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The archives of Sir Edward Frankland: Resources, Problems and Methods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Colin A. Russell  and
Shirley P. Russell
Colin A. Russell
Affiliation:
History of Chemistry Research Group, Department of History of Science and Technology, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, U.K.
Shirley P. Russell
Affiliation:
History of Chemistry Research Group, Department of History of Science and Technology, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, U.K.
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Extract

The periodical History of Science opened auspiciously in 1962 with an article by L. Pearce Williams on ‘The physical sciences in the first half of the nineteenth century: problems and sources’. He criticized the nearly exclusive reliance on printed sources then quite common in studies of Victorian science, concluded that much remained to be discovered and closed his paper with these words: What papers exist in private hands can only be guessed. I know of a trunk in an attic containing unpublished letters from Darwin, Huxley, Kolbe, Pasteur and a host of others. They are, unfortunately, not available to the scholar and there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of such boxes scattered through America and Europe. As they are discovered, catalogued and made available to scholars, the shape of nineteenth-century science will gradually lose its blurred outlines and the origins of modern science will become clear.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1990 , pp. 175 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1990

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References

1 Williams, L. Pearce, ‘The physical sciences in the first half of the nineteenth century: problems and sources’, History of Science, (1962), 1, pp. 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 8. One of us (C.A.R.) was not unfairly singled out for special opprobrium; his reply was sub sequently published as Russell, C. A., ‘The electrochemical theory of Sir Humphry Davy-III: the evidence of the Royal Institution manuscripts’, Annals of Science, (1963), 19, pp. 255–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Williams, L.P. (op. cit.), p. 13.Google Scholar

4 Numerous obituary notices appeared, particularly by McLeod, H. (Journal of the Chemical Society, (1905), 87, pp. 574–590)Google Scholar and Wislicenus, J. (Berichte, (1900), 33, pp. 3847–3874)Google Scholar. Also available is the second edition of his autobiographical Sketches from the Life of Sir Edward Frankland, edited and completed by his daughters W[est], M.N. and C[olenso], S.J., Spottiswoode & Co., London, 1902.Google Scholar A complete list of obituaries, together with an account of the problems of constructing a Frankland biography, may be found in note 5 (below). The fullest recent survey of Frankland's whole life and work is by W.H. Brock, DSB.

5 An account of the first twenty or so formative years of Frankland's life is given in Russell, C.A., Lancastrian Chemist: the Early Years of Sir Edward Frankland, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1986.Google Scholar This is the first volume of a two-volume biography currently in preparation.

6 His most important scientific papers are collected in his Experimental Researches in Pure, Applied and Physical Chemistry, van Voorst, London, 1877.Google Scholar

7 Russell, C.A., ‘Edward Frankland, founder of organometallic chemistry’, Chemistry in Britain, (1982), 18, pp. 737–738.Google Scholar

8 See his How to teach Chemistry, London, 1875.Google Scholar

9 These include Lecture Notes for Chemical Students, London, 1866Google Scholar and later editions, and (with Japp, F.R.) Inorganic Chemistry, London, 1884.Google Scholar

10 See for example Macleod, R., ‘The X-Club, a social network of science in late Victorian England’, Notes and Records, (1970), 24, pp. 305–322CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Jensen, J.V., ‘The X-Club: fraternity of Victorian scientists’, British Journal for the History of Science, (1970), 5, pp. 63–72CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Barton, Ruth, ‘“An influential set of chaps”: The X-Club and Royal Society Politics 1864–65’, British Journal for the History of Science, 1990, 23, 53–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Russell, C.A., Coley, N.G. and Roberts, G.K., Chemists by Profession, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1977.Google Scholar

12 Russell, C.A., op. cit. (5).Google Scholar

13 These strictures would hardly apply to a first volume of such a biography, dealing with the early years (Russell, C. A., op. cit. (5))Google Scholar, as only external archival sources would be relevant; there is almost nothing extant of Frankland's own correspondence until he reached his twenties.

14 See for example Insurance Record, 4 08, 1916Google Scholar; and Scholefield, G.H. (ed.), Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Wellington, 1940.Google Scholar

15 Information from Dr Garry J. Tee, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Auckland, and from The Rt Hon. Sir Owen Woodhouse, Law Commission, New Zealand.

16 Some of this material has been used in a paper by Campbell, F.P., ‘The meteorological researches of Sir Edward Frankland, KCB, FRS’, Weather, (1987), 42, pp. 383–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 See Garner, W.E., Obit. Not. Fellows Roy. Soc., (1947), 5, pp. 697–715CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Geison, G.L., DSBGoogle Scholar; Russell, C.A., Chemistry in Britain, (1977), 13, pp. 425–427.Google Scholar

18 The diary was copied in typescript at the instigation of John Tyndall's widow, Louisa, in November 1902; other copies of this document exist elsewhere e.g. at the Royal Institution.

19 Information from Dr Garry Tee.

20 See note 9.

21 In the archives of Laporte Industries Ltd, Widnes. See Morris, P.J. and Russell, C.A., Archives of the British Chemical Industry, 1750–1914, BSHS, Stanford in the Vale, 1988, p. 178.Google Scholar

22 An early example of microfilming scientific documents is the Davy correspondence owned by Mr George Rolleston but housed at the Royal Institution. This was copied on to 35 mm film on 29 July, 1968.

23 Some technical details are as follows. Various reduction ratios (21, 25, 27 and 29) enabled poorly legible documents to fill the frame to the maximum extent. After some experiments it was, however, decided to standardize on the maximum reduction ratio (29) in order not to exclude the frame-counter from vision. This means that individual frames can be located much more easily. After experiment it was found that a shutter speed of 7 (out of 12 possible settings) was suitable. As the instrument has its own built-in illumination external lighting is not necessary (though may be desired for other reasons). If glass sheets are used to keep documents flat, reflection from room lights can prove disastrous, so the use of glass has now been abandoned. One master copy and at least one diazo-duplicate copy are obtained and, for security reasons, stored in different buildings.

24 Where the documents are lodged in a bank they are retrievable only at considerable expense, to say nothing of inconvenience.

25 That is certainly the case where large numbers of letters are in their original envelopes; the market value of stamps alone could run into many hundreds of pounds.

26 The whole of the Frankland microfilm archive occupies a space less than 35 × 10 × 10 cm and could easily be housed in a shoebox.

27 This hope is not always realized. One set of documents had to be photographed on three separate occasions owing to a succession of technical problems.

28 Early examples of computerized analysis of archives include Blair, J. and Riden, P., using a FAMULUS programme: ‘Computer assisted analysis of medieval deeds’, Archives, (1982), 15, pp. 195–208Google Scholar; and N.W. Alcock and J. Hampartumian with their own specially written program: ‘A computer-generated place-name index for the probate records of the Lichfield Diocese’, ibid., pp. 209–216. There are numerous later examples.

29 The input computer was an IBM-compatible Zenith ZW-148 using MS DOS 3.2, with one 360K floppy disc drive and one 20MB hard disc with a 512K RAM expandable to 768K. The printer was an Epson LX-800.

30 The programme was written by Dr P.J. Morris.

31 The 8-digits numbers are of the form ab. cd. efgh. The first two digits indicate provenance of the archive:

01 for PFF Archive

02 for MJW-1 Archive

03 for SJC Archive

04 for MJW-2 Archive.

In addition a class ‘99’ is included for material elsewhere (i.e. not on microfilm) but included in the catalogue for completeness. The second pair of digits indicates the number of the microfilm (from 01 to 08 for the PFF Archive), or in the case of ‘99’ records their location (01 for the Deutsches Museum in Münich, 02 for Cambridge University Library, etc.). The final 4 digits are the firstframe number of the document (or for ‘99’ entries the arbitrary number of the item in the relevant collection).

32 These include: type of document if not specifically identified in the earlier fields (e.g. a legal document could be an agreement, a will, an invoice, a receipt etc., while the class memorandum has had to include diaries, address-lists, obituary notices, even newspaper cuttings); short address from which letter was sent; institutions, concepts, chemicals, subjects, etc. With hindsight it would have been wise to have included several more categories, particularly under ‘type of document’.

33 These include (where possible) all names appearing with more than a cursory mention in the document.

34 The contents of each document are loaded on to the hard disc of the computer until a maximum of 1000 entries is reached. The resultant file (such as FRANK01. DBF) is then copied on to floppy disc for input to the hard disc of a second computer in another location (simply as a back-up procedure). This file is then added to the main file FRANK. DBF on each computer and a new sub-file opened (such as FRANK02. DBF) and the process continued until the whole catalogue exists in identical forms on the hard discs of the two computers.

35 Contents of separate sub-files may also be printed in firstframe order.