. It wasn’t just a mower; it was a saw bench, compressor and hedge trimmer, a generator and strimmer. It did none of these things well. It mowed worst of all. Its reciprocating knife blades either ripped grass out by the roots (if you were lucky) or piled cut grass onto the front of the machine turning it into a travelling haystack. It had a very nasty habit of running away and you could guarantee that the moment it did was exactly when the metal rod which released the clutch stuck. In this mode it was particularly good at chewing its way through garden fences.

But to be fair, no machine is all bad and the Allen Scythe has one, inescapable redeeming feature. With its dangerously unguarded blades and eccentric ability to ignore the wishes of the man at the controls it’s perfectly placed to give the health and safety branch of the nanny state nightmares.

I think I’ll try to get mine started which will take about a month.

Take a look at all the Gardeners' Question Time objects on their profile page.

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Rory Cellan-Jones published a nice post this morning on his technology blog about his ideas for the 100th object in our series.

His choice of a simcard is a very clever one because it gets around having to pick any particular model of mobile phone.

Mobile phones and wifi connected technology, such as the iPad, have been popular suggestions so far. However, I like the suggestions that try and dig a little deeper into their circuitry for the thing that lies at the heart of what they deliver.

The simcard is definitely one of those, but my favourite so far is from James Simcock, one of the BBC’s mobile gurus, who has nominated the IP Packet Switch. It sounds like a con trick from from The Real Hustle but he describes it as “the enabling technology behind the internet revolution.”

Essentially it’s the device that lets your pc or smartphone send and receive data over the internet; chopping huge files into tiny little pieces that can be delivered independently and then reassembled.

The router in your home would be an example of a packet switch. And as most of us know from experience of the little green light fizzing out one day: no router, no internet.

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