The Society of Arts and the Encouragement of Public Useful Knowledge, 1754-1848
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Sentimental Industry: the Society of Arts and the Encouragement of Public Useful Knowledge, 1754-1848 Matthew Paskins 1 I, Matthew Paskins, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract This thesis offers a reinterpretation of the activities of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, an economic society founded in London in 1754. Previous histories of the Society have attempted to accommodate it within normative accounts of industrial development; or have celebrated its philanthropic intentions; or have focused on one aspect of its multifarious activities. I argue that the Society should be interpreted as a place where a wide-ranging public ethos and the promotion of public knowledge were meant to coexist. This meant a collision between an ethos of gentlemanly many-mindedness and the particular interests of individual trades, fraught negotiations about the question of the public, and involvement in practices of natural knowledge which were intended to render tacit knowledge explicit. How far any of this activity actually encouraged manufactures or commerce is debatable: nevertheless, the Society offers a vantage point from which we can see the difficulty of coordinating and aggregating local exemplary achievements and inventions. Individual chapters consider the Society's efforts in the fields of mechanics, import substitution, agriculture, and tree planting. 3 For my parents, and my brother, and to the memory of Peter Paskins. 4 Acknowledgements I have incurred many debts in researching and writing this work. I can notice only some of them here. I am grateful to Eve Watson from the RSA and to the librarians of the University of Bath for permission to quote material drawn from those sources. At and around UCL, they are primarily to my supervisors: Jon Agar and Julian Hoppitt, for their willingness to countenance a strange and expansive project. More generally, to my teachers and colleagues at UCL’s department of Science and Technology Studies: especially Joe Cain, Chiara Ambrosio, Simon Werrett, Carole Reeves, Brian Balmer; and Michaela Massimi and Hasok Chang, who are no longer at UCL. I was very privileged that while I was writing this thesis, the number of PhD students increased significantly. I have enjoyed working with them, and want to thank by name those with whom I have shared room G3 of 22 Gordon Square over the last three years: Tona Annzures, Yin Chung Au, Huiping Chu, Toby Friend, Hsiang-Fu Huang, Liz Jones, Hugh Mackenzie, Oli Marsh, Tom O’Donnell, Steph Ratcliffe, Julia Sanchez-Dorado, Yafeng Shan, Paul Smith, Erman Sozudogu, Melanie Smallman, Samantha Vaderslott and Raquel Velho; as well as to Shana Vijayan and Jonathan Everett, who have graduated and proved it can be done. I would like to acknowledge my special gratitude to Sara Peres. To the members of the Ad Hoc history of chemistry group, to whom I presented some of the ideas which have now gone into chapter six. To the 100 Hours project, and especially to Leonie Hannan. To Sandip Hazareesingh and other colleagues in the Commodity Histories network. To Giles Edwards from BBC Radio 4 for his generous support of my broadcasting parts of chapter seven. To my students, especially those on the Action for Global Citizenship course. Among my friends, for their kindness and hospitality during a difficult period, Miriam Austin, Al Page, Mary Robinson and Adam Caulton. To Seiriol Davies. For being wonderful housemates, Sol Gamsu, Craig Griffiths, Mandy Momoko Hughes, and Jon Moses. For much nurturing and gardens, Martine Borge and Catherine Forrester. To Liz Haines, for stimulating discussions and collaborative work. To Michael Weatherburn for offering the most tenacious ideal of what a historian should be. To Keith Walton, Imran Tyabji, and others involved in FSSE, from whom I learned something of how to identify with the mission of a voluntary association. This thesis is dedicated to my family. I owe more than I can say in practical and intellectual terms to their influence, example, and love. I did much of the final writing of this thesis in coffee shops and hotels dotted around Leeds City Centre, around New Year 2014. I was there to see Anna Rogers and it has been an amazing blessing to be able to do so. Love and thanks to her. 5 The last time the Contrast took the liberty of troubling the public, it was to inform them that he was DEAD, DEAD, DEAD! He now hopes they will not be offended to be informed, in one word, that he is ALIVE. He is conscious, that being dead, and then alive, is so strange and rare a circumstance, that it is enough to puzzle the antiquarians, even those antiquarians who swallowed five Neapolitan brick-bats for HERCULANEAN CURIOSITIES. But to that learned Society, who meet in Crane-court, he makes no doubt but it will be a fund of entertainment; and, like many other ridiculous foolish affairs, fill the next volume of transactions. The most profound botanist, Dr. Thing-a-me, the apothecary, will take the Contrast for a vegetable, and therefore see nothing wonderful, that he should die in December, and in May, by the refreshing showers, be brought to life; and will, with the velocity of lightning, repeat five hundred hard names of plants, all which do the same. […] The proceedings of the F.R.S.’s will fall far short of the Society of Arts, Manufactures, and FISH; who, on hearing that the dead Contrast is now alive, will, after very many debates (for those that pay two guineas have a right to speak) determine, that on account of the war, men having become scarce; and it appearing, that John Contrast, who died in December last, is now alive; they will therefore give to the person, who brings to life the greatest quantity (not less than an hundred) of stout, able bodied, good- looking dead-men; then guineas. To the second-best quantity of dead men, all alive; five guineas. To the third; two guineas. -----Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Wednesday June 6, 1764 Stepping into the model room of the Society at the Adelphi, one might be tempted to ask whether there are any limits to its field of exertion; whether in short, it is not a society for the encouragement of everything. What a glorious confusion there is amidst all the orderly array of glass-cases that extend horizontally in rows across the room, or that perpendicularly line the walls. Hands for the one-handed, to give them again two, and other instruments for those who have lost both – cloths of all sorts of materials from all sorts of countries – medals of Charles the First’s reign and the last new stove of Victoria’s – fire-escape ladders to run down from windows, and scaffolds, rising telescope-fashion out of a box, to mount up to roofs (a most ingenious machine, and worthy the admiration which we understand his Royal Highness the President recently expressed in regard to it) – bee-hives and instruments to slice turnips – ploughs, and instruments to restrain vicious bulls – pans to preserve butter in hot localities, and safety-lamps to preserve men in dangerous ones – models of massive cranes, and of little tips for umbrellas – life-buoys, and maroon-locks to give notice of thieves in gardens – diving-bells and expanding-keys – safe coaches and traps – clocks, and improved tail-pieces for violoncellos – instruments to draw spirits, and instruments to draw teeth – samples of tea, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmegs, in different stages of growth – models of Tuscan pavements – beds for invalids – methods to teach the blind how to write – but the list is interminable, and were we to continue it for half-a-dozen pages further, we should be in no appreciable degree nearer the end. -------Charles Knight, London, (Henry G. Bohn, London, 1851), p. 356. 6 Abbreviations Where footnotes specify a reference to “Transactions” with a volume number, and no further details, the source is the Transactions of the Society, Instituted at London, for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. This was published between 1783 and 1844. There are 55 volumes in total. I give full references to individual submissions to the Transactions; many of these were titled, somewhat idiosyncratically, “Paper in Mechanicks”, “Paper in Manufactures”, and so on. The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce is known by a number of different names. I have generally referred to it as the Society of Arts, as this was the most common. There were several Societies of Arts during the eighteenth century. Where I have not referred to a specific Society, I mean the one based in London. 7 Table of Contents Chapter One: An Expansive Public, and Disembedding Practices: 10 Chapter Two: the Society of Arts and Fish: 46 Chapter Three: Rationales of Reward: 73 Chapter Four: Anecdotes and Experiments: 103 Chapter Five: Simple Machines: 121 Chapter Six: Material Substitutions: 153 Chapter Seven: The English Pan: 192 Chapter Eight: A Planting Public: 217 Chapter Nine: On Top of the Material: 245 Bibliography: 267 8 9 Chapter One: An Expansive Public, and Disembedding Practices 1. Existing Histories, Shifting Contexts 2. An Expansive Public 3. Public Science 4. Disembedding Practices 5. Thesis Overview 1. Existing Histories, Shifting Contexts The first impression, on a survey of the Society’s work, is one of some bewilderment at the multiplicity and diversity of the subjects with which it has dealt in rapid succession or even simultaneously. Nothing seems to have been regarded as too homely for its attention.