Assistants to enlightenment: William Lewis, Alexander Chisholm and invisible technicians in the Industrial Revolution

Notes and Records of the Royal Society

Volumn 62, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 17-29

  Stewart, Larry ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN   (Canada)

Author keywords

Chemistry; Chisholm; Industrial revolution; Utility; Wedgwood

Indexed keywords

EID: 38949207187     PISSN: 00359149     EISSN: 17430178     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2007.0034     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. [James Keir], The first part of a dictionary of chemistry, & c. (Pearson & Rollason, Birmingham, 1789), p. iii.
2. On vitriolated tartar see William Lewis, A course of practical chemistry. In which are contained all the operations described in Wilson's Complete course of chemistry (for J. Nourse, London, 1746), p. 305.
3. Keele University, Wedgwood MSS. E1-694. Keir to Thomas Wedgwood, 17 March 1792.1 wish to thank the Wedgwood Museum and Ms Helen Burton for making these manuscripts available to me.
4. James Watt to Beddoes, 2 September 1794, in Thomas Beddoes and James Watt, Considerations on the medicinal use, and on the production of factitious airs (Part I by Thomas Beddoes, M. D.; Part II by James Watt, engineer) (J. Johnson, London, 1796), pp. 113-114.
5. Quoted in Malcolm Oster, 'The scholar and the craftsman revisited: Robert Boyle as aristocrat and artisan', Ann. Sci. 49, 255-276 (1992), esp. at p. 265.
6. Stephen Pumfrey, 'Who did the work?; experimental philosophers and public demonstrators in Augustan England', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 28, 131-156 (1995).
7. Oster, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 256, 263, n. 36, regarding the extensive debate over the scholar and the craftsman.
8. Rob Iliffe, 'Material doubts: Hooke, artisan culture and the exchange of information in 1670s London', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 28, 285-318 (1995), esp. at p. 298.
9. Pumphrey, op. cit. (note 6), p. 142.
10. Royal Society, Classified Papers, III (2), 18 January 1708/9; Classified Papers, XVIII, 28, 26 April 1711.
11. Iliffe, op. cit. (note 8);
12. Jim Bennett, Michael Cooper, Michael Hunter and Lisa Jardine, London's Leonardo. The life and work of Robert Hooke (Oxford University Press, 2003);
13. Stephen Inwood, The man who knew too much. The strange and inventive life of Robert Hooke 1635-1703 (Macmillan, London, 2002).
14. Stephen Pumfrey, 'Ideas above his station: a social study of Hooke' s curatorship of experiments', Hist. Sci. 29, 1-44 (1991);
15. Steven Shapin, 'The house of experiment in seventeenth-century England', Isis 79, 373-404 (1988);
16. Shapin, '"A scholar and a gentleman": the problematic identity of the scientific practitioner in early modern England', Hist. Sci. 29, 279-327 (1991);
17. Shapin, The social history of truth. Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (University of Chicago Press, 1994), esp. ch. 8.
18. For Boyle on the virtue of labour see Oster, op. cit. (note 5), p. 260.
19. See, for example, Deborah E. Harkness, The jewel house. Elizabethan London and the scientific revolution (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007);
20. J. A. Bennett, 'The mechanics' philosophy and the mechanical philosophy', Hist. Sci. 24, 1-28 (1986);
21. Pamela H. Smith, The body of the artisan. Art and experience in the scientific revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2004).
22. Cf. Mario Biagioli, 'From print to patents: living on instruments in early modern Europe', Hist. Sci. 44, 1-48 (2006);
23. and Iliffe, op. cit. (note 8), pp. 289 and 311.
24. Jim Bennett, 'Shopping for instruments in Paris and London', in Merchants & marvels. Commerce, science, and art in early modern Europe (eds Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen), pp. 370-395 (Routledge, New York, 2002);
25. L. Stewart, 'Science, instruments and guilds in early-modern Britain', Early Sci. Med. 10, 392-410 (2005);
26. and especially A. D. Morrison-Low, Making scientific instruments in the industrial revolution (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007).
27. Mary Terrall, 'Representing the Earth's shape: the polemics surrounding Maupertuis's expedition to Lapland', Isis 83, 218-237 (1992);
28. Rob Iliffe, '"Aplatisseur du monde et de Cassini": Maupertuis, precision measurement, and the shape of the Earth in the 1730s', Hist. Sci. 31,335-375 (1993);
29. Richard Sorrenson, 'George Graham, visible technician', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 32, 203-221 (1999);
30. Terrall, The man who flattened the Earth. Maupertuis and the sciences in the Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
31. F. W. Gibbs, 'William Lewis, M. D., F. R. S. (1706-1781)', Ann. Sci. 8, 122-151 (1952), esp. at p. 124.
32. William Lewis, Commercium Philosophico-Technicum; or, the Philosophical Commerce of Arts: Designed as an Attempt to Improve Arts, Trades, and Manufactures (H. Baldwin, London, 1763), 'Preface', p. xii;
33. Gibbs, op. cit. (note 17), pp. 126-127;
34. Gibbs, 'William Lewis and platina. Bicentenary of the "Commercium Philosophico-Technicum", Platinum Met. Rev. 7, 66-69 (1963);
35. and A. E. Musson and Eric Robinson, Science and technology in the industrial revolution (University of Toronto, 1969), pp. 53-54.
36. Larry Stewart, The rise of public science: rhetoric, technology, and natural philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660-1750 (Cambridge University Press, 1992), chs 7 and 8;
37. Carlo Poni, 'The craftsman and the good engineer: technical practice and theoretical mechanics in J. T. Desaguliers', Hist. Technol. 10, 215-232 (1993).
38. F. W. Gibbs, 'Robert Dossie (1717-1777) and the Society of Arts', Ann. Sci. 7, 150-151 (1951).
39. Smith, op. cit. (note 14), chapter 2 and pp. 234-236.
40. On this issue see the essays by Maxine Berg, Lilliane Hilaire-Perez, Larry Stewart, Kristine Bruland, Joel Mokyr, and Margaret Jacob in a special issue of Hist. Sci. 45 (June 2007);
41. cf. Iliffe, op. cit. (note 8), p. 298.
42. Lewis, op. cit. (note 18), preface, pp. xiii-xv.
43. Notice of his experimental approach to the different crafts and manufactures was taken by the Gentleman's Magazine 35, 338-340 (1765).
44. Gibbs, op. cit. (note 17), p. 130.
45. Gibbs, op. cit. (note 17), p. 128;
46. Frederick G. Page, 'Lewis, William (bap. 1708, d. 1781)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16609];
47. cf. William P. D. Wightman, 'Aberdeen University and the Royal Society', Notes Rec. R. Soc. 11, 145-158 (1955). The standard biographies suggest that Chisholm was a graduate of Marischal College, but this belief seems to have been mistaken. Personal communication from Ms June Ellner, Archives, King's College, Aberdeen.
48. Public Record Office, National Archives, Prob 11/1074. 19 February 1781.
49. Royal Society of Arts, Guard Books, vol. 23, no. 1, 16 February 1760. For Lewis's assessment for the Society of American potash see vol. 23, no. 46, 27 January 1767. See also D. G. C. Allan and Robert E. Schofield. Stephen Hales, scientist and philanthropist (Scolar Press, London, 1980), pp. 104 and 106.
50. F. W. Gibbs, 'A notebook of William Lewis and Alexander Chisholm', Ann. Sci. 8, 202-220 (1952), esp. at pp. 211ff.
51. Keele University, Wedgwood MSS., E26-19122. 'London Experiment Book' [1772-1773], esp. at pp. 3-30, 53-70 and 281-283.
52. Alison Kelly, 'Bentley, Thomas (1731-1780)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/2175];
53. Brian Dolan, Josiah Wedgwood. Entrepreneur to the Enlightenment (Harper, London, 2004).
54. British Library, Add. MS. 28314. Wedgwood MSS. Vol. VIII, 72-73;
55. Jonathan Simon, Chemistry, pharmacy and revolution in France, 1777-1809 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2005), pp. 66-77.
56. Gibbs, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 206 and 209;
57. Gibbs, op. cit. (note 17), pp. 130-131;
58. Lewis, op. cit. (note 18), p. 461.
59. Macquer's Dictionnaire de chymie, contenant la théorie & pratique de cette science (1766) ultimately seems to have become a basic reference work.
60. It was this that James Keir edited and amended. See Richard R. Yeo, Encyclopaedic visions: scientific discoveries and Enlightenment culture (Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 108.
61. See J. A. Chaldecott, 'Wedgwood's ceramic wares for chemical use: production and supply from 1779 to 1794', Ambix 28, 182-205 (1981);
62. and Neil McKendrick, 'Josiah Wedgwood and the commercialization of the potteries', in The birth of a consumer society. The commercialization of eighteenth-century England (eds Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J. H. Plumb), pp. 100-145 (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1982).
63. Josiah Wedgwood, 'An Attempt to Make a Thermometer for Measuring the Higher Degrees of Heat, from a Red Heat up to the Strongest That Vessels Made of Clay can Support', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. 72, 305-326 (1782).
64. Keele University, Wedgwood MSS. E4 3322 [copy], Josiah Wedgwood, jun., to James Watt, jun., 30 March 1800.
65. Keele University, Wedgwood MSS. E3 2126. Chisholm to Thomas Gisborne, 11 April 1783; Robert Hole, 'Gisborne, Thomas (1758-1846)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/10782].
66. Keele University, Wedgwood MSS. E44 28903. Chisholm to Tom Wedgwood, 23 December 1786; and E44-28904. Chisholm to Tom Wedgwood, n.d.; Trevor H. Levere, 'Wedgwood, Thomas (1771-1805)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/28967];
67. see also Keele University, Wedgwood Moseley Collection, WM 18. Josiah Wedgwood, jun. to Chisholm, 11 January 1787, seeking assistance with a paper he was about to write for the Chemical Society.
68. Keele University, Wedgwood MSS. E44-28903, Chisholm to Tom Wedgwood, 23 December 1786; E44-28904, Chisholm to Tom Wedgwood, n.d.
69. Thomas Wedgwood, 'Experiments and Observations on the Production of Light from Different Bodies, by Heat and by Attrition', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. 82, 28-47 (1792);
70. Wedgwood, 'Continuation of a Paper on the Production of Light and Heat from Different Bodies', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. 82, 270-282 (1792).
71. Keele University, Wedgwood MSS. E40 28420-28421 (1792).
72. Keele University, Wedgwood MSS. E1 697. James Keir to Tom Wedgwood, 19 April 1792.
73. David Philip Miller, 'The usefulness of natural philosophy: the Royal Society and the culture of practical utility in the later eighteenth century', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 32, 185-201 (1999), esp. at p. 197.
74. Cf. Jan Golinski, 'Conversations on chemistry: talk about phlogiston in the coffee house society, 1780-1787', in Discussing chemistry and steam: the minutes of a coffee house philosophical society, 1780-1787 (eds Trevor H. Levere and Gerard L'Estrange Turner), pp. 191-205 (Oxford University Press, 2002).
75. Matthew Boulton to Matthew Robinson Boulton, 19 December 1787, quoted in David Philip Miller, Discovering water. James Watt, Henry Cavendish and the nineteenth-century 'water controversy' (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2004), p. 90.
76. Dolan, op. cit. (note 29), p. 110.
77. Birmingham Central Library, James Watt Papers, 4/13/23. Daniel? Coke to Watt, 29 March 1792.