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Abstract
During the winter of 1825, and again in 1828, two eminent men of science, Thomas Young and John Herschel, debated the state's obligation to provide for the scientific arts, particularly the Board of Longitude's support for attempts to improve navigation and the provision of instruments for seagoing men of science. The question of how authority and expertise in scientific matters was judged by members of the Admiralty and their associates was closely connected with individuals' opinions about the support men of science should be able to expect from the state to further their expertise, both financially and materially. The exchange offers insight into the relationship of expertise and authority as understood by those attempting to negotiate Admiralty patronage. Alongside discussion of how the Board of Longitude more generally negotiated the demands, needs and wants of men of science, light is shed on how the Commissioners of Longitude used their authority to judge scientific expertise on behalf of the Admiralty in the first decades of the nineteenth century.
Notes
I must express my gratitude to Simon Schaffer, Rebekah Higgitt and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, to James Davey and Don Leggett for including me in this special edition, to Richard Dunn for his support and those at the JISC Board of Longitude digitisation project.
1 Lightman, ‘Science and the public’; Lightman, ‘The creed of science’; Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science.
2 Babbage, Decline of science in England, 10.
3 Foote, ‘British reform movement’; Morrell, ‘Structure of British science’; Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of science; Macleod, ‘Whigs and savants’; Yeo, Defining science; Snyder, Reforming philosophy.
4 Bentham himself stated: ‘Though discoveries in science may be the result of genius or accident, and though the most important discoveries may have been made by individuals without public assistance, the progress of such discoveries may at all times be materially accelerated by a proper application of public encouragement.’ Bentham, ‘Rationale of reward’, 256.
5 Miller, ‘Method and the “micropolitics” of science’, 232.
6 Kjægaard, ‘Competing allies’.
7 Brewer, Sinews of power; Storrs, Fiscal–military state.
8 Ashworth, ‘Roaming eye of the state’.
9 Gascoigne, ‘Royal Society and the emergence of science’.
10 Babbage, Decline of science in England; and South, Reply to a letter.
11 Macleod, ‘Medals and men’. For Babbage's criticism, see Decline of science in England, 115–35.
12 ibid., 115.
13 Gascoigne, Science in the service of empire, chap. 2.
14 Macleod, ‘Medals and men’, 86–7.
15 For example, Pendulum Committees were established in 1816 and 1818 to establish standard weights and measures. The Glass Committee, funded by the Royal Society and the Board of Longitude, was established to improve the quality and manufacturing of optical glass and was heavily reliant on the talents of Michael Faraday. Other Board of Longitude sub-committees were the Committee for Examining Instruments and Proposals, the Tonnage Committee, and the less formal committees investigating glass plate production and the 1793 London gas explosion. For the papers of these committees, see CUL, RGO/14/10 ‘Committee Papers’.
16 Ashworth, ‘The calculating eye’.
17 The first recorded minutes of the Board of Longitude were created retrospectively for the year commencing 1737, which was when the commissioners first came together to consider the plans for a timekeeper designed by John Harrison.
18 For the 1796 Act of Parliament and other acts relating to the Board of Longitude, see CUL, RGO/14/1.
19 Johnson, ‘Board of Longitude’; Howse, ‘Britain's Board of Longitude’.
20 Information on the 1818 Act is taken from Higgitt, ‘1818 Longitude Act’. For drafts of the 1818 Longitude Bill, see CUL, RGO/14/1.63–78; for the 1818 Longitude Act, see CUL, RGO/14/1.79–82.
21 There is a series of letters in CUL, RGO/14/49 that deal with the confusion over Sabine's employment. Most pertinent is CUL, RGO/14/49.19, Young to Lord Fitzroy Somerset: ‘If Captain S had thought himself justifiable in submitting them [his data] at once to the Board instead of sending them in the first instance to that department which he thought had the first right to any tribute of respect that he would pay. I have also no doubt that in this case if he had considered himself as immediately employed by the Board of Longitude, as he might fairly have done, they would have thought themselves obliged to reimburse him for his expenses & to have made him an acknowledgement for his loss of time similar to that which the Admiralty allowed him on the first Arctic expedition … upon an understanding somewhat of the same nature at the rate of £40 or £50 a month.’ For Babbage's criticism, see Babbage, Decline of science in England, 66–100.
22 Wood, Thomas Young, chaps 13–14.
23 Croarken, ‘Tabulating the heavens’; and Croarken, ‘Providing longitude for all’.
24 Cannon, ‘Idea of science’.
25 For a more in-depth discussion of the negotiations surrounding the voyages associated with Barrow, see Fleming, Barrow's boys.
26 Copeland, Introduction to the practice of nautical surveying.
27 Cannon, ‘Idea of science’; Brock, ‘Humboldt and the British’.
28 Listed in the 1818 Act as able to function as Commissioners of Longitude were Flag Officers in his Majesty's Fleet, the Governor of the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, the Judge of the High Court of the Admiralty, and the Comptroller of the Navy, but none of the men in these positions regularly attended meetings, if at all.
29 Royal Society, Herschel Papers [hereafter RS:HS] 18.334, Young to Herschel, 7 Nov. 1825.
30 Schaaf, ‘John Herschel, photography and the camera lucida’.
31 RS:HS 18:335, note from Barrow to Herschel kept with Herschel to Young, 8 Nov. 1825 (Barrow's deletion).
32 RS:HS 18:335, Herschel to Young, 8 Nov. 1825.
33 ibid.
34 RS:HS 18.336, Young to Herschel, 15 Nov. 1825.
35 John Wilson Croker quoted in ‘Commons report’, The Times, 5 July 1828, 5.
36 RS:HS 18.345, Herschel to Young, 30 Aug. 1828.
37 Hilts, ‘Thomas Young's “autobiographical sketch” ’, 253.
38 For a discussion of French state support for science in the period, see Fox, Savant and the state.
39 RS:HS 18.347, Young to Herschel, 1 Sep. 1828.
40 RS:HS 18:335, Barrow to Herschel, 7 Nov. 1825, kept with Herschel to Young, 8 Nov. 1825.
41 CUL, RGO/14/43.459, Sabine to Young, 31 Mar. 1824.
42 For more on these voyages, see Fleming, Barrow's boys.
43 For an account of the controversies that troubled the Royal Society in the 1820s, see Miller, ‘Between hostile camps’; Boas Hall, All scientists now.
44 Babbage, Passages from the life of a philosopher, 54–5.
45 Babbage, Decline of science in England, 76.
46 Sabine, An account of experiments.
47 Babbage, Decline of science in England, 77–8.
48 ibid., 78–9.
49 ibid., 115–35.
50 ibid., 100–1.
51 RS:HS 18.357, Young to Herschel, n.d.