‘Applied science’ in nineteenth-century Britain: public discourse and the creation of meaning, 1817–1876

Abstract

‘Applied science’ has long been a competitor with the concept of technology for the space between theory and praxis. This paper explores how the concept emerged in mid-nineteenth-century Britain through public sphere discussions in a cycle of rhetoric that linked the press, the development of new educational institutions and the interpretation of industrial change. The recounting and reprinting of heroic narratives of achievement served to cement alliances between ‘practical men’ and ‘men of science’ by proclaiming a respectable subject of common interest to which both could be associated. Narratives of applied science were drawn on in the process of institutional change. A key role was played by editors and business proprietors in local contexts; their interest in applied science stimulated the formation of new universities aimed at providing new forms of technical education. The use of the concept of ‘applied science’ to describe the space between science and practice challenged the traditional notion of ‘rule of thumb’ as a characterisation of shop work. With its connotations relating to both past and future, the term served to structure time as well as science.

Keywords:

• Applied science
• periodicals
• Great Britain
• nineteenth century
• public sphere
• history of concepts

Acknowledgements

The author should like to thank Benoit Godin, Tim Boon, Geoffrey Cantor, Paul Forman, Peter Morris, Gerrylynn K. Roberts, Desirée Schauz, Simon Schaffer, Martin Collins and the stimulating comments of many colleagues for criticisms and advice. The comments of anonymous referees have been of great help. The assistance of librarians of the Science Museum Library and the facilities provided by the University of Cambridge and University College London are also much appreciated.

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, grant number AH/I027177/1.

Notes

1. See for instance Reingold and Molella, “Introduction” and the subsequent papers in the special issue of Technology and Culture devoted to the papers from a 1973 conference on the relationship of science and technology in the industrial age. More recently a conference dealing with applied science was held at the Stevens Institute of Technology, see McClellan, The Applied-science Problem. A session at the 2009 History of Science Society led to an Isis focus section on ‘applied science.’ A meeting in Germany was entitled ‘Wissenschaft und Economie’, See http://www.gewige-online.de/images/Dokumente/GWG_DGGMNT_Mainz_2012.pdf (accessed 22 March 2013). It is striking that even Stokes, Pasteur’s Quadrant (1997) engages with the concept of applied science.

2. The first call for the better understanding of the history of terms and concepts was in the classic article of Mayr, “The Science-technology Relationship.” This paper was itself a response to the conference on the relationship of science and technology in the industrial age. For an example of the term’s historically unquestioned use within the history of science, see Cardwell, The Organisation of Science in England, vii. An ecological motif can be taken from Burke, A Social History of Knowledge. I have emphasised the contested nature of the ecology however, bearing in mind the continuing controversy represented for instance by Forman, “The Primacy of Science in Modernity.” On anachronistic uses of the term ‘technology’ see Schatzberg, “Technik comes to America.” See also Douglas, “Pure Science and the Problem of Progress.”

3. This is a term with a rich literature which has been indelibly marked by Jürgen Habermas whose concern as an historian has, however, been principally with the disinterested discourse of the eighteenth century bourgeoisie. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere, particularly see Eley, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures”; Crossley and Roberts, After Habermas.

4. ‘Y,’ “Science and Art,” The evidence that ‘Y’ was an iron-master is given in his letter “Technical Education.”

5. Brunner et al., Geschichtlische Grundbegriffe. For interpretations of this work, see Richter, The History of Political and Social Concepts. The approach of Schauz, “What is Basic Research” also draws upon conceptual history to explore the history of the cultural architecture of science.

6. See Jordheim, “Negotiating Negotiations.” For Koselleck’s own fullest treatment, see Koselleck, “Introduction and Prefaces to the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe.”

7. Bud, “Framed in the Public Sphere.”

8. McClellan, “What’s Problematic about Applied Science,” 28.

9. Harwood, “Engineering Education Between Science and Practice.”

10. The literature on this topic is huge. Key resources for the US include Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, and for the UK, Buchanan, The Engineers. More broadly see Jamison and Heymann, “Historical Tensions in Engineering Education.”

11. Kline, “Construing ‘Technology’ as Applied Science.” For keyword see Raymond Williams, Key words. There he talks of them collectively as a vocabulary which makes up the ‘shared body of words and meanings’ that constitutes a culture.

12. Manegold, “Technology Academised.”

13. Jonathan Harwood has studied the relationships between academics and agricultural research see for instance Harwood, Technology’s Dilemma. In Britain Marsden has studied the relationship both in Cambridge and in Glasgow, showing how linked were the epistemology and pedagogy of Whewell and Willis in the former and Rankine in the latter. See Marsden “The Progeny of These Two ‘Fellows’” and Marsden, “Engineering Science in Glasgow.” In the case of London’s South Kensington, Bud and Roberts have already shown how the development of the categories was connected to institutional change, Bud and Roberts, Science vs. Practice.

14. Tuchman, Science, Medicine, and the State in Germany, see particularly the introduction, 3–15 and chapter 5, 91–112. In the case of Britain, In the case of Britain a similar classic picture was provided in D. S. L. Cardwell ed. Organisation of Science in England.

15. For a modern treatment of the public sphere see Koller, “The Public Sphere and Comparative Historical Research an Introduction.”

16. Gispen, New Profession, Old Order, 47. For later reflections on the linkages between nationalism and engineering, see Herf, Reactionary Modernism.

17. Marsden, “Carriages, Coffee-cups and Dynamometers.”

18. We know however that in the US too at the time the term applied science was associated too with novelty. This was a concept ‘describing new knowledge, new practices, new places, and new products – all of which typified Tinseled Age America’. Lucier, “The Origins of Pure and Applied Science in Gilded Age America.”

19. “Tyndall on Illumination.” Tyndall’s talk was given on 17 January 1879 and reprinted in the New York Times on 16 February. The original lecture by Pasteur was first published in the Lyon newspaper Le Salut Public in March 1871, then in Revue Scientifique de la France et de l’Etranger and was republishedin Oeuvres de Pasteur. For a modern use, see Stokes, Pasteur’s Quadrant.

20. Connors and MacDonald, National Identity in Great Britain and British North America.

21. There is of course a huge literature on reading the Victorian press. See for instance, Brake, Bell, and Finkelstein, eds. Nineteenth-Century Media and the Construction of Identities. Brake and Codell, eds. Encounters in the Victorian Press. On science in periodicals http://www.sciper.org/. This is discussed in Cantor and Shuttleworth, Science Serialized; Cantor, Science in the Nineteenth-century Periodical. Only one use of the phrase ‘applied science’ is reported from the Sci-per selection for the period under discussion. The work of Jim Secord has been seminal in this area, in addition to his books see his “Knowledge in Transit.”

22. On the selection of newspapers by the British Library see Jane Shaw, “10 Billion Words” see too http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation/blnnews.aspxConsulted March, 2013.

23. Walker, “The Development of the Provincial Press in England.”

24. Ellegård, “The Readership of the Periodical Press in Mid-Victorian Britain.”

25. It is worth adding that since the origin of the numbers is the version digitised for the BL, there may have been additional references in the printed text which have been missed.

26. A new British newspaper archive project with a longer timebase and wider selection of newspapers was launched in November 2011 and is expected to grow over the next decade. See: http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/help/about.

27. Matthew, “Rhetoric and Politics in Great Britain,” 58.

28. Brown, “Morally Transforming the World or Spinning a Line.”

29. Dickens, “Permanent Books.”

30. On Blackwood see Finkelstein, Print Culture and the Blackwood Tradition.

31. Gambles, “Rethinking the Politics of Protection.” See also Mussell, “Cohering Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century.”

32. In German the earlier use of the term ‘angewandte Wissenschaft’ as a posteriori knowledge tended to be focussed upon the Staatswissenschaften. In mid-century the modern connotation was becoming widespread however. On this point, I am grateful for conversation with Désirée Schauz. In French the phrase science appliquée aux arts continued to be more popular till the late nineteenth century.

33. For ‘applied science’s’ importation from Germany see for instance Cardwell, Organisation of Science in England, 137–140; Hennock, “Technological Education in England.”

34. ‘To the Author.’ This article discusses how improvements could be made in ‘practical science’ by a survey of ideas. It prefigures the formation of the Society of Arts and its prizes a few years later.

35. An elegant treatment of the ambiguous interpretation of the relationships seen at the time between theoretical science and practice in the case of Joseph Henry, was explored in Molella and Reingold, “Theorists and Ingenious Mechanics.”

36. See for instance, Sir John Robison to Charles Babbage, 24 October 1831, Ad Mss 37,186 f 132, BL.

37. [Editorial], The Mining Journal, Railway and Commercial Gazette.

38. Snyder, S. T. Coleridge’s Treatise on Method. See also her, “Coleridge and the Encyclopedists.” For a fuller discussion of Coleridge’s links to the German background, see Bud, “Applied Science.”

39. ‘There are, as we have before noticed, two sorts of relation, on the due observation of which all Method depends. The first is that which the Ideas or Laws of the Mind bear to each other ; the second, that which they bear to the external world; on the former are built the Pure Sciences; on the latter those which we call Mixed and Applied.’ Snyder, S. T. Coleridge’s Treatise on Method. 55. See also, Bud, “Applied Science.”

40. The three editors were Edward Smedley, Hugh J. Rose and his brother Henry J. Rose. See Yeo, “Reading Encyclopedias,” 34–39.

41. The new owners were a consortium of booksellers led by the publisher and bookseller B. Fellowes, also official publisher to the Anglican King’s College London. The publishing enterprise finally cost £44,000 – then equivalent to quarter of a million dollars with a trading loss of £15,000. See, Collison, “Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the ‘Encyclopaedia Metropolitana,’” 755.

42. For an example of the contraction, see Morning Post 2 February, 1829 and the Standard 3 February 1829. Only one use of the term before 1840, not in one of the thirty advertisements for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana itself, is to be found in the Gale selection of forty-eight key nineteenth century newspapers. This exception was, nonetheless, a reference to a volume of the Encyclopaedia. See the editorial, Morning Chronicle, 1 November 1836. This referred to Barlow’s contribution on ‘applied science.’ A sole exception among monthly periodicals was a fascinating anonymous article in the Imperial Magazine aimed at lower-middle class readers (Connors and Macdonald, National Identity in Great Britain and British North America, 1815–1851, Appendix). The magazine argued that ‘it is through applied science and through skill in the direction of industry’ that labour would be saved but that this would lead to new products rather than unemployment. “The Influence of Science on the Opulence of Nations.” It may be that this formulation was based on the work of Dupin discussed here.

43. Hearnshaw, The Centenary History of King’s College, London.

44. King’s College London, Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture and of Science Applied to the Arts, 1.

45. For the linkage of the Conservatoire and Dupin’s term, see the ‘Ordonnance’ of 25 November 1819, article premiére ‘Il sera établi au Conservatoire des arts et métiers un enseignement public et gratuit pour l’application des sciences aux arts industriels.’ In Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Recueil Des Lois, 50. See also Bud, “Applied Science”; Payen, “The Role of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in the Development of Technical Education up to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century”; Bradley, Charles Dupin; and Christen-Lécuyer, Vatin, and Fox, Charles Dupin. We may hypothesise that the importation of Dupin’s phrase to King’s College was due to the Professor of Natural Philosophy, Henry Moseley, who had been born in France and whose work was respected in the deeply French-influenced French-influenced West Point Military Academy. See Woodward, “Moseley, Henry.”

46. King’s College London “Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture and of Science Applied to the Arts and Manufactures,” King’s College London.

47. King’s College London, “Report from the Council to the Annual General Court,” 25.

48. “Report from the Council to the Annual General Court,” 25; “Department of General Instruction in the Applied Sciences,” bound in King’s College Calendar 1844–1845, King’s College London Archive services.

49. The first advertisement I have seen was in The Times on 16 January 1845.

50. There were, for instance, no mentions of the course at all in The Mechanics’ Magazine.

51. Like his patron David Brewster, Johnston would be part of the Great disruption of 1843 when the Presbyterian church split from the national church. See Knight, “Johnston.”

52. Borscheid, Naturwissenschaft, Staat und Industrie in Baden.

53. The Corn Laws taxed foreign imports of grain to Britain unless prices rose to a (high) designated level. Finally abolished in 1846 they had become a key issue in the divisive conflicts between industrial cities and land owners and the rural economy. The disputes during the 1830s were intense expressed for instance in the newly established magazine The Economist. For a recent contribution to a huge literature see Gambles, “Rethinking the Politics of Protection.”

54. The American John Pitkin Norton who became the leader of agricultural chemistry in the United States spent two years with Johnston. His patron Benjamin Silliman was a strong proponent of Johnston. See Rossiter, The Emergence of Agricultural Science. Johnston also conducted his own invited lecture tour of North America. Johnston’s The Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology published in 1844 passed through thirty editions in his own lifetime. It was widely translated and recommended by Tolstoy. The historian of Dutch agriculture, H. A. M. Snelders has suggested Johnston had a major impact on the Dutch. See his “James F. W. Johnston’s Influence on Agricultural Chemistry in the Netherlands.”

55. Two separate analyses indicate Johnston’s review of his own work. The Wellesley Index attributes “Science and Agriculture,” to Johnston. Separately the notice ‘Things of the Day No II’ published by the Edinburgh Magazine in March 1842 was attributed to George Croly and J. F. W. Johnston by Frank Whitson Fetter, “The Economic Articles in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine” as well as later by The Wellesley Index.

56. The description ‘brand’ is used here intentionally. This category has been interpreted (i) A brand exists only in the memory of people; (ii) A brand is a sign of recognition (labels, names, logos, colours); (iii) A brand evokes associations in people; and (iv) A brand is linked to commercially saleable goods or services. See Franzen and Bouwman, The Mental World of Brands, 1. I have explored the relevance to concepts relating to the architecture of science in Bud, “Remaking Ideas about Science in Public.”

57. See Knight, “Johnston.”

58. This dinner was lovingly described down to the huge menu under the title “Dinner of the Committee,” by the Hull Packet 6 August 1841.

59. Johnston, “The Practice of Agriculture.”

60. “Agricultural Chemistry Association,” The Scotsman 13 January 1849. See Bud and Roberts, Science vs. Practice, 57–58.

61. See for instance, “Agriculture: Professor Johnston’s Lecture on Agricultural Chemistry.”

62. “State and Prospects of British Agriculture,” 450–451. Although anonymous this article attributed to Johnston by the Wellesley Index.

63. See for instance “Scientific and Practical Agriculture,” attributed to Johnston by the Wellesley Index.

64. See for example advertisements in Berrows Worcester Journal 13 April 1843, the Newcastle Courant 14 April 1843, Hampshire Advertiser 15 April 1843, The Standard, 19 April 1843 and The Morning Post 20 April 1843.

65. “Scientific Agriculture,” Economist, 967; “Experimental Agriculture,” Economist, 1246. See also Caledonian Mercury, 19 October 1846.

66. As a detail, I should add the caveat that I am here dealing with ‘applied science’ as an adjective and a noun. The alternative usage as in ‘he applied science’ was grammatically quite different, and the occasions of use slightly different. Its use was much less frequent but in general referred to the same examples such as Humphry Davy and indeed was said by many of the same people.

67. Of course, in telegraphy, innovation could come often from the machine shop as Paul Israel has shown in his book From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory. However at the time telegraphy was talked of in terms of applied science, for instance see the letter to a newspaper from A Member of the British Association for the Promotion [sic] of Science, “The United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company.”

68. “Applied Science,” The British Quarterly Review. For an example of Wilson’s early use of the phrase see his article “Rudimentary Electricity,” see 440. Attributed to George Wilson by the Wellesley Index.

69. See for instance Samuel Highley advertisements in The Athenaeum, 17 September 1853, 1351: 1112; Literary Gazette, 10 September 1853, 1912: 896.

70. “Hull Literary and Philosophical Society.”

71. The religious response to the exhibition is discussed by Cantor, Religion and the Great Exhibition of 1851. The scholarly response of Whewell who came to the conclusion that science did now play a role in invention is Mertens, “From Tubal Cain to Faraday.” For the role of the exhibition in promoting the concept of technology, see Marx, “Technology.”

72. One can see benefits from Playfair’s energetic endeavours in the press. See for instance a report of Dr Wylde’s lectures Glasgow Herald, 12 August 1857.

73. See for example the advertisement for Hoddesdon Scientific School in The Times, 6 January 1851.

74. Horace Greeley, “The Crystal Palace and its Lessons,” 421; Goodrich, Science and Mechanism.

75. On Hamilton Smith and the AAAS see Holmfeld, “From Amateurs to Professionals in American Science.”

76. Barton, “Just Before Nature.” Also see Brock, William Crookes; Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science; On Simmonds, see Cooper, “Peter Lund Simmonds and the Political Ecology of Waste Utilization in Victorian Britain,” Greysmith, “The Empire as Infinite Resource.”

77. See Macleod, “Securing the Foundations”; Barton, “Just Before Nature.”

78. The Mechanics’ Magazine was relaunched in 1859 as the Mechanics’ Magazine and Journal of Engineering. Agricultural Machinery, Manufactures, and Shipbuilding. This title was maintained even while the advertisements described it in terms of applied sciences. See the classified advertisement, Dundee Courier and Daily Argus 31 October, 1861 and subsequently.

79. Thomas Archer to President of the Liverpool Royal Institution, 24 July 1860, LR 1/3/4.1 p109, LRI papers special collections, University of Liverpool. Permission to publish this quotation is appreciated. On the Liverpool Museum see Ormerod, The Liverpool Royal Institutionp. 56. On Archer see his obituary, Galletly, “Obituary Notice of the Late T. C. Archer.”

80. Hartog, “Wilson, George.” On the brotherhood see Wilson, Memoir of George Wilson.

81. See Playfair to Ramsay, 26 March 1842 and Playfair to Ramsay 21 May 1842 GB 0210 MSRAMSAY, National Library of Wales.

82. Playfair to Ramsay 25 February 1843; GB 0210 MSRAMSAY, National Library of Wales. quoted with permission.

83. This is dealt with in more detail in Bud and Roberts, Science vs. Practice, 88–89.

84. Board of Trade Department of Science and Art, 5 July 1853, Ed. 28/1, f. 203. National Archives UK.

85. “Industrial Education,” 120–121.

86. “Government School of Mines and of Science Applied to the Arts,” Morning Chronicle.

87. “Museum of Practical Geology,” Daily News. The lecture was subsequently published as “On the Educational Uses of Museums.”

88. Lyon Playfair, “On Scientific Institutions in Connexion with the Department of Science and Art Department,” 22. The lecture was given on 30 November 1857.

89. The changing interpretations of the lives of the heroes of the industrial revolution have been charted by MacLeod in Heroes of Invention.

90. See Bud and Roberts, Science vs. Practice.

91. Report revised by the Syndicate, May 24, 1865, Guard Book, 28.5.1 ms ul, University Library Cambridge. This development seems to have been overlooked by Hilken, Engineering at Cambridge University. See however Marsden, “The Progeny of These Two ‘Fellows’.”

92. Wilson ascribed his use of the term ‘technology’ to the 1848 translation of Knapp’s Chemical Technology or Chemistry applied to the Arts and Manufactures, 1. See Wilson, What is Technology? 3–4. Knapp in turn had attributed his use of the term to Beckmann. On uses of the term ‘technology,’ at that time. see Sebestik, “The Rise of the Technological Science.”

93. [Wilson] “Rudimentary Electricity,” 442.

94. Anderson, “What Is Technology?”

95. Grant, The Story of the University of Edinburgh During Its First Three Hundred Years, 354–61. See also Donnelly, “The Origins of the Technical Curriculum in England.”

96. For the Senate Committee’s report and injunction to the Court to hasten see; Secretary of the Senate to The Court, 24 April 1868, Minutes of the Court 1(1859–70), 359–60 and the draft report on pp 361–65. Special Collections of the University Library, University of Edinburgh. In 1869 Edinburgh University Calendar advertised a division of study entitled ‘applied science’ incorporating agriculture, engineering and veterinary surgery. See The Edinburgh University Calendar 1869–70, 140.

97. The letter from Playfair to Lord Taunton is incorporated within a letter from Lord Granville to the editor, “Industrial Education,” The Times. On the significance of this letter see Gooday, “Lies, Damned Lies and Declinism.”

98. Norris, The Education of the People.

99. [Editorial] Manchester Guardian, 13 August 1867; “Compulsory Education.”

100. “Chambers of Commerce on Technical Education,” Manchester Guardian. See for example “Associated Chambers of Commerce,” Birmingham Daily Post.

101. In contrast to the born-insider Lyon Playfair, Bernhard Samuelson, born Jewish in Hamburg, had made his fortune by building up an agricultural machinery business and then a steel works. Beyond an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography there is no biographical treatment of this important actor in the development of technical education.

102. House of Commons, “Motion for a Select Committee,” HC Deb 24 March 1868, 191, cc160–86.

103. In addition to the expansion of Owens College (f.1851) and of the old universities, within just one decade, colleges were established in Newcastle, 1871, Aberystwyth, 1872, Birmingham and Bristol, 1873, Leeds, 1874; and Nottingham, 1876. In Scotland, Dundee University was founded in 1881.

104. Vernon, Universities and the State in England.

105. Rodrick, Self Help and Civic Culture.

106. Leighton, “Municipal Progress”; McCulloch, The Feeneys of the Birmingham Post.

107. “George Gore F.R.S.” Gore referred to this tour in his letter to Richard Norris, 1 July 1880. US41/7/22/32, Special Collections University of Birmingham.

108. [Gore], “On the Relationship of Science to Birmingham Manufactures First Article.” Gore claimed the paper in his list of publications, Gore, Statement of Qualifications of Dr George Gore. This was followed up a week later by [Gore], “On the Relationship of Science to Birmingham Manufactures. Second Article.”

109. On the use of Watt as chemist see Miller, James Watt, Chemist and his Discovering Water.

110. Gore, “On Practical Scientific Education,” 227.

111. “Sir Josiah Mason’s Scientific College Birmingham.”

112. “Sir Josiah Mason’s Science College.”

113. An attempt to distinguish these meanings is made by Donnelly “Representations of Applied Science,” 198, however even he does not show any evidence for explicit debate over the meaning of the term.

114. Donnelly, “Getting Technical.”

115. “Horticulture at Champaign.”

116. On Case as an Institution, see Kargon and Knowles, “Knowledge for Use.”

117. Hamilton Smith was an ‘outside member’ of the small Arkites drinking club of Leonard Case, and he and Leonard’s older brother William were the two founding curators. See Case, Notes on the Origin and History of ‘The Ark,’ 32–33. See also Hendrickson, The Arkites, 17. See also “The Case School of Applied Science.” The Leader.

118. The text of the article reads: ‘Its name [School of Applied Science] and the specification of its purpose will leave the board of Trustees to shape its course to the best interest of those who may attend it at the start, or in a hundred years from now. It will not compel them to introduce the multiplied courses of a true Polytechnicum, nor will it restrict them to anything less, if in time these should seem desirable.’ “The Case School of Applied Science.” The Leader.

119. Lucier, “The Origins of Pure and Applied Science in Gilded Age America.”

120. Mason Science College, Calendar, 1880–1881, 98.

121. “Report of the Proceedings at the Special Meeting of the General Council, Summoned To take into Consideration The Proposal to Establish a ‘Yorkshire College of Science’.” Clothworkers Hall, Archives.

122. Gosden and Taylor, Studies in the History of a University. See also “The Yorkshire College, Leeds.”

123. “The Yorkshire College,” Glasgow Herald.

124. “Royal Visit to Leeds,” Leeds Mercury. Baines’s draft of his talk is in the archives of the West Yorkshire Archive Service, WYL383/76/5.

125. Joyce, Democratic Subjects, 163–176. Manchester scientific culture was explored by Robert Kargon, Science in Victorian Manchester, by Thackray, “Natural Knowledge in Cultural Context” and in the essays collected by Cardwell, Artisan to Graduate.

126. Thompson, The Owens College, 317.

127. “A North of England University,” Manchester Guardian.

128. Thompson, The Owens College, 325. For the focus of Whitworth on chemistry, metallurgy and engineering and the eschewing of ‘applied science,’ see the Engineering Professorship Committee, for instance “Report of the Engineering Professorship on the terms of agreement settled with Mr Reynolds, on the accommodation required for the Engineering Department and on the scheme of study to be pursued in the Engineering Classes,” 13 May 1868, OCA 5/3/1, Manchester University Archives.

129. Jenkin, “Civil Engineer. A Two Years’ Course.” On Fleeming Jenkin, see Hempstead and Cookson, A Victorian Scientist and Engineer. See also Morrell, “The Patronage of Mid-Victorian Science.”

130. “The British Association for the Advancement of Science,” Morning Post.

131. Marsden, “Engineering science in Glasgow,” 271.

132. Marsden, “Engineering Science in Glasgow,” 320. Also Channell, “The Harmony of Theory and Practice.”

133. See for instance, Siemens, “Remarks on the House of Applied Science.”

134. Grey, “On the Study of Education as a Science.” On Grey see Levine, “Grey.”

135. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent. For Arnold’s own complex relations to science see Dudley, “Matthew Arnold and Science.”

136. Marsden, “Engineering Science in Glasgow,” 330; Kargon, Science in Victorian Manchester, 47.

137. “Science and Industry,” Nature; Churchill, “Chairman’s Address,” 10.

138. Bud, “Infected by the Bacillus of Science.” Also see Bud, “Responding to Stories.”

139. Siemens, “Opening address. Section-Mechanics.”

140. “The Queen at South Kensington.”

141. de Clercq, “The Special Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus.”

142. Bud, “Infected by the Bacillus of Science.”

143. I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss her dissertation work with Cho, author of the dissertation (in Korean) “The Special Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus, 1876.” For an admiring German review see, Biedermann, “Die Ausstellung Wissenschaftlicher Apparate im South Kensington-museum.”

144. “The Loan Exhibition of Scientific Apparatus at South Kensington.”

145. See for instance the Times review “Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus.”

146. Giberti, Designing the Centennial, 103–104.

147. Donnelly, “Science and Technology in Britain,” 195.

148. We have of course become accustomed to an analogous phenomenon in Anglophone uses of the category of technology, which refers to branches of knowledge, certain industries and machines in general.

149. Dworkin, Justice in Robes, 223.