Of ‘science and liberty’: The scientific instruments of king's college and eighteenth century columbia college in New York

Summary

A measure of the interest in and extent of science teaching in colonial American colleges may be judged to a large degree by their investment in scientific instruments and apparatus. Fairly adequate records of acquisition of these teaching aids have been preserved by Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, and Dartmouth Colleges, and have been published. The scientific collections of other colleges that have not been previously studied are those of the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania), College of New Jersey (Princeton University), College of Rhode Island (Brown University) and King's College, later Columbia University in the City of New York. It is with the last-named that this study is mainly concerned.