The search for the Northwest Passage in the years following the Napoleonic Wars provided both a market and testing ground for marine chronometers. Long voyages and extreme temperatures challenged the best chronometers. Among the firms seeking to meet those challenges was that of William Parkinson & William James Frodsham. Their chronometers performed particularly well in the Arctic, as John and James Clark Ross, William Edward Parry, and Edward Sabine gladly recognized. The way in which chronometers were made and sold, however, (...) meant that there were sometimes controversies over who was entitled to claim credit for a particular instrument. A letter from Parkinson & Frodsham in 1821 illustrates the problem, and its causes in the nature of the trade; the text of that letter is published here in its entirety. Also problematic, and discussed here, was the craft aspect of the industry, in which the ‘mechanical construction’ of a chronometer might not reveal the process of manufacture that gave it its steady rate and accuracy. (shrink)

Precision was not a quality expected from ordinary watches in the eighteenth century, which required specific maintenance to function correctly. The precautions to be taken to ensure the accuracy of pocket chronometers, whose going would influence navigation or the results of scientific activities, were even more vital. However, the remarkable attention that horological studies have devoted to the origins of chronometry has neglected these aspects. It has erroneously assumed that the success of chronometers was guaranteed by their innovative impact and (...) technological advancement. To illustrate the importance to examine the birth of chronometry from the point of view of manipulating technology and the user experience, my paper will discuss the case of the small series of pocket chronometers manufactured between 1782 and 1794 by the London workshop of the Swiss watchmaker Josiah Emery. The article shows that not all the users possessed the necessary technical knowledge nor training to handle and employ chronometers appropriately and that the instructions given by the artisan to his clients played a fundamental role. (shrink)

This thesis examines the changed status of the instrument maker in the London-based scientific community of the nineteenth century, compared with the eighteenth century, and seeks to account for the difference. Chapter 1 establishes that the eighteenth-century maker could aspire to full membership of the scientific community. The following chapters show that this became impossible by the period 1820-1860. Among reasons suggested for the change are that the instrument maker's educational context to some extent precluded him from contributing to scientific (...) innovation, and also the changed market for his products in an industrial Britain required that he devote more time to his business, thus decreasing the time available to pursue new developments. However, the decline is attributed mainly to the tendency of the scientific community to refine its own criteria of membership, in an era in which its self-consciousness as a distinct group increased, and its members articulated claims to status in terms of their value to the State. This ideology and its consequences are analysed in a number of studies. Chapter 2 deals with the burgeoning of collective identity in the context of the Royal Society, while the next four chapters study individual members of the scientific elite - Wheatstone, Babbage, Airy and Faraday, and their relationships with instrument makers. The studies demonstrate that the philosopher recognised the artisan's work as important, but not as vital as his own, and not classifiable as scientific work. As an institutional manifestation of the motives of the leading philosophers, the B.A.A.S. is the focus of Chapter 7. The final case study centres on the maker's tactics of self-promotion in business terms, thus linking more fully the factors at work in ensuring the rise of the philosopher and the decline in status of the artisan in the scientific community. (shrink)

Trade cards were a means of advertising products or services and thereby attracting customers to the owner's shop. They often included a variety of details about the proprietor and his business, and illustrated his wares. Cards for the scientific instrument industry depicted all classes of instrument and the products from which they were made. A careful study of the cards can reveal much supplementary information about the way the industry worked, so their use, and limitations, as a source of historical (...) evidence is discussed in detail. Over sixty English trade cards from London and the provinces, covering the period 1670 to 1900, are illustrated . By careful analysis, it is shown that aesthetic style and type-face design, combined with written and pictorial content, may be used to deduce dates and business practices. Many small pieces of information gradually build a complex picture of an important and fascinating industry. (shrink)