Originally all of the museum's collections were housed in the Oval Room from 1784. The electricity instrument demonstrations tended to make a lot of noise and distracted the readers of the books in the gallery, and after the mineralogical cabinet was built for the center of the room, demonstrations there became more difficult and a new demonstration and lecture room was built on the north side (today the Print room). This new room shared its purpose with the art gallery but as the number of instrument cabinets increased, was felt to be too dark, leading to the creation of a separate painting gallery in 1838. The current instrument room was built as part of an 1880-1885 extension of the museum, designed to have daylight from both sides for better viewing of the experiments. It is located between the Fossil Room II and the Oval Room.