Science, instruments, and guilds in earlymodern Britain

Early Science and Medicine

Volumn 10, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 392-410

  Stewart, Larry ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN   (Canada)

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EID: 33745126732     PISSN: 13837427     EISSN: 15733823     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/1573382054615433     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. On these issues see Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge and London, 1981);
2. Hunter, Establishing the New Science. The Experience of the Early Royal Society (Woodbridge, 1989), esp. 185-244;
3. and Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago and London, 1995).
4. See Steven Shapin, "The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England," Isis, 79 (1988), 373-404. When Newton was president of the Royal Society his petition to Queen Anne for a better site for the society was couched in terms "more convenient for persons of Quality..."
5. See Royal Society, Dom. MS. V, f. 45., n.d.
6. Cf. Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book. Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago and London, 1998), 106-108;
7. Michael Hunter, "Hooke the Natural Philosopher," in Jim Bennett, Michael Cooper, Michael Hunter and Lisa Jardine, London's Leonardo. The Life and Work of Robert Hooke (Oxford, 2003), 105-162;
8. Cf. Richard Sorrenson, "George Graham, Visible Technician," British Journal for the History of Science, 32 (1999), 203-221, esp. 203-205.
9. Pamela O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship. Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore and London, 2001), 10-11, 32, 99-104.
10. See Mario Biagioli, Galileo Courtier. The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago and London, 1993).
11. On navigational instruments as mathematical devices see Eric H. Ash, Power, Knowledge, and Expertise in Elizabethan England (Baltimore, 2005), 166.
12. Michael Berlin, "'Broken all in Pieces': Artisans and the Regulation of Workmanship in Early Modern London," in Geoffrey Crossick, The Artisan and the European Town, 1500-1900 (Aldershot and Brookfield, 1997), 79-80.
13. M. A. Crawforth, "Instrument Makers in the London Guilds," Annals of Science, 44 (1987) 319-377, esp. 320-324, & n. 12.
14. James R. Farr, Artisans in Europe, 1300-1914 (Cambridge and New York, 2000), 98-99.
15. Farr, Artisans in Europe, 66, 70, 82-83.
16. Joyce Brown, "Guild Organization and the Instrument-Making Trade, 1550-1830: the Grocers' and Clockmakers' Companies," Annals of Science, 36 (1979) 1-34, esp. 1-2;
17. On the background to British mathematical instruments, see Stephen Johnston, "Mathematical Practitioners and Instruments in Elizabethan England," Annals of Science, 48 (1991), 319-344.
18. On navigational instruments see also Ash, Power, Knowledge, and Expertise, 89ff.;
19. On the comparison with Flemish makers, see Anthony Turner, "John Dee, Louvain and the Origins of English Instrument-Making," in Marco Beretta, Paola Galluzzi and Carlo Triarico, eds. Musa Musaei. Studies on Scientific Instruments and Collections in Honour of Mara Miniati (Florence, 2003), 63-78.
20. Brown, "Guild Organization and the Instrument-Making Trade," 5.
21. D. J. Bryden, "Evidence from Advertising for Mathematical Instrument Making in London, 1556-1714," Annals of Science, 49 (1992), 301-336, esp. 322-323.
22. See also Gloria Clifton, Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers 1550-1851 (London, 1995), 73, 130.
23. Jim Bennett, "Shopping for Instruments in Paris and London," in Pamela H. Smith & Paula Findlen, Merchants & Marvels. Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York and London, 2002), 370-395, esp.391.
24. See also Jan Golinski, "Barometers of Change: Meteorological Instruments as Machines of Enlightenment," in William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer, eds., The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago and London, 1999), 69-93.
25. Cf. Deborah Jean Warner, "What is a Scientific Instrument, When Did it Become One, and Why?," British Journal for the History of Science, 23 (March, 1990), 83-93.
26. D. J. Bryden and D. L. Simms, "Spectacles Improved to Perfection and Approved of by the Royal Society," Annals of Science, 50 (1993), 1-32, esp. 2-3.
27. Rob Iliffe, "The Instrument Making trade in Early Modern London" unpublished typescript, 7-10;
28. Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge and London, 1981), 75-76;
29. Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000), 7: 254. August 19, 1666.
30. Bennett, et al., London's Leonardo, 82.
31. Robert Hooke, Micrographia; or, Some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses. With observations and inquiries thereupon (London, 1665), 'Preface.'
32. See Rob Iliffe, "Material Doubts: Hooke, Artisan Culture and the Exchange of Information in 1670s London," British Journal of the History of Science, 28 (1995), 285-318, esp. 307-310;
33. Hooke's diary reveals numerous visits to workshops and sites of manufacture. See, inter alia, Henry W. Robinson and Walter Adams, eds., The Diary of Robert Hooke. M.A., M.D., F.R.S. 1672-1680 (London, 1935), 61, 87, 103, 113, 334, 337.
34. On Hooke's attitude to invention see Rob Iliffe, "'In the Warehouse': Privacy, Property and Priority in the Early Royal Society," History of Science, 30 (1992), 29-28.
35. Bryden and D.L. Simms, "Spectacles Improved," 11-16.
36. See also, Iliffe, "The Instrument Making Trade," 10-13.
37. Bryden and Simms, "Spectacles Improved," 20-26.
38. Bryden, "Evidence from Advertising," 313, 320-321;
39. Clifton, Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers, 238-239;
40. John H. Appleby, "A New Perspective on John Rowley, Virtuoso Master of Mechanics and Hydraulic Engineer," Annals of Science, 53 (1996), 1-27.
41. See Larry Stewart, "Other Centres of Calculation, or, Where the Royal Society Didn't Count: Commerce, Coffee-houses, and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern London," British Journal for the History of Science, 32 (1999), 133-153, esp. 143-144.
42. Bryden, "Evidence from Advertising," 328-329;
43. Bennett, "Shopping for Instruments in Paris and London," 374-376;
44. Iliffe, "The Instrument Making Trade," 13-14.
45. Bryden, "Evidence from Advertising," 328-329.
46. Farr, Artisans in Europe, 98-99;
47. See, for example, Patricia Fara, "'A Treasure of Hidden Virtues': The Attraction of Magnetic Marketing," British Journal for the History of Science, 28 (1995), 5-35;
48. and Fara, Sympathetic Attractions. Magnetic Practices, Beliefs, and Symbolism in Eighteenth-Century England (Princeton, 1996), chapter two.
49. See also Alice Nell Waters, Tools of Enlightenment: The Material Culture of Science in Eighteenth-Century England (Ph.D. thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 1992).
50. Crawforth, "Instrument Makers in the London Guilds," 337-338;
51. Clifton, Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers, 142, 238-239, 306.
52. Crawforth, "Instrument Makers in the London Guilds," 334, n. 48;
53. Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science. Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660-1750 (Cambridge and London, 1992).
54. Cf. Farr, Artisans in Europe, 112-113;
55. Crawforth, "Instrument Makers in the London Guilds," 331;
56. Stewart, The Rise of Public Science, 124, n. 70; 219.
57. Royal Society, Misc. MS. IV, f. 63. Mary Hauksbee to Sir Hans Sloane, March, 1731;
58. Clifton, Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers, 128.
59. M. A. Crawforth, "Evidence from Trade Cards for the Scientific Instrument Industry," Annals of Science, 42 (1985), 453-554, esp. 467.
60. See Sorrenson, "George Graham";
61. and Richard Sorrenson, Scientific Instrument Makers at the Royal Society of London, 1720-1780 (Ph.D thesis, Princeton University, 1993), esp. ch. 5.
62. Crawforth, "Instrument Makers in the London Guilds," esp. 325-326;
63. Iliffe, "The Instrument Making Trade," 3;
64. Bryden and Simms, "Spectacles Improved," 4-5;
65. See also Clifton, Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers, passim, which is the result of the early work of Project SIMON (Scientific Instrument Makers, Observations and Notes, begun by Michael Crawford and continued by Gloria Clifton of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich).
66. Crawforth, "Evidence from Trade Cards," 473;
67. Clifton, Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers, 63.
68. Crawforth, "Evidence from Trade Cards," 480;
69. Royal Society, MSS, Certificates, 2 (1751-56), nos. 442 and 7;
70. Joseph Priestley to Richard Price, September 27, 1772 in W. Bernard Peach and D.O. Thomas, eds., The Correspondence of Richard Price (Durham, N.C., 1983), 137-138;
71. John R. Millburn, Benjamin Martin. Author, Instrument-Maker, and 'Country Showman' (Leyden, 1976), 84-89.
72. Millburn, "British Archives for the History of Instruments," Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, 21 (1999), 3-7.
73. Anita McConnell, "From Craft Workshop to Big Business - The London Scientific Instrument Trade's Response to Increasing Demand, 1750-1820," The London Journal, 19 (1994), 35-53, esp. 49;
74. Clifton, Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers, 196;
75. Deborah Jean Warner, "Edward Nairne: Scientist and Instrument-Maker," Rittenhouse, 12 (1998), 65-93;
76. Paola Bertucci, "A Philosophical Business: Edward Nairne and the Patent Medical Electrical Machine (1782)," History of Technology, 23 (2001), 41-58.
77. On Cavallo and de Magellan see also L. Stewart, "Putting on Airs," in T. H. Levere and Gerard L'E. Turner, Discussing Chemistry and Steam. The Minutes of a Coffee House Philosophical Society 1780-1787 (Oxford, 2002), 207-255;
78. and John R. Millburn, Adams of Fleet Street. Instrument Makers to King George III (Aldershot, 2000).
79. McConnell, "From Craft Workshop to Big Business," 45.
80. McConnell, "From Craft Workshop to Big Business," Ibid., 44;
81. Iliffe, "The Instrument Making Trade," 14.
82. Berlin, "'Broken all in Pieces'," 76, 84-86, esp. 87.
83. Rijksarchief in Noord-Holland, Haarlem; Archive van Marum. Box 15, Tiberius Cavallo to van Marum, May 8, 1789.
84. McConnell, "From Craft Workshop to Big Business," 36, 41.
85. McConnell, "From Craft Workshop to Big Business," Ibid., 38, 45-46.
86. Farr, Artisans in Europe, 52-55.
87. On Wedgwood's management methods, see Philip Mickleburgh, Accounting and Management in the British Industrial Revolution: A Re-examination of the Wedgwood Archives (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, MSc. Thesis, 1998);
88. and Neil McKendrick, "Josiah Wedgwood and Factory Discipline," The Historical Journal, 4 (1961), 30-55.
89. Cf. Leonard Rosenband, Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century France. Management, Labor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill, 1761-1805 (Baltimore and London, 2000). I wish to thank Professor Rosenband for his assistance.