ABSTRACT
The artifacts at living history museums can be a focal point for the interaction between visitors and staff, even if visitors are unfamiliar with those artifacts and have no idea of how they were used or how they worked. Caring for those artifacts is a core responsibility for museum personnel, but when dealing with mechanical objects, that care may be influenced by how those individuals feel about them. Peter Ledwith illustrated how the differing attitudes that people have about mechanical objects can influence the way that collections are treated at living history sites. Indifference exists in a very delicate state of balance in the museum world. Demonstration of machinery certainly helps attitudes, but all too frequently at the peril of the artifact. Positive, negative, indifferent- these are the three varieties of attitudes which form a standard thread running throughout industrial collections from coast to coast.
