Technical assistance in the world of London science, 1850–1900

Author:

Gay Hannah1

Affiliation:

1. Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Imperial College LondonLondon SW7 2AZ, UK

Abstract

Examples of technical assistance in a range of London settings are discussed in this paper. Skilled trades people, apprentices, lab boys and girls, family members, research students, research assistants, and laboratory technicians were, in different ways, all important to the organization of scientific work in this period. To illustrate this point, examples of work performed in trades shops, academic laboratories, entrepreneurial businesses and private laboratories are given. The examples demonstrate not only the complex and collective nature of scientific work, but also something of the social interactions of scientists and their assistants. Of especial note is the dependence of scientists on people who worked in the skilled trades.

Publisher

The Royal Society

Subject

History and Philosophy of Science

Reference104 articles.

1. Science Museum (London) Library (SML) Thomas Andrews correspondence vol. 3 letter 17 18 August 1868. Thomas Graham FRS (1805–69) former professor of chemistry at University College London Master of the Mint; Thomas Andrews FRS (1813–85) close friend of Michael Faraday and professor of chemistry Queen's College Belfast.

2. Steven Shapin 'The invisible technician' Am. Scient. 77 554-563 (1989)

3. A social history of truth: civility and science in seventeenth-century England (University of Chicago Press 1994) chapter 8.

4. Papin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He had earlier worked as an assistant to Christian Huygens (to whom he later returned) and was perhaps the prototype technician in the sense of having great manual dexterity and the ability to design and build a range of scientific apparatus. He was a major contributor to the air pump that is associated with Boyle. As Shapin states there was a degree of collegiality between Boyle and Papin and some joint publication. Perhaps more typical of the ‘invisible’ technician were John Flamsteed's paid assistants at Greenwich most of whom as noted by Shapin came from trades backgrounds and remained largely anonymous in scientific circles.

5. Shapin (1994) op. cit. (note 2) p. 356.

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