So great has been the impact of Darwinian evolution upon contemporary thought that even the tiniest aspect of Darwin's own history assumes importance as a datum in the history of those ideas which provide the ideological base of the contemporary world. In all of the accounts of the intellectual journey which led to the formulation of that theory, a great deal of stress is placed upon the Beagle voyage, that prolonged period of initiation from which the young Darwin returned, the sober—and too often in later accounts, sombre—naturalist, scientifically seasoned by his experiences with a world observed but still unexplained and hardly known. The traditional outlines of the story have been repeated over and over again: the outfitting of the Beagle for its surveying responsibilities; Fitzroy's proposal that “some well-educated and scientific person should be sought for who would willingly share such accommodations as I had to offer, in order to profit by the opportunity of visiting distant countries yet little known”; Henslow's recommendation of his friend and student Darwin; the parental refusal; and, finally, the permission granted. In the retelling, in the almost mystical affect attached to the Beagle voyage and to Darwin's participation, the association of the inexperienced youth with the Beagle has become a fixed point in intellectual history.

Today the economic diagram is employed universally in teaching and research by professional economists. Yet the history of its construction shows that much that has been regarded as distinctive of twentieth-century visual culture was prefigured in the nineteenth. This paper will place the construction of the first economic diagrams by Alfred Marshall in the context both of contemporary visual technologies developed in other moral sciences, and of his wider theory of industrial production. The paper will argue that an understanding of the background to the historical graphs, constructed by the Cambridge political economist from the late 1860s onwards, will necessitate a revision of the narrative of modern visual reasoning, as recently advanced by Lev Manovich.

A fossilized skeleton discovered in 1856 presented naturalists with a unique challenge. The strange, human-looking bones of the first recognized Neanderthal confronted naturalists with a new type of object for which they had no readily available interpretive framework. This paper explores the techniques and approaches used to understand these bones in the years immediately following the discovery, in particular 1856–1864. Historians have previously suggested that interpretations and debates about Neanderthals hinged primarily on social, political and cultural ideologies. In this paper, I will argue that much of the scientific controversy surrounding the first recognized Neanderthal centred on questions of methodology and practice, and will demonstrate this through an exploration of the tools and approaches naturalists utilized in their examinations of the fossils. This will contribute to a growing historical recognition of the complex exchange between disciplines including geology, archaeology and comparative anatomy in the early study of fossil hominins, and provide a future framework for histories of Neanderthal debates in the twentieth century.

George Greenough (1778–1856) was one of the influential group of early nineteenth-century English geologists who rejected both Hutton's and Werner's attempts to propound all-embracing geological theories, and followed a deliberately empirical approach. He travelled through Scotland in 1805, studying geological phenomena in the light of both the Plutonist and the Neptunist theories, and generally concluded that neither was entirely satisfactory as an explanation of the observable facts. He was also the first to suggest that the ‘Parallel Roads’ of Glen Roy were the successive beach-levels of a former lake: this theory was later attacked by Darwin but ultimately vindicated by Agassiz's glacial theory. The more important geological passages from Greenough's MS. journal of the tour are reproduced and discussed in this paper. They illustrate some of the scientific problems that were involved in accepting either Hutton's or Werner's theory entire.

One of the most dramatic advances in the physical sciences during the nineteenth century was the emergence of spectroscopy. It rapidly became an invaluable experimental technique for chemists and astronomers, while for physicists it opened a window upon the world of sub-atomic phenomena. Sir John Herschel played an important part, the value of which has sometimes been underestimated, in the early development of spectroscopy. This paper examines his contribution to the subject during the period 1819–61 in the light of his publications and of certain manuscript material preserved in the Royal Society's Library. Herschel corresponded with most of the scientists who did important work in spectroscopy during his lifetime, and he expressed definite opinions on most of the practical and theoretical problems that arose in it; however, the present study cannot pretend to offer a complete discussion of all aspects of the early history of spectroscopy.

During the decades following the publication of Darwin's Origin of species in 1859, religious belief in England and in particular the Church of England experienced some of the most intense criticism in its history. The early 1860s saw the appearance of Lyell's Evidence of the antiquity of man (1863), Tylor's research on the early history of mankind (1863), Renan's Vie de Jésus (1863), Pius IX's encyclical, Quanta cura, and the accompanying Syllabus errarum, John Henry Newman's Apologia (1864), and Swinburne's notorious Atalanta in Calydon (1865); it was in this period also that Arthur Stanley was appointed Dean of Westminster, and that Bills were introduced in Parliament to amend or repeal the ‘Test Acts’ as they affected universities. They were the years that witnessed Lyell present the case for geology at the British Association at Bath (1864), the first meeting of the X-Club (1864), and the award of the Royal Society's Copley Medal to Charles Darwin. These were the years in which, as Owen Chadwick has put it, ‘the controversy between “science” and “religion” took fire’.

In the late 1920s, the American obstetrician Joseph DeLee brought the motion-picture camera into the birth room. Following that era's trend of adapting industrial efficiency practices for medical environments, DeLee's films give spectacular and unexpected expression to the engineering concept of ‘streamlining’. Accomplishing what more tangible obstetric streamlining practices had failed to, DeLee's cameras, and his post-production manipulation, shifted birth from messy and dangerous to rationalized, efficient, death-defying. This was film as an active and effective medical tool. Years later, the documentarian Pare Lorentz produced and wrote his own birth film, The Fight for Life (1940). The documentary subject of the film was DeLee himself, and the film was set in his hospitals, on the same maternity ‘sets’ that had once showcased film's remarkable streamlining capacity to give and keep life. Yet relatively little of DeLee was retained in the film's content, resulting in a showdown that, by way of contrast, further articulated DeLee's understanding of film's medical powers and, in so doing, hinted at a more dynamic moment in the history of medicine while speaking also to the process by which that understanding ceased to be historically legible.

This paper focuses on the defection of nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo from Britain to the USSR in 1950 in an attempt to understand how government and intelligence services assess threats deriving from the unwanted spread of secret scientific information. It questions whether contingent agendas play a role in these assessments, as new evidence suggests that this is exactly what happened in the Pontecorvo case. British diplomatic personnel involved in negotiations with their US counterparts considered playing down the case. Meanwhile, the press decided to play it up, claiming that Pontecorvo was an atom spy. Finally, the British secret services had evidence showing that this was a fabrication, but they did not disclose it. If all these manipulations served various purposes, then they certainly were not aimed at assessing if there was a threat and what this threat really was.

This article argues that the study of astronomical observing instruments, their transportation around the globe and the personal and professional networks created by such exchanges are useful conceptual tools in exploring the role of science in the nineteenth-century British Empire. The shipping of scientific instruments highlights the physical and material connections that bound the empire together. Large, heavy and fragile objects, such as transit circles, were difficult to transport and repair. As such, the logistical difficulties associated with their movement illustrate the limitations of colonial scientific enterprises and their reliance on European centres. The discussion also examines the impact of the circulation of such objects on observatories and astronomers working in southern Africa, India and St Helena by tracing the connections between these places and British scientific institutions, London-based instrument-makers, and staff at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. It explores the ways in which astronomy generally, and the use of observing instruments in particular, relate to broader themes about the applications of science, the development of colonial identities, and the consolidation of empire in the first half of the nineteenth century. In considering these issues, the article illustrates the symbiotic relationship between science and empire in the period, demonstrating the overlap between political and strategic considerations and purely scientific endeavours. Almost paradoxically, as they trained their sights and their telescopes on the heavens, astronomers and observers helped to draw diverse regions of the earth beneath closer together. By tracing the movement of instruments and the arcs of patronage, cooperation and power that these trajectories inscribe, the role of science and scientific objects in forging global links and influencing the dynamics of the nineteenth-century British Empire is brought into greater focus.

This paper sets out to examine the changes which took place in Thomas Young's concepts of the ether between 1799 and 1807. During the earlier part of this period he supposed the ether to consist of mutually repelling subtle particles which are attracted to particles of matter. Hence, he considered that the ether is denser within dense bodies than in rare ones. Furthermore, Young proposed that the ether density does not change abruptly at an interface; instead the denser ether extends beyond the geometrical limit of a body to form an atmosphere around it. As this hypothesis of an atmosphere of dense ether surrounding material bodies will be the central subject of this paper, I shall in future refer to it as the ether distribution hypothesis.

The paper examines the reputation of C. S. Sherrington as both eminent physiologist and eminent representative of scientific culture. It describes Sherrington's ‘figurehead’ status. In his career, research and personal manner, he embodied a life of science, not only not in opposition to humanistic values but in fact appearing to be the highest achievement of those values. An analysis of Sherrington's research, of his lectures on Man on His Nature and of his poetry supports this account. The paper uses Sherrington's reputation to describe the values of an establishment group of English-speaking scientists and physicians in the 1930s and 1940s.

This article seeks to illuminate the shifting and unstable configuration of scientific print culture around 1800 through a close focus on William Nicholson's Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, generally known as Nicholson's Journal. Viewing Nicholson as a mediator between the two spheres of British commercial journalism and scientific enquiry, I investigate the ways he adapted practices and conventions from the domain of general-readership monthly periodicals for his Journal, forging a virtual community of scientific knowledge exchange in print. However, in pursing this project Nicholson ran up against disreputable associations connected with the politics of journalism and came into conflict with more established models of scientific publication. To illustrate this, I turn to examine in detail the practice of reprinting, a technique of information transmission which the Journal adapted from general periodicals and newspapers, looking at a clash between Nicholson and the Royal Society that exposes disagreements over the appropriate role for journals during this period of reorganization in the scientific world.

A patriot fiddler-composer of Luton

Wrote a funeral march which he played with the mute on,

To record, as he said, that a Jewish-Swiss-Teuton

Had partially scrapped the Principia of Newton.

Punch, 19 November 1919, p. 422

When the results of experiments performed during the British solar eclipse expeditions of 1919 were announced at a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, they were celebrated in the next day's Times of London with the famous headline ‘Revolution in science’. This exemplified the general approbation with which A. S. Eddington and F. W. Dyson's results were received, the upshot of which was widespread approval for general relativity and worldwide fame for Albert Einstein. Perhaps because of Einstein's present reputation, there has been little historical analysis of why his theory should have been so celebrated on the basis of a single announcement of the results of one group's experiments. In this paper I argue that the remarkable public and professional success of the eclipse experiments was the direct result of a systematic and extended campaign by Eddington and Dyson and their associates to create interest in relativity theory, build an audience for the experiments, promote a favourable reception for the results and establish their work as a crucial experiment that would distinguish between the gravitation theories of Newton and Einstein. The campaign was motivated by Eddington's affection for Einstein's theory, and was successful largely because of Eddington's substantial credibility.

This paper presents the story of two calculating machines invented by Sir Samuel Morland (1625–95) in the 1660s. These instruments are the earliest known mechanical calculators made in England. Their designs are unusual and very much of their time. They appealed to some, especially at court, and were dismissed by others, such as Robert Hooke. The first part of the paper introduces Morland and the courtier–inventor's world, in which a reputation as a ‘machinist’ or an engineer could accompany high social status. It considers why a former diplomat and postal spy would turn to invention in general and to mechanical calculators in particular as a career move in the Restoration court. The second part addresses the instruments – attention to their design reveals Morland's inspiration. The paper concludes with an examination of the market for the calculators in London, Paris and Florence. While it is notable that the calculators circulated both in court and in the commercial sphere, even more interesting is the contrast between their receptions in these two spheres. The story of these machines and their maker helps flesh out the poorly understood world of the courtier–inventor in early modern England.

In the late 1960s teams of engineers working independently in Japan, Switzerland and the United States used newly created electronic components to completely reinvent the wristwatch. The products these groups developed instigated a global revolution in the watch industry and gave everyone, whether they needed it or not, access to the split-second accuracy once available only to scientists and technicians. This radical change in timekeeping technology was in the vanguard of a dramatic shift from a mechanical to an electronic world and raises important issues about technological change for scholars interested in late twentieth-century history. Examining the work of three teams of engineers, this paper offers a comparative approach to understanding how local differences in culture, economy, business structure and access to technological knowledge shaped the design of finished products and their acceptance by users.

Between 1856 and 1858, a group of entrepreneurs and engineers led by the American Cyrus Field and the Englishmen J. W. Brett, Charles Bright and E. O. Wildman Whitehouse sought to lay a telegraph cable across the Atlantic from Ireland to Newfoundland. Their projected cable would be far longer, far more expensive, and far more difficult to lay than any previously attempted; that such an ambitious undertaking was launched and quickly drew financial backing was testimony to the technological enthusiasm of the mid-Victorian era. After many setbacks, the cable was successfully completed early in August 1858. The first messages it carried were met with rapturous excitement on both sides of the Atlantic – making its failure after just a few weeks of fitful service all the more humiliating. Identifying the causes of that failure, and assigning blame for them, became crucial to ensuring the future of transoceanic cable telegraphy. Were the causes of the failure intrinsic to the enterprise, and the vision of a network of transoceanic cables no more than an unrealistic dream? Or did the collapse of the cable result simply from a series of unfortunate and correctable errors? How those questions were answered in the autumn of 1858 would go far toward determining the prospects not only for renewing the Atlantic project, but also for any attempt to extend submarine cables more widely around the world.

Edinburgh has long been recognized as one important place where early glacial theory was promoted and debated. This paper, rather than attend to the longer-term development of glacial theory, focuses on the ways in which the theory was assessed, disseminated and received in and through the scientific culture of early Victorian Edinburgh. Edinburgh's scientific and educational societies, science journals, newspapers and field sites are brought to view through examining their engagement with, and use of, early glacial theory. Tracking the theory's passage across a range of spaces bound up with the promotion of geology in mid-nineteenth-century Edinburgh signals relations between local geological endeavour and other sorts of scientific and cultural work. Particular, though not exclusive, attention is given to practices more readily defined as ‘popular’.

Presidential addresses offer an opportunity to reflect on the history of our subject and where the history of science stands in our own day. Such reflections are particularly appropriate with the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) which is marked in 1997. Some may consider that looking back over our past is either an unacceptable luxury or an occasion for the kind of celebration that can all too easily degenerate into hagiography and an excuse to rake over the past in a thoroughly uncritical manner. This address – and I trust the events of 1997 – will try to avoid such excesses and instead contribute to the historiography of our subject.

Apart from statics, about which I shall say nothing, there were three chief centres of interest in mechanics in the 1660's:

(1) the motions of pendulums;

(2) the laws of motion;

(3) the free fall of heavy bodies and the motion of projectiles.

In the first the influence of Huygens was dominant; I have placed it so because it was of very lively contemporary concern. The second area of interest descended partly from Galileo and partly from Descartes; the third from Galileo alone. Perhaps one should consider adding a fourth area, the investigation of central forces, but this in fact did not attract much attention as yet.