The Science Museum is inviting visitors to interact with 80 of its most precious artefacts with a new iPad app that allows users to study, rotate and operate objects hand-picked by the museum's curators.

Journeys of Invention includes the examination of a flea using Robert Hooke's 17th century microscope, encoding messages using an enigma machine from the second world war and a tour of the control panel of the Apollo 10 command module – an area that museum visitors cannot normally explore.

Users are also given access to photographs, archive film footage and contemporary artworks.

“Journeys of Invention is at once awe-inspiring and intimate," said Andrew Nahum, the Science Museum’s lead curator. "It is like having a curator take you on a series of guided tours through some of the most magnificent objects in our collection, with each journey bringing to life the story of a key scientific idea.”

Nahum added that the app allowed the curators to "take off the shackles of geography" and allowed users to explore objects that normally would require them to visit three floors of the Science Museum. 

The 80 inventions are curated into 14 stories, two of which are free when the app is downloaded and the others can be accessed through one in-app purchase of £6.99.

One story, Connected, traces how technology, from the steam engine to the iPad, has made the world a more connected place and brought people closer together. Another, called New Science, focuses on modern science, allowing users to look at various objects through Hooke's microscope before comparing it to the scientist's original drawings.

The app designers have form

The app was created by Touch Press in partnership with the Science Museum, who are celebrating an earlier app being named Apple's Best iPad App of 2013.

“Science is a journey of discovery through time and space. So is this app," said Theodore Gray, Touch Press's chief creative officer.

The London startup previously created an app with Disney that allowed users to go behind the scenes of every film Disney has ever released. Amongst a variety of actions, users can see hand-made drawings of the cartoons, as well as scroll to look at individual stills from the movies.

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