This article, through a case study of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS), traces the reception, experimentation with, and uses of radium in early twentieth-century Ireland. Throughout the nineteenth century there was increasing state intervention in the provision of scientific and technical education in Ireland. This culminated in the loss of the RDS's traditional role in this area. The article demonstrates that the RDS was forced to re-envisage its role as a scientific institution by actively seeking to support experimental research. Using radium as a case study, the article argues for the success of this tactic. It demonstrates that radium played a central role within the RDS as a nexus for the maintenance of an experimental and philanthropic culture that permeated much of the society's scientific output in this period. In doing this it highlights the importance of sociability in the promotion of science in Ireland in the early twentieth century. In addition, it explores the role of the RDS as an arbiter of scientific authority.

That remarkable soldier, statesman and man of science, Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, has many claims on the interest of the historian of science. He is remembered for certain experiments and conclusions of fundamental importance regarding the nature of heat; he founded the Royal Institution; he was the author of a series of Essays on various aspects of pure and applied science which were celebrated in their day; and he was a pioneer in that field of activity which he described himself as “the application of science to the common purposes of life”. His methods of conservation of heat and economy of fuel, his designs of stoves, fireplaces and cooking utensils were widely used during his lifetime. He was consulted on the laying out of kitchens in hospitals and institutions and his advice was sought by his friends on household problems such as the curing of smoky chimneys and the efficient warming of rooms. He taught his contemporaries to recognise the fire built on an open hearth, the only means of domestic heating and cooking with which they were acquainted, for the ineffective and wasteful contrivance it really was. He held the most enlightened views, which were far in advance of his time, on the waste of fuel and the evils of atmospheric pollution in cities.

The word “classification” is used here in its sense of “the result of classifying” rather than the action of so doing. Since the resulting classification has special reference to the subject-matter of science as a whole, it is natural to turn to the scientific literature of various periods for an indication of how this classification has been developed. For sake of comparison, reference may be made to one of the modern systems of library classification. In the Dewey Decimal System the numbers 550 to 559 are allotted to Geology and 560 to 569 to Palaeontology. By placing numbers to the right of the decimal point, further sub-divisions may be made, for example, 560·942 is classed as Palaeon-tology of England. Thus a number is available for every reasonable demand of classification. The present purpose is to trace the natural evolution of the various branches of science, in contrast to the mechanical process of providing a classification of scientific literature for ease of reference. An example may make this distinction clearer.

By 1918, four years of total war had produced a complete mobilization of scientists, scholars and their institutions throughout Europe, the British Empire, and the United States. Public men spoke freely of the implications of a ‘technological war’ run by engineers and chemists. And in the years following the Armistice, historians were eager to record the achievements of the professions, and the effects of the war on their self-image. Memories of the First World War, as Paul Fussell reminds us, remain and shape the texture of our daily life. The parapet, wire and mud have become permanent features of human existence. In a similar way, the war of 1914–18 had enduring consequences for science and scientists, rarely appreciated until the end of the Second World War. Scholars and savants deserted their classrooms for the trenches, industries and war offices, while professional bodies turned themselves into useful extensions of military departments. By October 1914, the infamous Professors' Manifesto, with its Appeal to the Cultured Peoples of the World had identified German science with German war aims, and the natural sciences were fully at war. Scientific knowledge applied to the war was – at one and the same time – a fulfilment of the Enlightenment project of reason, and a violation of the Enlightenment ethos of humanism and internationalism.

As a natural philosopher, Count Rumford is best known for his vehement advocacy of a motion or mechanical hypothesis of heat and for the dramatic experiments that he performed to support this hypothesis. Although a motion hypothesis which held that heat was merely the motion of the ultimate particles of a body had a distinguished history, with advocates that included Bacon, Boyle, Hooke, and Newton, most British natural philosophers by the beginning of the nineteenth century believed that the phenomena associated with heat were caused by an imponderable fluid. William Henry reflected contemporary opinion in 1803, when he wrote:

The former of these opinions [i.e. the existence of caloric], though far from being universally admitted, is now generally received; and the peculiar body, to which the phenomena of heat are referred, has been denominated by M. Lavoisier [as] caloric.

The Geological discoveries made during the early nineteenth century resulted in a series of general, predominantly didactic studies, the chief purpose of which was the compilation of large amounts of data. Many of these books were quickly translated from one language into another, and the work of Sir Charles Lyell was, naturally enough, no exception.

This special issue explores the power that images with a techno-scientific content can have in international relations. As we introduce the articles in the collection, we highlight how the study of this influence extends current research in the separate (but increasingly interacting) domains of history of science and technology, and political science. We then show how images of different types (photographs, cartoons and plots) can inform inter-state transactions through their public appeal alongside the better-studied dialogic practices of the diplomatic arena. Finally, we offer an analysis of the interlacing of different diplomatic tracks based on words and images and conclude that, in contrast with words, images conflate agency and argument, therefore creating opportunities to inform transactions and negotiations which their designers may not have even intended.