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Concepts of power: natural philosophy and the uses of machines in mid-eighteenth-century London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Alan Q. Morton
Alan Q. Morton
Affiliation:
Science Museum, South Kensington, London SW7 2DD.
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Extract

How may scientific research contribute effectively to industrial development? This question has been debated for many years. However, a recent development in this discussion has come from a number of eminent scientists and others who have become concerned with what has become known as the public understanding of science. According to them, a greater understanding of science by members of the public would result in a higher value being placed on scientific research, which, eventually, would result in both increased social status for scientists and growing funding from government and industry for their work. Thus, in part, concern about the public understanding of science is an indirect way of influencing the outcome of discussions about the science budget.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 63 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1995

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References

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10 Golinski has discussed the development of lectures on chemistry as a form of public culture, shaped by the needs and aspirations of the audience. See Golinski, Jan, Science as Public Culture, Cambridge, 1992Google Scholar. The argument of this paper is that changes in the way science was portrayed to an audience also depended on industrial developments.

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37 Science Museum MS 552, ‘A course of experimental philosophy by S. Triboudet Demainbray in the year 1755’. Demainbray's maximum machine is Science Museum inventory number 1927–1634, see Morton, and Wess, , op. cit. (5), 155, catalogue D22.Google Scholar

38 Ironically, it became more difficult for Demainbray and his colleagues-cum-competitors to earn a living from lecturing. In fact, Demainbray gave up lecturing within a few years, in the early 1760s.

39 For this reason they objected to monopolies restricting trade in order to keep prices artificially high.

40 Coats, A. W., ‘Changing attitudes to labour in the mid-eighteenth century’, in Essays in Social History (ed. Flinn, M. W. and Smout, T. C.), Oxford, 1974, 87Google Scholar. See also Linebaugh, Peter, The London Hanged, Harmondsworth, 1993, 222Google Scholar, who says about the third quarter of the eighteenth century, ‘To say that the factory was introduced in this period would be misleading if by “factory” is meant machine production, but if the term is understood to mean a hierarchical organization of production under the eye of a single authority, then it calls attention to a major and decisive development.’

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43 Machine for Discharging Ships' Cargoes, Patent No. 712, 1757.

44 Switzer, Stephen, An Introduction to a General System of Hydrostaticks and Hydraulicks…, London, 1729, ii, 284, pl. 10, fig. X.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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49 A similar point can be made about the coal-heavers, for they petitioned Parliament to regulate their position but did not get what they wanted. Even then the undertakers found ways round the legislation which was introduced.