And the Mechanic Arts: the Franklin Institute and Science in Industrial America, 1824-1976

A. Michal McMahon THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE

"BRIGHT SCIENCE" AND THE MECHANIC ARTS: THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE AND SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, 1824-1976

"Bright science too, beneath our sacred dome, Shall find a last retreat, a fav'rite home, And, freed from schoolmen's trammels, shall impart Her cheering influence to each useful art." Mathew Carey's American Museum, 17891

Philadelphia's technological and scientific community founded the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania during the 1820s in response to the emergence of industrialization and to the rise of experimental physical science. These momentous events re- leased energies carrying the organization through crucial phases in the development of the nation. Because the Institute's one-hundred- and-fifty-plus-years parallel the making of the industrial order in America, its work exposes the shifting contours of technological and scientific activity in the culture. In the nineteenth century, the Institute's scientific work reflected first the experimental tradition and then the rise of university-trained engineers and engineering knowledge refined by mathematics and industrial necessity. In our own century, the Franklin Institute has created both a basic science research institution in the tradition of England's Cavendish Labora- tory and an applied science research laboratory serving military, governmental, and industrial needs. The society began its work in 1824 with men like Samuel Vaughan Merrick, a manufacturer; William H. Keating, a professor of min- eralogical chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania; and Mathew

1. Quoted in Silvio A. Bidini, Thinkers and Tinkers (New York 1975), vii.

351 352 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

Carey, a national leader in the movement to promote American manufacturers. The Institute's founders established formal classes, popular lectures on science and technology, a long-running series of industrial exhibitions, a library, and a committee to oversee technological innovation in America. In 1826, the Journal of the Franklin Institute began publication. From this industrial community, leading members of the first generation of organized physical scientists found their initial support. University of Pennsylvania physicist Alexander Dallas Bache, a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin and at mid-century the nation's leading scientific administrator, contributed greatly to the Institute's initial research efforts. Sharing the manufacturers' desires to promote machine production and the useful arts, physical scientists like Bache lent their knowledge and skills to the needs of the young manufacturers' organization. The Institute's successful introduction of experimental science to Philadelphia technologists rested on a tradition already a half- century old. Since the eighteenth century, the industrial movement had included constant attempts to join science with the useful, or mechanic arts. This American movement actually grew alongside England's industrial revolution. Yet the colonial version was only a shadow of the English experience. Attempts to create the reality of English industrialism in the colonies invariably failed; accordingly, early American promoters of industrial growth tended more to praise industrial activity and progress than to institute it. Colonial litera- ture frequently mixed scientific opinions and information with discussions of the practical concerns of the people and land. Whether in Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, in Benjamin Franklin's Essay on the New Invented Pennsylvania Stove, or in the Trans- actions of the American Philosophical Society, colonial savants wrote passionately on agricultural experiments or the need for increased manufactures. Such writings reinforced the progressive colonial's desire to establish manufactories in the New World. In 1769, the American Philosophical Society founded a short-lived linen manufactory; by 1790, several similar, equally unsuccessful attempts had been made to implant England's industrial revolution in America. 2 Even so,

2. Samuel Rezneck, "The Rise and Early Development of Industrial Consciousness in the United States, 1760-1830, "Journal of Economic and Business History, 4 (1932):784 passim. FRANKLIN INSTITUTE 353 these first fumbling attempts were crucial events in the making of the industrial order. The formation in 1787 of the Pennsylvania Society for the En- couragement of Manufactures and Useful Arts was one such event. Established in Philadelphia, the Society brought together a number of energetic Americans. The eighty-three-year-old Benjamin Franklin accepted a patron's role, as he had done at the Constitutional Con- vention. Tench Cox served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Alexander Hamilton; from 1790 to 1815, he wrote a series of important reports on the growth of American manufactures. Among the most active members was publisher Mathew Carey, a Scottish immigrant and editor of the American Museum. Others in the group operated chemical manufactories, or already had attempted to found textile factories. The society's own effort to establish a manufactory ended in a fire in 1790.8 Though Carey was the youngest of the main group forming the Pennsylvania Society, his perceptions of the industrial revolution compared closely with the venerable Franklin's. Franklin perceived the centrality of invention and scientific work to the future of Amer- ican civilization, believing inventions would be "prolific."4 Similarly, the poem in Mathew Carey's American Museum yearned passionately for a future where "Bright Science. . . freed from schoolmen's trammels, shall impart her cheering influence to each useful art." Already that was happening in the application of astronomical knowledge to navigation. Industrial application came as physical scientists began to examine the properties of steam and the steam engine, and to look at technology generally.5 This awareness of the importance of scientific experimentation to industrialization grew with the young nation. The Franklins and Careys knew instinctively what modern historians forcefully assert: a primary feature of modern industrial revolutions is the accelerated application of science to production.6 3. Ibid. 795. 4. Franklin to Rev. John Lathrop, 31 May 1788, John Bigelow, ed., The Works of Benjamin Franklin, 9 (1904):429. 5. Brooke Hindle, The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1956), 166-169, 174 ff, 352. On the interest in industrial application of scientific research see "Address before the Albany Institute, October 30, 1824, "The Papers of Joseph Henry, I (Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington, D.C. 1972):78- 92, 241-242. 6. Stuart Bruchey, The Roots of American Economic Growth, 1607-1861 (New York 1968), pp. 14-15; David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1969), pp. 2-7. 354 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

The Pennsylvania Society lasted only a few years, yet Carey's pro- motional activities extended well into the nineteenth century, literally joining the chiefly ideological eighteenth-century movement with the more concrete period of actual industrialization. Besides writing and publishing a steady stream of pamphlets on American manufactures, Carey encouraged organizational efforts to win greater influence with the national government. In the 1820s alone, he campaigned for a strong, protective tariff, helped form an internal improvements society, and, for the Franklin Institute's first two years, chaired the Board of Managers. 7 The Institute's connections to the eighteenth-century industrial movement went beyond Carey, however. The society's intellectual and social roots led to the energetic mechanics of the revolutionary era and to the vibrant spirit of Franklin as experimental scientist, tradesman, and inventor. Later, during the 1 820s, the manufacturing movement came together with experimental science as mechanics' institutes organized throughout the country. In Philadelphia, Samuel Vaughan Merrick, the recent inheritor of an iron foundry, initiated both the Franklin Institute and its scientific activity. He needed the Institute in the beginning to learn the new industrial technology so he could succeed as an iron founder. Within five years, however, Merrick began to push the fledgling organization beyond the bounds of a mechanics' society. He first wrested con- trol of the journal from its editor, who aimed solely at the common mechanic. Though not against mechanics' education, Merrick wanted "original matter" in the Journal. He invited the newly-appointed professor of natural philosophy, Alexander Dallas Bache, to join the Institute and contribute reports on his researches. Merrick also translated articles from French scientific periodicals for the Journal. That same year, in 1829, Merrick initiated the Institute's first large-scale experimental project on water wheels and waterpower.' The Institute's waterpower investigations consisted of "a series of experiments" seeking the "value of water as a moving power, and the relative effect produced by it upon wheels of different construc- tions." The result of tests upon the various water wheels-overshot, pitchback, breast, and undershot-would be, one of the experimenters

7. Mathew Carey, "Diary, 15 December 1822-16 June 1826," Special Collections,' Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania. 8. Bache to Merrick, 11 March 1829, Franklin Institute Archives (hereafter Fl); Minutes, Board of Managers, Franklin Institute, 12 March 1829, Fl. FRANKLIN INSTITUTE 355 asserted, "of the utmost importance to every person interested in the internal improvements now making in every section of the United States."9 Indeed, as one modern scholar has concluded, "the important first stages of factory development during the Industrial Revolu- tion were achieved largely through waterpower." During this period, steam power did not prove itself superior to waterpower. In transportation, of course, steam power commanded attention from the beginning. Yet in the important matter of maintaining regularity of motion in the operation of machinery, the water wheel surpassed the reciprocating action of the steam engine. 0 Following extensive publicity by the Institute and the press, the waterpower tests attracted broad support: Philadelphia's City Councils permitted use of the Fairmount water works for the experiments. The Institute's Committee on Water Wheels and Waterpower mailed 450 circulars, bringing in over $1500 from individuals and organizations throughout the country. A London magazine ex- claimed that the Institute's investigation "constitutes another of its exclusive claims to the favor of the scientific public."'" The value of the tests lay in the experimental mode utilized by the waterpower committee and the careful manner in which the investigators recorded and analyzed their data. The steam boiler explosion investigations of the early 1830s responded to more dramatic issues. Spurred by a series of destructive explosions on steamboats traveling American waters, in the spring of 1830 a committee of inquiry recommended that the Institute investi- gate the accidents and seek a "proper remedy." Assuming the role of a national research institution, the society resolved that the accidents must be stopped before they impaired "the confidence of the public in an invention which has shed vast honor on the American name" and contributed to "the prosperity of this country." Samuel Merrick urged the Institute to assume responsibility since the nation had no national scientific bodies like the British and

9. Minutes, Board of Managers, 12 March 1829, Fl; Bruce Sinclair, Philadelphia's Philosopher Mechanics: A History of the Franklin Institute, 1824-1865, (Baltimore, 1974), p. 141. 10. Jennifer Tann, The Development of the Factory (London 1970), pp. 59-60, quoted in Louis C. Hunter, "Waterpower in the Century of the Steam Engine," in Brooke Hindle, ed., America's Wooden Age (Tarrytown, New York, 1975), p. 165. Also see Hunter, pp. 163, 204-205 n. 11. Minutes, Board of Managers, 12 March 1829, FI; Sinclair, pp. 147-148. Sinclair describes the tests in detail, pp. 144-146. 356 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

French. The United States Congress could not begin to explore the question with as "thorough discussion and investigation" as could the Institute's "practical and expert men." Merrick hoped that a careful examination and report might "determine what regulations, if any," were needed. He sought action from the federal government, with its delegated "power" to "protect the people.""2 The assumption of national status had merit. Within a decade, the Franklin Institute had become a model mechanics' institute. Its influence extended on the one hand to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, fifty miles west, and on the other, to Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and even to England. The steam boiler investigation considerably en- hanced the society's growing reputation as a scientific institution. Forty years later, the Secretary of War, referring to the Institute's landmark work, believed "no material advance seems to have been made in real knowledge on the subject since that time."" After Merrick and Keating had established the goals of the investigation, the Secretary of the Treasury, hearing of the Institute's activities, requested a description of the planned research so the government could consider financial aid. The structure of the experimental program was quite sophisticated. Merrick, in his lengthy report as chairman of the committee on inquiry, stressed the basic technical issues: the strength of materials, steam boiler design, and the training of the workers constructing the boilers. Although Bache, the young University of Pennsylvania physicist, did not initiate the experiments, he leapt at the chance to apply his expertise, and to advance his career. His detailed design quickly brought approval from the Treasury Department and the sum of $2000, the first research grant given by the federal government. 1 Bache's role in both the waterpower and steam boiler investigations suggested the primacy of industrial motives in the rise of modern, experimental physical science. His position and courses at the University of Pennsylvania indicated further the responsiveness of the new university science curricula to the needs of the commercial and manufacturing communities. Appointed professor of natural philosophy at Pennsylvania in 1828, Bache entered the University

12. Minutes, Board of Managers, 13 May and 10 June 1830, Fl. 13. Quoted in Thomas Coulson, The First Hundred Years of Research at the Franklin Institute, reprint from the Journal of the Franklin Institute, 256 July 1953):8 (hereafter JFJ). 14. Minutes, Board of Managers, 13 May and 10 June 1830, FI; Minutes, Com- mittee on the Explosion of Steam Boilers, 29 September and 29 October 1830, Fl. FRANKLIN INSTITUTE 357 as part of a re-organization of the faculty and curriculum. His predecessor's courses had related "primarily. . . to Newton's theory of matter" and had stressed "the phenomenon of light, heat, and electricity." Bache brought to the position a West Point education, which, one modern scholar has concluded, "was not only the best engineering school in America, but may very well have been the best place in the nation to acquire a scientific education." At Pennsyl- vania, Bache developed courses on, among other things, the "steam engine" and electromagnetism, a phenomenon discovered less than a decade before."5 Bache contributed to the Institute's pathbreaking experimental program as the trained expert. Merrick's sharp perceptions of the possibility of wedding scientific method to industrial enterprise created the program; Bache perfected the experimental design, wrote the lengthy report, and oversaw the collection of data. He wanted, however, to go further. With the support of Merrick and others in the society, Bache successfully proposed major changes in the Institute's program to examine all new inventions. In 1834, he replaced the Committee on Inventions with the Committee on Science and the Arts, hoping to institutionalize the recent experimental work. As a member of the first generation of organized physical scientists, Bache wanted to replace amateurism with pro- fessionalism. Whereas Board members ran the older committee, Bache opened Science and Arts to all. "The scientific labors of the institution," Bache explained, "required the cooperation of those whom education, business in life, and habits render peculiarly qualified for the task.""6 Nothing substantial came of the changes. The work of the Com- mittee on Inventions in examining and reporting on the inventions of applicants and granting awards to original ideas remained the same under Science and Arts. By the 1840s, Keating was dead, and Merrick had moved fully to the commercial side of his business. In 1843, Bache accepted a position as a Washington administrator, heading the U.S. Coast Survey, the largest pre-Civil War governmental science agency. "

15. Marvin A. Gross, "A History of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Physics," (unpublished dissertation, Villanova University, 1973), pp. 13 14; Nathan Reingold, et al., editors, The Papers of Joseph Henry, I (Washington. D.C., 1972):120. 16. Journal of the Franklin Institute 13 (March 1834):230. 17. On Merrick, see "Memoir of John Vaughan Merrick," Mary Brinton Williams, 358 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

The Franklin Institute, in fact, undertook only minor investigations after those of the 1830s. The Institute, however, still promoted an active role for science in an industrial society: In 1863, when the Board experienced an eighty-five per cent change in membership, outgoing president John C. Cresson, city gas works superintendent, praised the Institute as a "pioneer in the noble work of raising the labor of the mechanic and artizan to its true position as both hand- maid and exemplar of Science." The new corresponding secretary believed "the Institute represented not only the relations between the mechanic and the scientific man in Philadelphia, but was beyond that, the representative institution of the connexion of mechanics with Science for the country."" On the surface, both speakers looked to the past. "Mechanics," "artisans," these words found no place in the vocabularies of the technologists and engineers building the national industrial society of the post-war period. Before the end of the century, the professional engineer would replace the mechanic, and the corporate laboratory would replace the shop. In the process, the very nature of technological problems changed. Yet the idea of science and technology working together to achieve similar goals remained current, and indeed grew in force. The Franklin Institute responded early to a vast industrial society's need for standardization. A nearly complete turnover of the organization's leadership in 1863 brought William Sellers, a manufacturer of machine tools, into the presidency. Born with the Institute in 1824, Seller's social and technological interests looked to an America where transportation, marketing, and communication were quickly nationalizing. Sellers' perception of the "extent of manufactures," plus his personal development of a sophisticated screw thread design and a screw-cutting machine, led to the Institute's first campaign for uniform standards in industry. The Institute conducted no experiments to determine screw thread design; rather, the society sought national acceptance of Seller's specifications. 9 A desire for "reliable data" on the efficiency of machines motivated the electrical tests conducted during the last quarter of the century. Wanting to purchase a dynamo, in 1877 the Institute tested the

Their Lives and Mine (private printing, 1972); for Bache, see Merle M. Odgers, Alexander Dallas Bache (Philadelphia 1947), p. 141. 18. Minutes, General Monthly Meeting, 21 January 1864, Fl. 19. William Sellers, "A System of Screw Threads and Nuts," Manuscript, Fl; Sinclair, pp. 311-313. FRANKLIN INSTITUTE 359 efficiency of dynamos alone; in 1884, during the Institute-sponsored International Electrical Exhibition, the Board of Managers determined to test the entire range of electrical technology. The Institute initiated the dynamo efficiency tests of the 1870s by asking the leading makers to submit examples for comparative tests. Only a few companies attempted to mariet dynamos at that time. Nevertheless, Charles F. Brush of Cleveland and Wallace-Farmer of Massachusetts each sent large and small models. The Board also acquired a French Gramme, previously shown at the Centennial celebration in Philadelphia.' Elihu Thomson, a young professor at Philadelphia's Central High, wanted to submit a dynamo design of his own; instead he chose to serve on the Institute's special Committee on Dynamo-Electric Machines. Thomson was a seminal contributor to the making of the electrical age and to the Institute's involvement with that event. In 1877, he stood on the edge of a successful inventive and entrepreneurial career; with Edwin Houston, a professor of natural philosophy at Central High, Thomson founded an electrical company that later merged with Thomas A. Edison's firm to form General Electric. He worked actively at the Institute before moving to New England at the end of the decade. During the fall of the Centennial, he completed a successful series of lectures on electricity in the Institute's hall;2 1 later, he co-authored the main parts of the report on dynamo- electric machines. In deciding to test dynamo efficiency, the Institute acted out of the belief that the increasing use of electricity "for lighting, the deposition of metals, etc., was rapidly gaining in importance." Tests hopefully would provide "reliable data" on "the efficiency of the various types of machines designed for producing electrical current from motive power." At the conclusion of the tests, the Institute chose the small Brush machine to serve the organization's needs, citing its "adaptability" in producing currents of widely varying intensities, while producing a good light. The Committee com- mended the "mechanical details of its construction" allowing "great ease of repair."'2

20. Report of the Committee of the Franklin Institute on Dynamio-Electric Machines (reprinted from JFI, May and June 1878; Philadelphia 1878), pp. 1 2. 21. David 0. Woodbury, Elihu Thomson (Boston 1960), pp. 86-87. 22. Report of the Committee . . . on Dynamo-Electric Machines, pp. 16, 32. 360 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

The electrical tests undertaken in 1884 reflected the shift from telegraphy to electric lighting and power as the most dynamic sector of the electrical industry. Because the Franklin Institute's leadership perceived that electrical applications had "passed from the experimental period to that of permanence and practical necessity," they staged the society's first specialized exhibition-after holding almost thirty general exhibitions during its eighty years. Indeed, the Institute's conception of the exhibition recapitulated the industry's growth. Thinking at first of holding "an exhibition of electric lighting and of the machinery pertaining thereto," the event finally included lighting and power, steam and gasoline engines, electrical communication technologies, and electrical applications to medicine, warfare, art, and education; in short, the Committee examined almost thirty areas in the electrical field.' As with the steam boiler investigation, the Board appointed an excellent experimental staff. William A. Anthony served as one of the examiners: a physics professor at Cornell, Anthony inaugurated the first electrical engineering course in the country. Frank L. Pope, a pioneer telegrapher, wrote the report on telegraphic systems. Carl Hering, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, had taken a degree in electrical engineering in Europe. Besides serving as assistant electrician at the Exhibition, he aided the work of the Committee on Measurements and Tests.?A The Institute's electrical tests contributed significantly to the making of the electrical era. The 1877 tests literally established Brush's generators as the best made in America; besides determining such matters as the relative efficiency and durability of incandescent lights produced by Westinghouse and Edison's company, the 1884 tests established the importance of standards themselves. Monroe B. Snyder, chairman of the examiners of electrical technology at the 1884 Exhibition, wrote Elihu Thomson in 1928 that "the two activities at the Franklin Institute most significant to its history were determined by you and by me." Moreover, Snyder believed his 1884 address on "The Establishment of a National Bureau of Physical Standards" represented "the origin of the movement which led in 1900 to the concrete actualization of an American Bureau

23. General Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Exhibitions (1884-International Electrical Exhibition; Philadelphia 1885, pp. 4-5, 53-54. 24. See the examiners' reports published as supplements to JFI issues throughout 1885; for Hering, see The Electrical World, vol. 17. FRANKLIN INSTITUTE 361 of . .. Measurements . . ."' Although ignorant of the earlier experimental work, Snyder nevertheless accurately evaluated the In- stitute's investigative activities during its second half-century. More importantly, however, Snyder recognized that the significance of the electrical tests went beyond the confines of Institute history to contribute to the national movement seeking uniform standards in all technological matters. The electrical efficiency tests partook of science, but were not science: like Sellers' screw thread campaign, the tests created industrial standards, not new knowledge. Such activities partake, rather, of engineering knowledge. The relationship of science to engineering is necessary. British historian A. R. Hall believes science could have supported technological innovations only during "the industrial and agrarian revolutions of the nineteenth century." Hall explains that

The sudden rise of engineering needs above the level of the carpenter and the blacksmith [and] the sudden realization that engineering skill in all its branches was fundamental to improvements in manufacture, transportation, agriculture, and the means of making war, created a situation in which scientific knowledge and method not only could be, but must be, applied, while large-scale manufacture provided the means and incentive for the application of science."

Speaking specifically of the late nineteenth century, an American scholar, Carroll Pursell, has suggested that while scientists could not directly answer the problems of invention, increasingly in the last decades of the century they consulted with industrial firms. The fruitfulness of scientific advice to industry led in turn to the more extensive use of engineers.2 ' From the beginning, the Institute had used traditional forums to promote a close relationship between science and technology. The Lectures always had broad appeal among Philadelphians, drawing gentlemen and their ladies as well as apprentices and mechanics.

25. Harold C. Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers, 1875-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), pp. 15-16, 110-111; Selections Jrom the Scientific Correspondence of Elihu Thonison, edited by Harold J. Abrahams and Marion B. Savin (Cambridge, Mass., 1971). pp. 493 494. 26. Hall, Ballistics in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge 1952), p. 1; Kenneth O'Brien, "Symposium on Nineteenth-Century American Science: Northwestern Unixversitv, March 30-April 2, 1970," Technology & Culture, 12 (January 1971):56-63. 362 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

The annual series was famous in Philadelphia society, early at- tracting large popular audiences. The basic science orientation appeared at the first lecture series in 1824 with papers on "Time" and "Space." In 1876, the Institute replaced the lectures on Me- chanics with a series on Physics. A year later, the Board of Managers split the lectures into two levels: advanced lectures gave "popular instruction in the more advanced grades of science," dealing with "the facts treated of in scientific journals," a second level was "ele- mentary and strictly educational in character."2 7 The Institute early supported the proliferation of trained engineers. With the organization of Sections in 1869, the Institute modernized its scientific offerings. Begun by William Sellers in 1869, sections served in effect as proto-engineering societies. They derived in part from the calcified state of the Committee on Science and the Arts after the war. Initially appointed to review all new inventions in the country, the Committee continued its original mission as inventive activity intensified around it, producing many specialized categories of knowledge. The sections reflected the new reality: the Mechanical Section of 1869 preceded the American Society of Mechanical Engineers by a decade; the Electrical Section of 1882 antedated the American Institute of Electrical Engineers by two years. Members organized other sections around microscopy, chemistry, and meteorology. Because these groups were essentially engineering bodies, the monthly meetings included a striking number of papers on basic science topics. 5 Bringing basic science to technology had been a motive of the sections since inception. The 1869 by-law changes defined them as being "for the promotion and encouragement of manufactures and the mechanic arts, as well as of the sciences connected with them." Not until 1899 did the Institute believe it necessary to establish a Section "devoted to pure science;" the President's annual report explained then that "the new Physical and Astronomical Section represented the Institute's recognition . .. that all advances . . . in the arts have their origin in the cultivation of science for its own sake by original investigation."'

27. Annual Report, 1877, Board of Managers, JFI, 105 January 1878). 28. Minutes, Board of Managers, 16 March, 18 May, 16 November, and 21 December 1870, FL. 29. Charterand By-Laws of the Franklin Institute (Philadelphia 1869), 1; Annual Report for 1899 and Annual Report, Physical and Astronomical Section, 1899, Fl. FRANKLIN INSTITUTE 363

A remarkably creative addition to the Institute's scientific activities, the sections mixed basic science with technology and industrial considerations in exactly the mode that has dominated scientific and technological enterprises to the present. This explicit recognition and promotion of the necessity for uniting science and technology cast the Institute close to the role of technological guru. By the 1880s, however, the role began to shrink, bringing with it a loss of direction that dramatically appeared following the Inter- national Electrical Exhibition of 1884. Soon after that triumphant event, the society chose as president Colonel Charles Banes, organizer of the exhibition. Banes wanted to diminish the role of the Committee on Science and the Arts, begin a trade school, and construct a new building. His plans, however, fell through at the end of the year- along with his presidency. Banes and his followers wanted to excise the Science and Arts Committee's function of examining all new technology. Although he managed to do away with the voluntary character of the committee, perhaps because of the strange plan for a School of Handicraft to teach craft skills without relying on "power machine tools," Banes mainly achieved one of the shortest presidencies in Institute history." The decline of important scientific activities among Philadelphia's voluntary societies was general at the end of the century. Indeed, in the 1890s, a sub-committee of Science and Arts experts perceived the dilemma: During the last year, "several of the cases ... have involved an unusual amount of research and study in the higher and more intricate laws and phenomena of the rapidly developing physical science.... The work of the committee becomes annually more and more difficult in consequence of the great advance which is daily being made in all of the practical arts and sciences. " In 1906, the President of the American Philosophical Society, speaking at the conclusion of a year's celebration of the 200th anniver- sary of Benjamin Franklin's birthday, bluntly characterized the status of scientific research in Philadelphia. The city had not seen significant research done by the A.P.S. in decades; he concluded that "this old society, with the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Franklin

30. Minutes, Membership, 17 February, 17 March, 21 April, 19 May, and 16 June 1886, FI. 364 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

Institute and our beloved university, made this city the center of scientific research in the Western World. Today it is the university, and several smaller groups of workers in which the spirit of research continues." In short, "the City as a scientific center, such as it was from 1740 to 1890, has lost position...."' The Institute found it indeed difficult to maintain traditional investigative functions. The appearance of antitrust laws late in the century revealed the tremendous growth of industrial firms; rapid growth led corporations to consolidate the nation's inventive skills as well as its productive capacities. Industrial laboratories joined university and government to sustain scientific research. Until World War II, in fact, when affluence and the cold war made it possible for small scientific institutions to survive on governmental contracts, only a stroke of philanthropy-a surviving force in the funding of scientific research-could create a substantive scientific research program. For the Institute, that happenstance came with the death of Philadelphian Barnabas H. Bartol during the First World War. In the 1850s, Bartol's father began his career and the family fortune in Institute founder Samuel Vaughan Merrick's iron works; in 1918, the son left over a million dollars to the Institute for a research foundation.3 2 Originally requiring that the foundation focus on electrical science, Bartol later added a codicil recognizing that by the 1910s electrical science had lost its urgency. He therefore prescribed electrical science plus work similar to that being done at the Mellon Institute. The Mellon Institute, however, had shifted research directions as it had geographical locations in moving from Kansas to Pittsburgh. The Mellon originally sought, the Institute's Bartol Committee reported, "to make science subserve the practical needs of industry;" that direction later veered "toward greater activity along purely scientific lines." Thus the Franklin Institute decided to use the Bartol bequest "for the conduct and direction of researches relating to fundamental problems in physical science, particularly those in the fields of electricity, and for the investigation of specific problems of a scientific nature which arise in the industries."

31. Annual Report, Committee on Science and the Arts, 4 January 1893, FI; "Abstract from the Annual Address by the President of the American Philosophical Society-delivered Friday, December 21, 1906" (Philadelphia, n.d.), Fl. 32. Minutes, Board of Managers, 11 January 1922, FH. 33. Ibid. FRANKLIN INSTITUTE 365

From the beginning, the Institute's leadership markedly pre- ferred the basic research tradition. They dreamed of a laboratory in the British tradition, especially after the Cavendish, where thirty years before Ernest Rutherford described the dynamic nature of the atom. The Committee appointed to establish the Bartol Research Foundation initially concluded that the laboratory director must be a British nuclear physicist. Considering "the ability and prestige of the leading members of the staff" more important than facilities, the Committee at the outset began to contact the most successful scientists of that tradition. The word spread quickly. In 1923, the editor of the British journal, Nature, wrote the Institute for a short account of the laboratory. He wondered if "the laboratories will be to The Franklin Institute what the Davy-Faraday Laboratory is to the Royal Institution."" As a first step in the search for a director, the Institute sent repre- sentatives to Europe to hire a scientist working in the "fundamental problems of physical science." Returning empty handed, they felt that "no further attempt should be made at present to secure a man of this type." Further, the Institute should seek "an American" to "carry on the work along the second line, i.e.: 'Investigation of Specific Problems of a Scientific Nature in the Industries'."3 5 Yet the Institute strongly desired a basic science laboratory-and a British director. In 1922, the Bartol Committee sponsored five lectures by Francis W. Ashton, a Cavendish researcher under Ruther- ford and a Nobel prize winner in chemistry for 1922. Neils Bohr was offered and rejected a research professorship at the foundation. The search for a director continued to 1927, when William F. G. Swann, a British nuclear physicist residing in the United States, accepted the position. Swann almost fit the Institute's image of a Bartol director: Born in England, he studied and taught at the Royal College of London, moving then to the University of Sheffield. Beginning an American career in 1915, Swann moved from Minne- sota to Chicago and finally to Yale as director of the Sloane Labora- tory. Swann's experience in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation perfectly matched Institute desires.3"

34. Ibid., 11 January 1922 and 12 December 1923. 35. Ibid., 18 April 1923. 36. Ibid., 12 April 1922; for Aston, see Who's Who in Science (Chicago 1968); MiNlLtCs, Board of Managers, 9 January 1924, Fl; for Swann, see "Who's Who in the Franklin Institute" (Philadelphia, n.d.), 1. 366 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

Almost fifteen years later, Bartol drew on its strength in these areas as a response to the Second World War. The Foundation won contracts covering radar development, the theory and application of electricity and magnetism, computing apparatus for airplane pilots, and ballistics. An Institute staff member later remembered how "the Bartol staff rejoiced to learn that some of the improved radar equipment used in the North African campaign was built in their shop."3 7 The war, however, brought a more radical extension to the In- stitute's research activities than expansion of Bartol's projects: from the Science Museum, barely eight years old, came a cadre of engineers and technicians and a new research tradition at the Institute. In the early years of the war, the national government searched eagerly for organizations with research skills. Institute-Museum contracts, at first small, entailed work in mechanical, optical, and electrical research for ordnance. The museum's excellent machine shop helped win these initial contracts. During the four years of the war, the Franklin Institute Research Laboratories (FIRL), as the operation was later called, grew from 9,000 to 43,000 square feet of space and to several million dollars worth of research contracts." The war radically changed the research complexion of the twen- tieth-century Institute. Even Bartol found itself more reliant on contractual research; in 1946, Swann agreed that "30 or perhaps 40 percent of the personnel and facilities of the Bartol Foundation may be devoted to such research activities." Although Bartol returned to "basic physics" after the war, FIRL continued to seek contracts for military research and began to plan an industrial research program.3 9 The Institute, in fact, worried about over-reliance on "Government Contracts," asserting the need to "step up the efforts for industrial research." The Committee on Research believed in 1946 the Institute should "go up to a point with Government research but then try to secure industrial problems." 4 0

37. Thomas Coulson, The Franklin Institute from 1824 to 1949 (reprinted from JFI, January 1950), p 44. 38. Ibid., p. 41. 39. Minutes, Board of Managers, 21 November 1945, Fl; Wynn Laurence LePage, "To Add to the Sum of Human Knowledge: The Story of Research at the Franklin Institute, 1824-1968" (The Newcomen Society: New York 1968), p. 15. 40. Minutes, Board of Managers, 19 December 1945 and 19 June 1946, Fl. FRANKLIN INSTITUTE 367

Even so, military research dominated FIRL's work. After the war, bio-engineers at FIRL developed a small "sensor" device for the Veteran's Administration to test and improve artificial limbs. Twenty years later, the Laboratories still worked chiefly on military contracts. 41 Declining governmental contracts in the physical sciences and engineering during the 1960s lessened FIRL's involvement with governmental research. FIRL operated clearly in the pattern of military-industrial research; indeed, both areas had supported research in the physical sciences and technology since the American industrial revolution. Military-industrial research grew greatly in this century, as, for example, in the joint work of Bell Research Labora- tories and the Navy in developing the transistor and LASER. FIRL ended the 1960s searching for industrial contracts. In 1968, Institute President Wynn Laurence LePage described FIRL as a "nucleation center" for industrial research. He believed the Research Laboratories could provide new industries with the understanding and experience of researchers "involved not only in physical and life sciences, but also in social engineering and economics." Thus, "over the next decade,. . . the Institute will be the nucleation center of many new industrial corporations." 42 Although the assertion represented policy more than achievement, LePage's basic formula- tion of FIRL's research goals remained dominant. The Institute's two post-1967 presidents, the first to serve as full- time staff members, indicated the continued strength of the research tradition at the Institute. Both Athelstan Spilhaus and Bowen C. Dees were trained as physicists in graduate research institutions before entering scientific administration. Although the Franklin Institute always included more than research functions, the research tradition has remained a bright attraction. The Library, existing since 1824 as a separate entity, became, in the 1970s, part of FIRL's science information branch. The Science Museum, whose pre-history dates to the first manufacturers' exhibition in 1824 and the early, successful attempts to collect the models and artifacts of American industrial civilization, assumed its prominence within the Institute only in the 1930s. One of the oldest and largest science museums in the country, the Science Museum commanded a large part of the Institute's energies in the past quarter-century. The neglect of

41. LePage, p. 17; Recent Research at the Franklin Institute (Philadelphia 1965) 42. LePage, p. 24. 368 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

Museum activities during FIRL's birth in the war years clearly revealed the fundamental position of research in the Institute's self-image. Research had always come first. Before the Institute's tenth birthday, the founders had won national acclaim for its experimental investigations of waterpower and steam boiler design. After the middle of the nineteenth century, a talented and active group of manufacturers and scientist-technologists had used the Institute's national stature to campaign for efficiency and uniform standards in the machine-tools and electrical industries. Simultaneously, the Institute sought closer relations between science and technology during the period of the birth of professional engineering. Specializa- tion and the increasing number of industrial and university research programs at the end of the century diminished the Institute's role in a society that spread across the continent, dominated by large corporate and governmental institutions. Ironically, however, the Franklin Institute survived through the last half-century chiefly through the new life given the Institute's research tradition by big government and big business.