Psychology Virtual Museum

The Barnard College Psychology Department History of Psychology Collection

This collection is dedicated to the preservation of the history and apparatus from the early days of the Barnard College Psychology Department. Barnard College, a four-year women's college, was founded in 1889 and the first courses in psychology were offered in 1906 over the strenuous objections of many faculty and administrators who maintained that psychology was not a fitting topic for young women. We have digitized the documents and apparatus which have been stored in the departmental archives for nearly 100 years and placed them on the internet in a form that makes them accessible to historians and students. This museum was created in 1995 and, as time permits, more of this information will be digitized and made available.

In the photograph above, Harry L. Hollingworth, founder of the Barnard College Psychology Department, demonstrates the operation of the Hipp Chronoscope at the opening of the Hollingworth Laboratories.

View and Download a PDF of the collection here.

Related Sites

• Museum of the history of Psychological Instrumentation, Montclair State University.
• The Museum of Brass Instrument Psychology at the University of Toronto.

Contacts

Thomas B. Perera Ph.D.
Historian and Barnard College Museum Curator
Professor Emeritous, Department of Psychology
Montclair State University
Tom Perera's Homepage
Tom Perera's Telegraph & Scientific Instrument Cyber Musem

Peter Balsam Ph.D.
Department of Psychology and Department of Neuroscience & Behavior
Barnard College - Columbia University
3009 Broadway New York City, NY 10027
pbalsam@columbia.edu