HISTORY OF MECHANICAL CABINET IN SAINT-PETERBURG UNIVERSITY

Mechaniсal cabinet (former name: applied mechanics cabinet) is a cabinet with a collection of teaching mechanisms for physics and mathematics faculty of Imperial Saint-Petersburg University. It was founded in 1865 y. by M.F.Okatov Among curators there were the famous mathematicians and mechanics: A. M. Lyapunov, I.V. Meshcherskiy, G.V. Kolosov , E.L. Nikolai, N. I. Mushelishvili and others. Now the part of the collection are still saved and used at the theoretical and applied mechanics department of mathematics and mechanics faculty in Saint-Petersburg State University . We will present the following sections of the collection: 1) The models created by academics P.L. Chebyshev (with his own hand or by his drawings) in 1889-1895, 2) Wooden models of easiest mechanisms created in 1830-es 3) Reuleaux-Voigt mechanisms, 1882-1911-th and some others. In the best times (about 1899) the collection had hundreds models, in our days the department has less than one hundred mechanisms. The computer animations (including made by students) for several mechanisms are presented. The International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science (IFToMM) attended to this collection.