Like the constructivist approach to the history of science, the new history of reading has shifted attention from disembodied ideas to the underlying material culture and the localized practices by which it is apprehended. By focusing on the complex embodied processes by which readers make sense of printed objects, historians of reading have provided new insights into the manner in which meaning is both made and contested. In this brief account I argue that these insights are particularly relevant to historians (...) of science, first, because practices of reading, like those of experiment and fieldwork, are constitutive of scientific knowledge, and, second, because attention to the history of reading provides important evidence of the multifaceted and uneven contest for meaning that occurs when science is mobilized in popular culture. The essay concludes by considering some of the surprisingly abundant sources of available evidence from which a history of scientific reading might be constructed for the modern era. (shrink)

While important research on the history of scientific commemorations has been published in recent years, relatively little attention has been paid to the commemoration of invention and inventors. A comparison of the centenaries of James Watt's death in 1919 and of Michael Faraday's discovery of electromagnetic induction in 1931 reveals how the image of the inventor was being refashioned in the early twentieth century. Although shortly after his death Watt had been acclaimed by the Royal Society as a great ‘natural (...) philosopher’, a century later his reputation had been appropriated by the engineering professions and trades. As the title of Dickinson's 1935 biography described him, he was seen primarily as a ‘craftsman and engineer’, not a scientist. With poor publicity, which failed in particular to make any connection between steam power and electricity, the 1919 centenary excited little interest outside engineering circles. Meanwhile, professional scientists, who were seeking financial recognition for the importance of their research in ‘pure’ science, had found a new icon in Michael Faraday. They seized the occasion of the 1931 centenary to reinforce the link between Faraday's scientific research and the wonders of modern electrical technology and thereby to elevate the role of ‘blue-sky’ research over its ‘mere’ application. (shrink)

This survey outlines a history of museums written through biographies of objects in their collections. First, the mechanics of the movement of things and the accompanying shifts in status are considered, from manufacture or growth through collecting and exchange to the museum. Objects gathered meanings through associations with people they encountered on their way to the collection, thus linking the history of museums to broader scientific and civic cultures. Next, the essay addresses the use of items once they joined a (...) collection, whether classificatory, analytical, or in display. By thus embedding the study of scientific practice in material culture, this approach contributes to constructivist histories of science. The final section addresses the role of objects in the experience of the visitors, emphasizing how fruitful the history of museum objects can be in the study of the public engagement with science. (shrink)

Historians of science have identified toys as part of their subject’s material culture, but there has been little exploration of the production and use of educational or playful objects. Moreover, academic writing on science for children has focused on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This essay argues that our understanding of historical science education can be enhanced by exploring twentieth‐century instruments. It uses the example of Construments sets, with which children could build a wide variety of optical instruments from a (...) series of standardized parts. Invented by C. W. Hansel, a school science master, Construments were founded in and responded to contemporary educational practices and debates over “general science,” as well as addressing characteristic interwar concerns about adaptability and economy and older ideals of rational entertainment. By exploring the company’s instruments, promotional literature, and magazine, and by drawing on the memories of contemporary users, I reconstruct the contexts in which Construments were used, emphasizing the creation of heterogeneous communities vital for the transmission of skills and knowledge. (shrink)

The present interest of Englishmen in education is partly due to the fact that they are impressed by German thoroughness. Now let there be no mistake. The war has shown the effectiveness of German education in certain departments of life, but it has shown not only its ineffectiveness, but its grotesque absurdity in regard to other departments of life, and those the departments which are, even in a political sense, the most important. In the organization of material resources Germany has (...) won well-merited admiration, but in regard to moral conduct, and in regard to all that art of dealing with other men and other nations which is closely allied to moral conduct, she has won for herself the horror of the civilized world. If you take the whole result, and ask whether we prefer German or English education, I at any rate should not hesitate in my reply.Thus William Temple, future archbishop, addressing the Educational Section at the 1916 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Newcastle. Temple's statement introduced his contribution to the ‘neglect-of-science’ debate, a public dispute over the place of science in English secondary education. Originally, the debate had been started by prominent scientists convinced that England's military and industrial fortunes were suffering as a result of the country's continuing scientific illiteracy. The contrasts Temple drew between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between England and Germany, between ‘conduct’ and ‘efficiency’, cropped up throughout the debate. (shrink)

Whereas the academic discipline of the history of science has made enormous strides in half a century, ironically, recognition from without has often been disappointing. Private success has not been matched by public status. The work of the Science Museum in London as one of the few widely accessible windows into the discipline is therefore worth remarking upon here, and more detailed investigations are even now under way. The foundation of the British Society for the History of Science at the (...) Museum, in 1947, symbolized a role that the Museum had already played for decades and plays to this day: the pre-eminent public space of the history of science. This distinctive role has of course been shared by other object-based museums attracting large numbers of visitors in places such as Manchester, Greenwich and Edinburgh as well as in Munich and Washington. (shrink)