Men and Machines in mid-18th century London

NOTES AND REFERENCES

• These issues are discussed in Alan Q. Morton and Jane A. Wess, Public and private science: the King George III Collection. (Oxford University Press and the Science Museum, Oxford, 1993).
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• Ian Gilmour, Riot, Risings and Revolution: Governance and violence in Eighteenth-Century England. (Hutchinson, London, 1992), chapter 2. Steven A. Shapin, 'Of Gods and Kings: Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Leibniz-Clarke Disputes', Isis vol. 72 (1981), pp. 187–215.
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• It is related to what Cardwell has pointed to, what he sees as the development of scientific technology in the later 18th century—a blend of science and technology. D. S. L. Cardwell, The Organization of Science in England. (Heinemann, London, 1972), p. 14. Following Cardwell, we should also bear in mind his warning about reading modern concerns back into history. For example, there is a widespread view today that academic or pure research should eventually find some application; however, we should not see 18th century natural philosophy in the same way, as "science" awaiting application in industry.
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• Questions about how the science of the late 17th and early 18th centuries is linked to the Industrial Revolution of the later 18th century have been examined a number of historians of science and technology. See A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution, (Manchester University Press, 1969), D. S. L. Cardwell, Technology, science and history, (Heinemann, London, 1972) M. C. Jacob, The cultural meaning of the scientific revolution, (Knopf, New York, 1988). Ian Inkster, Science and Technology in History: an approach to industrial development. (Macmillan, London, 1991).
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• Of course, this is the period, too, of the development of the Newcomen engine. This and other new machines would encourage some to take an interest in technical matters. However, this enthusiasm for new machines was eventually tempered by the experience of numerous speculative schemes floated at the time of the South Sea Bubble. See Larry Stewart, The rise of public science. (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
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• The General Advertiser, no 4024, Thursday September 17th 1747, p. 1.
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• The Newcastle Courant, 24/26 November 1712, p. 10. Of course, Jurin was lecturing around the time Newcomen engines were first set up in the coal field round Newcastle, as the members of this society hardly need to be reminded.
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• See J. T. Desaguliers, A course of experimental philosophy. 2 vols. (London, 1744–5). As these were lecturers meeting with his approval, mostly his pupils, it is an underestimate of the actual number of lecturers.
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• Their careers have been examined by Stewart, op. cit.
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• These issues are discussed in Morton and Wess op. cit. chapter 3.
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• Quoted in Eric Robinson, The Profession of Civil Engineer in the Eighteenth Century: a Portrait of Thomas Yeoman, FRS, 1704( ?)-1781. Ann Sci 18, (1962), 195–215. P. 195.
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• W. Brockbank and F. Kenworthy, The Diary of Richard Kay, 1716–51 of Baldingstone, near Bury. A Lancashire Doctor. (Chetham Society, Manchester, 1968), p. 65.
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• See Alan Q. Morton, 'Concepts of power: natural philosophy and the uses of machines in mid-18th century London', BJHS forthcoming.
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• T. H. Croker, T. Williams, S. Clark, The complete dictionary of arts and sciences. . . (the authors, London, 1764) Vol. I, advertisement.
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• See J. R. Harris, Essays in Industry and technology in the eighteenth century: England and France. (Variorum, 1992) Another variation of this problem is pointed out by D. J. Jeremy, Transatlantic industrial revolution: the diffusion of textile technologies between Britain and America, 1790-1830s. (Blackwell Oxford, 1981) p. 51. Artisans from different parts of England brought together in the United States got into arguments because they came from differing technical traditions.
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• The conditions were not just to do with the physical surroundings. In Toulouse, the mills were a very early example of capitalist ownership. Those who owned shares in the mills were separate from those who worked them. See G. Sicard, Aux origines des sociétés anonymes: les moulins de Toulouse au Moyen Age. (Colin, Paris, 1953), pp. 349–353.
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• See L. T. C. Rolt and J. S. Allen, The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen. (Moorland, Hartington, 1977), p. 54.
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• Desaguliers op.cit. Vol. 2 p. 465.
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• Such accounts were used by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations (1776).
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• Daniel Defoe, A tour through the whole island of Great Britain. (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 458.
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• He succumbed to another 18 th century innovations, Dr. James's Fever Powders.
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• Desaguliers op.cit. Vol. 2 p. 412.
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• Parent had applied calculus to ideas about mechanical efficiency in 1704. Arnold Pacey, The maze of ingenuity. (Allen Lane, London, 1974), p. 124.
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• John Smeaton, 'An experimental examination of the quantity and proportion of mechanic power . . Philosophical Transactions, vol. 66 (1776), pp. 450–469 on pp. 454–5 footnote.
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• See Brett D. Steele 'Muskets and Pendulums: Benjamin Robins, Leonhard Euler, and the Ballistics Revolution', Technology and Culture, vol. 35 (1994), pp. 348–382.
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• Mathematical tracts of the late Benjamin Robins, Esq. . . 2 vols., (Nourse, London, 1761).
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• One of the two he made himself he gave to Joseph Priestley.
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• John Smeaton Experimental enquiry concerning the natural powers of wind and water (Taylor, London, 1794). See also Terry S. Reynolds Stronger than a Hundred men: a history of the vertical water wheel. (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1983).
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• ". . . it is in fact the air-pump of Smeaton, having a cover or close lid to the barrel, which prevents the atmospheric air pressing on the bucket, and renders the working more easy . . ." John Farey A treatise on the steam engine. (Longman, London, 1827), p. 323. Furthermore, Cardwell suggests that Watt got the idea of expansive operation from Smeaton's paper on waterpower. D. S. L. Cardwell, 'James Watt. . .' in Man masters Nature, ed. Roy Porter, (BBC Books, London, 1987), p. 122.
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• What is involved with these various studies is a notion of how to specify machines so their useful properties can be reproduced. This ideas would seem to be antecedents to later concepts where interchangeable parts are used to provide machines with identical properties.
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• For another example of how the published accounts of Smeaton's methods were applied, see Basil Harley, 'The Society of Arts' model ship trials, 1758-1763', Transactions, Newcomen Society, vol. 63 (1991–2), pp. 53–71, on pp. 57–8.
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• See Paul N. Wilson 'The waterwheels of John Smeaton', Transactions, Newcomen Society, vol. 30 (1955–7), pp. 25–48.
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• As Paul Langford, Public Life and the propertied Englishman, 1689–1798, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991), p. 211 points out. Improvement-". . . avoided the idea of innovation while suggesting desirability of change".
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