Technical assistance in the world of London science, 1850-1900

Notes and Records of the Royal Society

Volumn 62, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 51-75

  Gay, Hannah ^a  

^a IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Laboratory technicians; London science; Nineteenth century science; Research assistants; Scientific trades

Indexed keywords

EID: 38949091709     PISSN: 00359149     EISSN: 17430178     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2007.0033     Document Type: Article

References (124)

1. Science Museum (London) Library (SML), Thomas Andrews correspondence, vol. 3, letter 17, 18 August 1868. Thomas Graham FRS (1805-69), former professor of chemistry at University College London, Master of the Mint; Thomas Andrews FRS (1813-85), close friend of Michael Faraday and professor of chemistry, Queen's College, Belfast.
2. Steven Shapin, 'The invisible technician', Am. Scient. 77, 554-563 (1989);
3. A social history of truth: civility and science in seventeenth-century England (University of Chicago Press, 1994), chapter 8.
4. Papin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He had earlier worked as an assistant to Christian Huygens (to whom he later returned) and was perhaps the prototype technician in the sense of having great manual dexterity and the ability to design and build a range of scientific apparatus. He was a major contributor to the air pump that is associated with Boyle. As Shapin states, there was a degree of collegiality between Boyle and Papin and some joint publication. Perhaps more typical of the 'invisible' technician were John Flamsteed's paid assistants at Greenwich, most of whom, as noted by Shapin, came from trades backgrounds and remained largely anonymous in scientific circles.
5. Shapin (1994), op. cit. (note 2), p. 356.
6. See, for example, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory life: the social construction of scientific facts (Princeton University Press, 1986);
7. H. M. Collins, Changing order: replication and induction in scientific practice (University of Chicago Press, 1985);
8. Arlene Kaplan Daniels, 'Invisible work', Soc. Problems 34, 403-415 (1987);
9. David Gooding, Trevor Pinch and Simon Schaffer (eds), The uses of experiment: studies in the natural sciences (Cambridge University Press, 1989). The concern in these studies is largely sociological and philosophical and has more to do with how scientific meaning is constructed/given through experiment than with the historical nature of scientific practice.
10. Boyle, quoted in Shapin (1994), op. cit. (note 2), p. 375.
11. For a nineteenth-century example, see Hannah Gay, 'Invisible resource: William Crookes and his circle of support, 1871-81', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 29, 311-336 (1996).
12. See, for example, David Gooding, 'History in the laboratory: can we tell what really went on?' in The development of the laboratory: essays on the place of experimentation in industrial civilization (ed. Frank A. J. L. James), pp. 63-82 (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1989). In this paper Gooding looks at some work carried out at the Royal Institution including some public demonstrations of John Herschel and some of the work of Michael Faraday when an assistant to Humphry Davy.
13. See also Melvyn C. Usselman, Alan J. Rocke, Christina Reinhart and Kelly Foulser, 'Restaging Liebig: a study in the replication of experiments', Ann. Sci. 62, 1-55 (2005);
14. also M. C. Usselman, 'Multiple combining proportions: the experimental evidence', in Instruments and experimentation in the history of chemistry (eds F. L. Holmes and T. H. Levere), pp. 243-271 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).
15. Some sociological work with a focus on technicians has been conducted by using an oral history approach to the understanding of scientific teams in medical and pharmaceutical laboratories; see N. C. Russell, E. M. Tansey and P. V. Lear, 'Missing links in the history and practice of science: teams, technicians and technical work', Hist. Sci. 38, 237-241 (2000). See also examples of interviews and oral reminiscences in this issue.
16. See Shapin (1994), op. cit. (note 2), pp. 369-372;
17. also Helen M. Pycior, Nancy G. Slack and Pnina G. Abir-Am (eds), Creative couples in the sciences (Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 1996).
18. In this volume see especially B. J. Becker, 'Dispelling the myth of the able assistant: Margaret and William Huggins at work in the Tulse Hill observatory' (pp. 98-111). See also M. F. Rayner-Canham and G. W. Rayner-Canham, Women in chemistry: their changing roles from alchemical times to the mid-twentieth century (American Chemical Society and Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1998);
19. Mary R. S. Creese, Ladies in the laboratory II: west European women in science, 1800-1900: a survey of their contributions to research (Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD, 2004).
20. For some studies of practical teaching in science see, for example, W. H. Brock, 'Introduction', in H. E. Armstrong and the teaching of science, 1880-1930, (Cambridge University Press, 1973);
21. W. H. Brock, '"Observe, experiment and conclude": Finsbury College's new course of experimental philosophy in 1879-80', and 'Science for all', in Science for all: studies in the history of Victorian science and education (ed. W. H. Brock), chs 11 and 19 (Variorum, Aldershot, 1996);
22. Graeme Gooday, 'Precision measurement and the genesis of physics teaching laboratories', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 23, 25-51 (1990);
23. Nani N. Clow, The laboratory of Victorian culture: experimental physics, industry and pedagogy in the Liverpool laboratory of Oliver Lodge, 1881-1900 (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1999).
24. These points were recognized by Victorian scientists and were made explicitly by Silvanus P. Thompson in his Address of the President delivered to the Physical Society of London on 8 February 1901.
25. Oliver Lodge, another great experimentalist, claimed to have acquired many of his skills when, at the age of 16 years, he became an assistant to the itinerant lecturer, John Angell, and learned 'quite a lot of manipulation'. See Oliver Lodge, Past years: an autobiography (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1911), pp. 68-69.
26. Lodge later became a student at University College London and was an assistant to George Carey Foster, who paid him £50 per year. Carey Foster was a pioneer in the teaching of practical physics and had a renowned assistant, William Grant, who made much of the equipment used by the students. For Carey Foster, who began as a chemist before turning to practical physics, see William H. Brock, 'The chemical origins of practical physics', Bull. Hist. Chem. 21, 1-11 (1998).
27. One of Graham's early assistants was James Young, who began working as a carpenter at the Andersonian Institute in Glasgow while taking evening classes in chemistry. Another of Graham's students was Lyon Playfair; he and Young became friends. Later, Playfair found a petroleum spring at his future brother-in-law's coal mine in Derbyshire. Crystals deposited from the oil were found to be paraffin (a substance identified earlier in Germany). Playfair wrote about this to Young, who by then was working in the chemical industry. Young was inspired and later founded the paraffin oil and wax industry in Britain. See Wemyss Reid (ed.), Memoirs and correspondence of Lyon Playfair (Cassell, London, 1899), p. 37;
28. also John Butt, 'Young, James (1811-1883)', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
29. Herbert McLeod FRS (1841-1923). Imperial College London archives (ICA); Herbert McLeod Diary (1860-1923). The first 11 years of this diary have been transcribed; see Frank A. J. L. James (ed.), Chemistry and theology in mid-Victorian London: the diary of Herbert McLeod, 1860-70 (Mansell, London, 1987) [microfiche]. I have deposited a list of trades people and scientific instrument makers visited by McLeod during the period 1860-85 in the ICA.
30. See Ilaria Meliconi, 'Browning, John (1830/31-1925)', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). Many students who came to the RCC were the sons of trades families located in the City (as was Browning) or in the East End of London. Browning later moved his business to the Strand with factories nearby. He employed a large workforce, which included several women. One of his apprentices, Adam Hilger, later had a very successful business of his own.
31. In addition to those mentioned elsewhere in this paper, the chemist Henry Roscoe worked closely with Browning in conducting his important spectroscopic research. McLeod notes that on one occasion he went to Browning's to look at a new spectroscope made for Oxford University. It had seven compound prisms made from 'flint and crown'. ICA, McLeod Diary, 17 April 1873.
32. Lord Sackville Cecil and McLeod shared also a great interest in electrical timekeeping. This new technology was a challenge to the clockmaker's trade. Both the traditional and newer horological trades were of great importance to science but are not discussed in this paper. See Hannah Gay, 'Clock synchrony, time distribution and electrical timekeeping in Britain, 1880-1925', Past and Present (November), 107-140 (2003).
33. For visits to Browning's see ICA, McLeod Diary, 1861-78; there are many entries. For the purchase of lamps see the entry dated 31 December 1870. The batteries and lamps also required six men to keep things running. Shortly afterwards, McLeod helped Lord Salisbury to install a generator and more permanent lighting at Hatfield. Robert A. T. G. Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903), was Prime Minister from 1886 to 1892 and from 1895 to 1902. See Andrew Roberts, Salisbury, Victorian titan (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1999). Roberts mentions McLeod's helping Lord Salisbury and briefly discusses their friendship in his book.
34. For further details see Hannah Gay, 'Science and opportunity in London, 1871-85: the diary of Herbert McLeod', Hist. Sci. 41, 427-458 (2003).
35. Herbert McLeod was hired to look after the British chemical exhibits at the Paris Exhibition in 1867. He noted that Matthey had several platinum instruments on display. Indeed, Matthey won one of Britain's few gold medals for his entry and had a major role in the subsequent construction of standard weights and measures (meter rods and gram and kilogram weights) made out of platinum-iridium alloys. See McLeod diary entries for April 1867; see also Ian E. Cottingham, 'Matthey, George (1825-1913)', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
36. Aluminium became cheaper in the 1860s after the introduction of the sodium/aluminium chloride process by H. E. Sainte Claire Deville in 1854. The Hall process was introduced in the late 1880s. In the late 1850s Johnson Matthey purchased patent rights for Deville's lime-block furnace used in the melting and refining of platinum.
37. One interesting example from later in the century is R. W. Paul, a pioneer in moving pictures. A former student at Finsbury Technical College, he set up shop at 44 Hatton Garden selling electrical equipment such as galvanometers designed by William Ayrton and Thomas Mather, both former professors at Finsbury. McLeod records purchasing galvanometers from Paul's shop in the 1890s. It was in the 1890s that Paul turned increasingly to cinematography and built a studio in Muswell Hill. I am indebted to the film historian Ian Christie, who is working on a book on Paul's cinematography (University of Chicago Press, in the press) for alerting me to this work. See also Robert Sharp, 'Paul, Robert William (1869-1943), maker of scientific instruments and cinematographer', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
38. The second company was formed in 1868. The earlier company had begun by manufacturing chemicals and were the suppliers for William Perkin's Greenford factory of the raw materials needed for making mauve and other dyes. Simpson, Maule and Nicholson then also moved into the dye-making business at its Atlas Works in Hackney Wick, before being taken over. In 1874 Simpson Brooke and Spiller took over Perkin's Greenford factory. See William H. Brock, The Fontana history of chemistry (Fontana, London, 1992), pp. 293-310;
39. Anthony S. Travis, 'Perkin's mauve: ancestor of the organic chemical industry', Technol. Culture 31, 51-82 (1990);
40. D. H. Leaback, 'Perkin's pioneering enterprise,' Chem. Br. 24, 787-790 (1988).
41. See also a special issue on 150 years of the coal-tar dye industry (1856-2006) (Hist. Technol. 22 (2006)).
42. The Government School of Mines had been renamed the Metropolitan School of Science by the time that Spiller worked with Percy. It was later renamed the Royal School of Mines. I use the better-known RSM throughout.
43. As noted in Hannah Gay, '"Pillars of the College": assistants at the Royal College of Chemistry 1846-71 ', Ambix 47, 135-169 (2000), Spiller and his RCC friend, William Crookes, developed a great interest in photography. Spiller ran a course in photography at Woolwich and it is for his photographic work that he is best remembered today. It was his brother, William Spiller, who founded the company for which he later worked. William Spiller had also studied with Hofmann. Crookes's interest in photography was encouraged also by H. Fox Talbot, with whom he corresponded.
44. King's College, London (KCL), archives, Bloxam papers. See, for example, diary entry for 9 October 1850. On 14 April 1852 he met Lord Ashburton at the works. Ashburton, a major supporter of the RCC and the owner of a large estate on which he promoted experimental farming, came to the RCC for some private chemistry lessons.
45. ICA, McLeod Diary, 22 September 1860.
46. The firm was owned by Thomas Whiffen (1819-1904). His son, Thomas Joseph Whiffen (1850-1931), studied at the RSM. See Judy Slinn, 'Whiffen, Thomas (1819-1904)', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
47. Through the 1860s and 1870s there are many references to Becker in McLeod's diary. See also note 36 below.
48. When William Crookes read his pathbreaking paper, 'Attraction and repulsion resulting from radiation', at the Royal Society (11 December 1873, and an earlier version on 20 June 1872), he showed off a vacuum balance designed by Oertling together with pure platinum weights made by Johnson Matthey. He gave details of the platinum purification procedure in his paper. For the founder of Oertling's see P. D. Buchanan, 'Oertling, Ludwig (1818-1893)', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
49. See Hannah Gay and Anne Barrett, 'Should the cobbler stick to his last? Silvanus Phillips Thompson and the making of a scientific career', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 35, 151-186 (2002).
50. The making of Sprengel, pumps needed some glassblowing skills, although even greater skill was needed to make the diffusion vacuum pump, which was introduced in the early twentieth century.
51. Herman Johan Philip Sprengel FRS (1834-1906) was a scientist entrepreneur, and inventor of the eponymous vacuum pump that was used by many scientists in this period. He came to England as an assistant to Sir Benjamin Brodie but left Brodie to conduct his own research at the RCC, where he was given space by Hofmann. He then briefly took a job with the Kensington Sulphuric and Nitric Acid Works (Messrs Thomas Farmer) before going into business on his own as a consultant and manufacturer. His pump produced the lowest known pressures in this period-even lower after Dewar introduced activated carbon at liquid-air temperatures as an absorbent in his vacuum systems. Both Charles Gimingham and Herbert McLeod made improvements to the Sprengel pump, mainly by introducing multiple-tube versions. For Crookes and Gimingham's use of the Sprengel pump and a description of how it worked, see Gay, op. cit. (note 7).
52. Hofmann's lecture apparatus was widely copied by laboratory suppliers. By and large this did not include vacuum apparatus. See, for example, W. B. Jensen, 'Reinventing the Hofmann sodium spoon', Bull. Hist. Chem. 7, 38-39 (1990).
53. The old Whitefriars Glass Company was purchased by the wine merchant James Powell in 1831. The company then focused mainly on the domestic market, and its craftspeople worked closely with good designers and art schools. However, the company also made standard laboratory glassware such as beakers, flasks, reagent bottles and thermometer tubes. They also took in custom work. One example from 1868 was a commission from Edward Frankland for the water research laboratory (see below); it was for two 15-foot-long tubes, each 3 inches in diameter. They were filled with sand and used to filter sewage-prototypes for large-scale sewage works (glass was used so as to see what was going on). The glass tubes were then the longest ever made in London and, according to Frankland's assistant James Day (see note 49 below), many people came to view them.
54. J. J. Griffin started his business in Scotland in the late 1830s but, by the 1860s, had a shop in London at Bunhill Row, later moving to Long Acre. In the 1840s Griffin went on a buying/educational trip to some of the German states and Bohemia. He kept a diary of his journey (deposited in the Royal Society of Chemistry Library), according to which he left several orders (not exclusively for glassware) with manufacturers in Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig and Prague. The firm must have continued its import business because McLeod mentions buying imported equipment from them in the 1860s and 1870s. But Griffin also designed and sold cheap apparatus for chemical instruction. McLeod mentions buying standard items such as bell jars, pneumatic troughs and deflagrating spoons from the firm. The firm of Griffin later became Griffin and George, a major laboratory equipment supplier (incorporating also Becker's business). See Brian Gee and William H. Brock, 'The case of Joseph Griffin: from artisan-chemist and author-instructor to business-leader', Ambix 38, 29-62 (1991);
55. Brian Gee, 'Griffin, John Joseph (1802-1877)', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
56. James Joseph Hicks was born in Ireland and apprenticed to L. P. Casella, a maker of scientific glassware in Hatton Garden. Hicks advanced in the firm and later established his own company, which made many ingenious glass instruments including novel thermometers and barometers. His firm expanded to include about 350 workers and also made microscopes and other technical instruments. He also built and sold a range of apparatus designed by London scientists, including some of Crookes's radiometers and Herbert McLeod's low-pressure gauge. See Anita McConnell, 'Hicks, James Joseph (1837-1916)', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); also ICA, McLeod Diary, entries for 11 February and 2 July 1869, for initial work on his low-pressure gauge.
57. This work was performed at the RIEC. The 1880s also include diary entries on Hicks's making several vacuum chambers for work at the college. Hicks and his assistants came to visit McLeod's laboratories and discussed work with him there.
58. See, for example, SML, Thomas Andrews correspondence, vol. 1, letter from John Welsh, Kew Observatory, 18 December 1852. Welsh notes that the glassblower at the Kew Observatory, Mr Adie, had a good eye for picking out glass for the tubes and that 'when I select my own glass I have to throw much aside'. Selecting good glass was also one of Andrews's problems, and the letter was in response to one seeking advice on the matter from Kew. For more on the Kew Observatory, see S. Schaffer, 'Where experiments end: tabletop trials in Victorian astronomy', in Scientific practice: theories and stories of doing physics (ed. Jed Z. Buchwald), pp. 257-299 (University of Chicago Press, 1995);
59. also Francis Galton, Memories of my life (Methuen, London, 1908), ch. 9. The Kew Observatory, built by George III, was run by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. For much of the nineteenth century it was the principal government laboratory for meteorological and geophysical science. Its instruments were later taken over by the National Physical Laboratory, with which McLeod had an association later in his life. Indeed, his glass vacuum lines and vacuum pumps were still in use there until the early twentieth century.
60. Blakeman lived on City Road, where he had an office; his workshop was on Ranelagh Road. Another person who made metal apparatus for the college was Jones the coppersmith, who had a workshop in Leicester Square.
61. See Colin A. Russell, Edward Frankland: chemistry, controversy and conspiracy in Victorian England (Cambridge University Press, 1996). Frankland had been apprenticed to a chemist in Lancaster before coming to London at the age of 21 years.
62. See also Gay, op. cit. (note 25).
63. This was before the founding of the Government School of Mines in 1851, so there were then no students in Jermyn Street. Playfair was the official chemist of the Geological Survey. Another subterranean laboratory on Duke Street existed in the house of Dr Bloxam, whose son, Charles, was an assistant to Hofmann in the late 1840s and who recorded in his diary details of the largely medically related work performed in the home laboratory. KCL archives, Charles Bloxam diary.
64. Ransome would have been much engaged with mineral analysis for the Survey. He was the grandfather of the author Arthur M. Ransome.
65. A. W. H. Kolbe (1818-84) is seen as a founder of modern organic chemistry because of his synthesis of acetic acid from non-organic starting materials. He had many other achievements in the field. See Alan J. Rocke, The quiet revolution: Hermann Kolbe and the science of organic chemistry (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993).
66. In Marburg Frankland was introduced to an approach to organic chemistry based on the then fashionable Radical Theory. In practical terms this meant he learned much about organic chemicals containing methyl, ethyl, etc., groups, and the production of gases such as methane and ethane. In this connection Frankland also learned much from Kolbe about gas analysis. For more on the theoretical and technical details see Russell, op. cit. (note 41), 30-35.
67. Between his two Marburg periods, Frankland taught briefly at Queenwood College in Hampshire, an institution founded by the socialist Robert Owen as a way of promoting his educational ideals. By Frankland's time, however, the college had run into debt and had been sold to another pedagogical idealist, the Quaker George Edmondson.
68. Duppa was the son of a well-known landowner and educationalist and came from a far wealthier background than Frankland. His father was a follower of P. E. von Fellenberg, and Duppa had spent some time as a pupil at Fellenberg's Hofwyl School in Switzerland.
69. One of Frankland's competitors in water analysis was his former Owens College student, James A. Wanklyn (1834-1906). Like Frankland, Wanklyn began his career as an apprentice and later also studied with Bunsen in Heidelberg. He, too, was an assistant to Lyon Playfair, then in Edinburgh, before moving to work in London.
70. For the Commission's laboratory see Christopher Hamlin, A science of impurity: water analysis in nineteenth-century Britain (Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1990), especially chapters 6-8. For a while Frankland's principal assistant at the water laboratory was William Thorp, a former student at the RCC. Thorp helped in the development of filtration techniques introduced in large-scale sewage works - for example at Merthyr Tydfil in 1871.
71. There is evidence for these claims both in McLeod's diary and in some correspondence of the period. See, for example, the Henry Armstrong correspondence in the ICA, notably the letters from James Day. Day was a student at the RCC who became an assistant to Frankland at the water laboratory on Victoria Street. In letters written during the period 1867-68, Day describes some of the water analysis and mentions other assistants working in the laboratory. He wrote about the long tubes commissioned from the Whitefriars Glass Company (see note 35). He also referred to new gas analysis apparatus designed by Duppa, which Frankland managed to break when he began using it. According to Day, Frankland was only in the laboratory for one day a week and at the RCC for one day. Otherwise he was engaged in research at the RI, and with Lockyer on the spectroscopy of the Sun's atmosphere and prominences. McLeod's diary has many references to the making and designing of equipment used in water analysis work. For more on this see Gay, op. cit. (note 25).
72. See ICA, B\Meldola 1/4. This material includes a diary kept of the eclipse expedition and work performed shortly afterwards. The diary is episodic and was kept for only a few months. For Lockyer's assistants, see also A. J. Meadows, Science and controversy: a biography of Sir Norman Lockyer (Macmillan, London, 1972), pp. 131-134.
73. In his diary, McLeod notes doing the same. He also noted (see, for example, 28 January 1875) that when no one was home at Lockyer's he would simply walk in and remove or deposit valuable equipment. Lockyer had an observatory at his home in St John's Wood, at that time a run-down area, rather bohemian in character. Lockyer later moved to Earl's Court. McLeod's diary includes much information on Lockyer's work in the 1860s and 1870s. Like Meldola, but more willing, McLeod set up the demonstrations for some of Lockyer' s lectures, including one in Jermyn Street that was attended by the Queen and Princesses of The Netherlands (see diary, 17 March 1870). McLeod also worked for Lockyer on Nature, writing book reviews and performing other duties for which he was paid.
74. In 1877 Meldola left Frankland and Lockyer and joined the laboratories of Brooke, Simpson, and Spiller at the Atlas Works, Hackney Wick. There he worked on dyestuffs, the field in which he made his name, before returning to academic life in 1885 as Professor of Chemistry at Finsbury Technical College.
75. From Dingle's obituary of Fowler in Proceedings of the Royal Society, quoted in Meadows, op. cit. (note 50), p. 131. According to Meadows, Lockyer's first personal assistant not borrowed from Frankland was Richard Friswell, another student at the RCC. It was he who kept the research moving forward in the early 1870s when Lockyer was largely absent as Secretary to the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science (Devonshire Commission).
76. See Gay, op. cit. (note 25).
77. Hofmann also had several German assistants at the RCC, some of whom later had major careers. McLeod's successor at the RCC was Alexander (later Sir Alexander) Pedler, who became Frankland's lecture assistant when the RCC/RSM chemists moved to South Kensington in 1873. According to McLeod, Frankland was not too happy with Pedler. However, Pedler was to have a very successful career in India, becoming Professor of Chemistry at Presidency College, Calcutta, and later president of the college. Pedler took some technical skills from the RCC with him and was an important figure in the development of safe coal gas and water supplies in India.
78. Lab boys were typically known by their first names, whereas more senior assistants were known by their surnames. George Scott, who was 14 years old when he began working in the laboratory, is one of the few lab boys I have been able to identify fully.
79. McLeod later tried to get Scott a job as assistant to Lord Rayleigh but I do not think he was successful. Scott later found work in a public health laboratory.
80. McLeod' s work, including the invention of his ingenious gauge for measuring very low pressure, was sufficient to gain him Fellowship of the Royal Society. Despite coming from a relatively poor family he became very well connected in scientific circles.
81. Vivian Byam Lewes (1852-1916) was the nephew of the author George Henry Lewes, who had a major role in his upbringing. Lewes was educated at University College School and then became an assistant to the chemist F. S. Barff at University College. From there he moved to Cooper's Hill. After leaving McLeod he did little, but after several other assistantship positions he became lecture assistant to Heinrich Debus at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. There he did well and succeeded Debus as Professor of Chemistry in 1888. He is an example of someone able to progress with good schooling but no degree. Another example is Charles Greville Williams, who began as a technician in the laboratory of Thomas Anderson in Glasgow and later assisted William Crookes. He became a lecturer in chemistry at the Normal School, Swansea, and published a book, Chemical manipulation (J. Van Voorst, London, 1857), illustrated with engravings of the apparatus described. For his subservient relationship with Crookes,
82. see Frank A. J. L. James, 'The letters of William Crookes to Charles Hanson Greville Williams 1861-2: the detection and isolation of thallium', Ambix 28, 131-157 (1981).
83. Lodge frequently visited the RIEC because his brother, Alfred, was a professor there. In his autobiography, Lodge states that McLeod's manipulative skills were legendary. John W. Clark became Lodge's official demonstrator; a few years later, Edward E. Robinson, a local boy from Egham who had been well trained by McLeod, became Lodge's lecture assistant. See Lodge, op. cit. (note 12), p. 144;
84. see also McLeod Diary, 16 and 18 September 1880 and 21 March 1885. McLeod valued Robinson, his lecture assistant, highly. In 1880 Robinson was paid £2 week by the RIEC and an extra 10 shillings by McLeod. He received the same pay from Lodge when he moved to Liverpool in 1885.
85. The RCC and some other departments of the RSM began moving to South Kensington in 1873 and were to be renamed the Normal School of Science in 1881.
86. Sir James Dewar was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he was an assistant to Lyon Playfair and Alexander Crum Brown. He was a professor at the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College in Edinburgh before moving to Cambridge. See H. M. Ross (rev. Trevor I. Williams), 'Dewar, Sir James (1842-1923)', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
87. Lord Rayleigh, 'Some reminiscences of scientific workers of the past generation and their surroundings', Proc Phys. Soc. 48, 217-246 (1936).
88. See also William H. Brock, 'Exploring the Hyperarctic: James Dewar at the Royal Institution', in 'The common purposes of life': science and society at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (ed. Frank A. J. L. James), pp. 169-190 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2002).
89. In 1884 the Polish scientists Z. F. Wróblewski and K. S. Olszewski made small quantities of liquid air, oxygen and nitrogen. On 20 January 1893, Herbert McLeod and several of his Chemical Society friends went to hear Dewar give a paper on liquid air at the RI. Dewar allowed the nitrogen to boil off, leaving liquid oxygen. 'He is now using vessels surrounded by a vacuous vessel in which the liquids are better preserved and without any deposition of moisture on the outside' (ICA, McLeod Diary). Dewar's work was given a boost when, in 1896, Ludwig Mond gave £100 000 to equip the new Davy-Faraday Laboratory in a neighbouring building to the RI; Dewar became its first director.
90. In 1899, the centenary of the RI, Dewar gave a lecture on liquid hydrogen with a litre of it sitting in front of him cooled by a vessel of liquid air. Later Dewar claimed to have prepared liquid helium, but this is disputed: the first person to do so was H. Kammerlingh Onnes in Leiden in 1908. Dewar had some problems with helium because his source, a spring in Bath, also contained neon, which solidified and clogged the apparatus. He had a major row and falling out with Robert Lennox (see below) over this failure, wrongly blaming it on Lennox's equipment. Kammerlingh Onnes's source of helium was neon-free and liquefaction was therefore simpler. See section on Dewar in Alexander Findlay and William Hobson Mills (eds), British chemists (Chemical Society, London, 1947).
91. Rayleigh, op. cit. (note 63), 230.
92. This Mr Gimingham was Edward Gimingham, younger brother of Crookes's assistant Charles Gimingham (see below). In his letter Green wrote that E. Gimingham was 'a hale old man' still in business in Diverton, and that since he came up to London regularly he would ask him for his views on Dewar and Lennox (Gimingham's views on this are unknown to me). Dewar acknowledged the help of Gimingham when the mercury-mirror vacuum vessel was shown in public (report in The Engineer, 27 January 1893). See RI archives, Dewar papers, DE 16/2/38, draft of letter from Green to Rayleigh, 2 May 1940. Dewar used evacuated flasks as heat insulators as early as the late 1870s. Lennox arrived in his laboratory in 1881; it therefore seems unlikely that he was responsible for the first 'Dewar' flask.
93. Dewar also made use of activated charcoal in getting high vacuums and performed many experiments to determine how best to prepare it for maximum gas absorption.
94. For salary see RI, DG1e/2.
95. RI, DE13/2 and DE 16/2, contain letters and notes of instructions to Green. Although I read enough of these to come to the conclusion that Dewar was a difficult and impatient person to work for, I abandoned reading much of the material because Dewar's handwriting is almost illegible. It is obvious that much was written in haste.
96. RI, Dewar papers; see DB 11/1 for letters to Henry Armstrong. Quotation from letter from John C. McKendrick, 21 July 1923. McKendrick was Professor of Physiology at Glasgow University and had earlier worked with Dewar on the physiology of vision. Until he went to the RI, Dewar worked largely in areas of organic chemistry, and in spectroscopy, trying to disprove several of Lockyer's claims on the dissociation of elements at high temperatures. One of Dewar's later collaborators, John Ambrose Fleming, with whom he worked on the electrical properties of matter at very low temperatures, wrote to Armstrong of Dewar's 'charming and hospitable' side but stated also that he was 'not easy to work with unless one gave way to his rather dominant personality' (DBl 1/1/4; 14 May 1923).
97. Dewar obituary, Proc. R. Soc. A 3, xiii-xxiii (1926). One of the displays remembered by Dewar's obituarist was the burning of diamond under liquid air - 'the gradual accretion of the carbon dioxide snow-shower and the blueing of the fluid by ozone, also demonstrated by the iodine test; then the rapid uprush of the mercury in a barometer tube full of air when the tube was cooled with liquid hydrogen; it all but knocked the top off.... At such moments - and there were many such - the heart beat with joy at the significance of his feats of inspiration' (p. xvi). 'Often he carried his life in his hands and had more than one surprising escape' (p. xx). More often than not it was the lives of his assistants that were at risk.
98. During World War I Dewar was unable to continue his liquefaction work and turned instead to research on soap bubbles. Interestingly, after Dewar's death, another of his assistants took possession of much of this work; see A. S. C. Lawrence, Soap films: a study of molecular individuality (G. Bell, London, 1929).
99. Gay, op. cit. (note 7).
100. See obituary, 'Charles Henry Gimingham', Electrician (3 October), 625 (1890). It seems that Crookes also employed other young boys in their teens and trained them in his laboratory, although it is difficult to trace their later careers. One mentioned by Crookes's memoirist was Henry Seward.
101. See E. E. Fournier D'Albe, The life of Sir William Crookes (T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1923), pp. 84-86;
102. W. H. Brock, 'Crookes, Sir William(1832-1919)', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
103. Gardiner was also active in the Röntgen Society and was the first editor of the Society's journal.
104. See, for example, RI, Crookes's laboratory notebooks, vol. 6, 16 June 1881. Women glassblowers also did some of this work. 'Miss Stribling made 24 lamp cases in 4 hours using up three cases of French glass' (vol. 6, 8 March 1882). Lord Rayleigh (op. cit., note 63) describes the women using foot bellows while blowing the glass. Gardiner lists some exhibits from the International Inventions Exhibition (vol. 5, 21 May 1885). One exhibit was of the stages of making glass cases from glass cylinders, in which the 'unskilled labour' of 'girls and women' was used rather than that of highly paid professional glassblowers.
105. Crookes decided to leave the electrical light bulb business in 1881 and sold all his patents, although two of his sons retained a business interest in electrical lighting. Crookes then turned more to chemistry and his laboratory notebooks indicate a growing interest in what are now known as Group 3a metals and the lanthanides (rare earths). Crookes referred to them as: cerium, decisia, erbia, samarium, tantalum, terbia, thulia, yttria and zirconia. Notebooks for this later period include entries by both Crookes and J. H. Gardiner. The books were given to Gardiner by Crookes's son Bernard. Gardiner donated them to the Royal Institution in 1942 after a bomb had damaged his house in Harrow (RI G1d/4).
106. Henri Moissan (1853-1907), professor at the University of Paris, received the Nobel prize in 1906 for his work on fluorine chemistry. In the 1890s he developed an electrical furnace in which he was able to heat molten pig iron (which contains carbon) under pressure to very high temperatures. Sudden cooling was said to have produced very small diamonds, although Moissan's claim is disputed.
107. During World War I, Crookes was on the Admiralty Board of Invention and Research. He and Gardiner developed a night-time signalling device by placing a didymium glass in front of a light source. The light source does not visibly change but a conspicuous absorption band can be used as a signal.
108. J. L. Phipson, who had been a fellow student of Crookes under Hofmann, supplied Crookes with several interesting minerals. Phipson also wanted Crookes to examine some uranium mineral that he had brought back from Cornwall. See RI, Notebook, 6 June 1885, which includes a letter from Phipson between the pages.
109. RI, Crookes's notebooks; vol. 10, notebook 4, July 1888. Although Crookes's sons helped in the laboratory they were adults by this time, so the 'boy' must have been an apprentice or employee.
110. After Hofmann returned to Berlin in 1865, Stenhouse took over the assaying work Hofmann did for the Royal Mint. See George Stronach (rev. K. D. Watson), 'Stenhouse, John (1809-1880)', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). One of Stenhouse's assistants when he was at St Bartholomew's was August Kekulé, later a major organic chemist.
111. In his diary Bloxam mentions being offered a position by Stenhouse at £70 per year; but he refused and recommended John Spiller instead. KCL archives, Bloxam diary, 6 April 1852. Raphael Meldola worked briefly for Stenhouse, as did E. J. Mills, later a professor in Glasgow.
112. Groves and McLeod were instigators of the so-called 'Scientists' Declaration' during Groves's time with Stenhouse, something for which they had Stenhouse's support. See W. H. Brock and R. M. McLeod, 'The Scientists' Declaration: reflexions on science and belief in the wake of Essays and Reviews, 1864-5', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 9, 39-66 (1976);
113. also Hannah Gay, "The Declaration of Students of the Natural and Physical Sciences", revisited: youth, science, and religion, in mid-Victorian Britain', in Religion and the challenges of science (eds William Sweet and Richard Feist), pp. 19-38 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007).
114. P. J. Hartog (rev. A. J. Meadows), 'Rue, Warren de la (1815-1889), chemist and astronomer', Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
115. For a history of Thomas de la Rue's printing business see Lorna Houseman, The house that Thomas built (Chatto & Windus, London, 1968).
116. Another of his employees, the designer Owen Jones, was appointed Superintendent of Works for the 1851 Exhibition. The firm had a major stand at the exhibition, where Warren de la Rue's envelope-making machine was a major attraction.
117. See Carsten Reinhardt and Anthony S. Travis, 'The introduction of aniline dyes to paper printing and Queen Victoria's postage stamps', Ambix 44, 11-18 (1997). Thomas De La Rue & Co. was a major supplier of postage stamps to the British government.
118. ICA, McLeod Diary, 13 March 1875. McLeod returned to the laboratory many times. On 4 August 1876 he noted the wonderful discharges that de la Rue produced in his vacuum tubes. Indeed, de la Rue was credited with some of the finest photographs of such discharges then known.
119. Sir William Huggins FRS (1824-1910), the son of a silk mercer, was educated at the City of London School, a school that produced several good scientists in the nineteenth century. His business activity included work connected to the brewing industry, from which he made enough money to retire and devote his life to science.
120. ICA, McLeod Diary, especially 14 July 1883.
121. For example, on 2 May 1889 they read a paper at the Royal Society on the spectrum of the nebula in Orion. Margaret Lindsay Murray (1848-1915) married Huggins in 1875. For more on this working relationship see Becker, op. cit. (note 9).
122. If the number of brewer peers is anything to go by, brewing must have been seen as a gentlemanly business.
123. McLeod had earlier assisted Lord Salisbury in setting up laboratories at Hatfield House and in Arlington Street. He especially assisted in purchasing and setting up electrical lighting and other electrical equipment. See Gay, op. cit. (note 19). Spottiswoode was President of the Royal Society from 1878 to 1883.
124. The University of London introduced the PhD after World War I. It soon replaced the DSc in popularity and helped to bring in modern patterns of research studentship.