The instruments had disappeared by the 1920s when R. T. Gunther, the first curator of the Oxford Museum of the History of Science, made inquiries into their whereabouts. Gunther listed them in his "Early Science in Oxford, Vol. 2: Astronomy" as "not extant". But in 1936 during the refurbishment of the University Radcliffe Observatory, he was alerted by the Savilian professor of Astronomy, H. H. Plaskett, to a chance discovery of "certain old metal bars and plates behind some cases." These turned out to be part of the missing Savilian collection, including a mural quadrant, and an astrolabe of Queen Elizabeth I which Greaves took on his 1637-40 expedition to the Middle East. Gunther wrote two articles in "The Observatory" on his findings, one shorter preliminary report with a fuller appreciation a few months later.