Cambridge Press Museum

Cambridge, UK

Cambridge University is regarded the world over for its history and prestige. Its famous college and university buildings attract visitors near and far, and hold many treasures which give an exciting insight into some of the scholarly activities of the university's academics and students.

Its Press Museum which is located on Shaftsbury Road, displays a large collection of original and facsimile copies of items relating to publishing, printing, bibles and prayer books. Amongst the items on display are a selection of John Baskerville's punches, a folio edition of the King James Bible, a selection of programmes for the Wayzgoose, and the trowel that laid the first stone of the Pitt Building in 1831.

When display case manufacturers, Click Netherfield, came to house several of the historic items they were faced with a bit of a challenge. The positioning of the display cabinets in the room meant that they were unable to run mains power cables to them and so turned to UFO for assistance with the lighting element.

We were able to create a bespoke lighting solution that met the criteria of the brief. We did this by customising two of our MetroLED gantries to allow them to operate via battery power instead of mains power. When fully charged, the battery power would allow the LED lights on the gantry to operate for a minimum of 200 hours. Once a re-charge was necessary, the museum personnel could simply run an extension cable to the battery pack located in the base of each display cabinet and charge the system through the night while the museum was free of visitors. It couldn't be any easier.

The other customisation to the MetroLED system included the LED spotlights being attached to the gantry via stalks. The flexible stalks can be moved to allow the stream of light to pinpoint specific details of the items on display.

Images courtesy of Click Netherfield Ltd