Shaping Scientific Instrument Collections: a Historiography

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Alberti, S J M M (2018) Shaping scientific instrument collections: A historiography. Journal of the History of Collections (fhy046). ISSN 1477-8564

https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhy 046

Deposited on: 09 December 2019

NMS Repository – Research publications by staff of the National Museums Scotland

http://repository.nms.ac.uk/ Journal of the History of Collections vol. 31 no. 3 (2019) pp. 445–452 Shaping scientific instrument collections

A historiography Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/31/3/445/5214359 by National Museums Scotland user on 09 December 2019

Samuel J.M.M. Alberti

Many histories of scientific instruments concentrate on their manufacture and original function, but such artefacts as survive often do so in collections – many will have spent far longer in a museum than anywhere else. Alongside the rich literature on the history of scientific instruments, accordingly, there is a body of work on the histories of scientific instrument collections. This survey outlines genres and themes in the historiography of scientific instruments, focusing in particular on display and other collection-based functions. Fluid and contingent, collections are instrumental in the history, heritage, and historiography of science.

There is an extensive literature on the history of what culture of science, from buildings to herbarium sheets. we now term scientific instruments. As a result, we Neither will the literatures on specific categories of know a great deal about how devices such as telescopes, instruments be addressed in detail, rather I follow the clocks and astrolabes were made and used, especially flow of those who reflect on scientific instruments more those dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth broadly.2 Finally, it is important to acknowledge my centuries. Many of these artefacts survive to be stud- own (unforgivable) Anglophone bias.3 ied and written about because they have been gathered These parameters guide the stream of focus towards into collections, often in museums. This special issue particular genres that characterize instrument studies. of Journal of the History of Collections reflects upon There are of course the usual monographs, specialist the meanings and values of such collections; by way of journals and stand-alone articles of any historical en- introduction, here I lay out the genres and themes in terprise.4 There are also chunky single-volume sur- the historiography of scientific instruments. veys that formed the backbone of this literature for As a suggested framework for historians of science many years and remain on the shelves and in the and of collections I cover some of the fruitful topics footnotes of instrument scholars.5 Historiographical in the history of scientific instruments as I see them – insights may also be gained from catalogues of collec- defining, making, and using – before delving more tions and specific exhibitions, as I will discuss below. closely into the scholarship that explicitly addresses They sit alongside more exhaustive compendia that their museological value. I address how historians cut across institutions: encyclopaedias and national- have written about collecting scientific instruments scale inventories provide insights into the parameters and their functions within collections, especially (but and methods of instrument scholarship up to the not exclusively) display. My intention is to set the fol- point of their publication.6 Furthermore, instrument lowing papers into their historiographical setting and scholars are a gregarious bunch, fond of edited collec- their museological context. tions,7 and special issues of journals.8 By concentrating on the confluence of museum his- My aim here is not to summarize these genres in tory and instrument studies there are of course rele- turn nor to address them as chronological waves – they vant strands of scholarship that will not be addressed are in any case for the most part contemporaneous – in detail here. There are related literatures that do not but rather to seek out the currents that flow across and fall within the present scope: on science museums as between them. References will for the most part pro- institutions (rather than specifically instruments within vide one or two examples of the topics in question; to- them) and on medical instruments.1 And as Liba Taub gether they provide insights on how instruments were articulates in this issue, scientific instruments, however defined, made, and used; and how instrumentcollec - defined, are but one sub-set of the broader material tions were gathered, deployed, and exhibited.

Making and using for measurement, education and demonstration; sci- Defining one’s object of study would usually come first entists are by no means the only users of ‘scientific’ 13 and foremost; all categories of historical study are his- instruments. Investigating their uses leads us to the torically contingent of course, but the problem of def- historical exploration of the different groups who Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/31/3/445/5214359 by National Museums Scotland user on 09 December 2019 inition for scientific instruments is particularly acute, used them, from savants to surveyors, and then the given that they have only been known as such since values and meanings placed upon the instruments – the mid-nineteenth century. The category then had which of course helps to explain why some survived 14 to be retrofitted, mostly around mathematical, optical in collections and others did not. and philosophical instruments (those that measured, Other historians of science since the 1980s have viewed and experimented respectively). While any of also turned their attention to instruments, as mani- the synthetic works in the genres mentioned above festations of scientific theory and of scientific prac- 15 must out of necessity define the scope of their study, tice. Contextualist historians of science from the D. J. Warner and J. V. Field in particular have help- 1990s found materials and tools to be useful conduits 16 fully historicized these definitions and alerted us to between the practice and cultures of science. A par- anachronism.9 Scientific instrument specialists have ticular/peculiar intersection between instrument defined their object of study as part of their profes- aficionados working in museums and universities are sional identity, variously privileging different chrono- those who have recreated instrumentation and experi- logical eras and scientific areas, as I show in my article mentation to understand the scientific enterprise, an in this issue. Throughout there has been a clear link endeavour which demands close study of the original 17 to museum practice, as I argue below: collectors and tools. Generally, however, although other historians curators define their collections, and the instruments of science have paid some attention to instruments, that survive in collections then skew definition away there has been little close study of them as artefacts; from those no longer with us. our understanding of the materiality of instruments However they are defined, a powerful tide pre- has come from the contributors to the specialist gen- 18 sent throughout instrument scholarship looks not res mentioned above. to instruments as products but rather to their making as process, and especially their makers. Two of the founding figures of post-war instrument history, Collecting and collections Maurice Daumas at the Conservatoire National des Our interest in this issue is in the history of a particu- Arts et Métiers in Paris and the British historian of lar set of uses to which instruments are put when they geography E.G.R. Taylor, both paid attention to the are associated with museums and collections. The manufacturing context of mathematical and other remainder of this introductory survey will therefore instruments – the workshops, industries and econom- be devoted not so much to the overlap (or gap) between ics.10 Taylor in particular employed a bio-bibliograph- instrument studies and (other) history of science, but ical approach that generations of instrument scholars to the historiographical pool where museum studies refined, enhanced and expanded over the following meets instrument scholarship. It is here that we find decades: from the 1960s through the 2000s, detailed the answers to the questions that Taub poses later in studies of instrument making in particular national this issue: ‘Why and how were scientific instruments contexts are evident, including the United States and collected? Once in collections, how were they used? the British Isles.11 This theme also runs through many How are the uses of instrument collections in histor- of the collaborative publications in this field.12 ical scholarship and in heritage institutions related?’ Alongside the attention to makers was a broader This mode of study has a long precedent. E.G.R. interest in the instruments’ uses. Specialist scholars Taylor wrote about the working ‘outfits’ of mathem- have studied the original instruments alongside con- atical practitioners.19 A. J. Turner, a stalwart of instru- temporary texts to understand their precise technical ment history, has always paid close attention to how specifications and functions, from architecture and and why instruments were collected, whether qua ballistics to surveying and navigation. Many were scientific instruments or as works of art (in its vari- for problem solving; some were for experiment in a ous senses), especially since the eighteenth-century sense we might recognize today, but many more were increase in collecting, collectors, and purchasing

446 SHAPING SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT COLLECTIONS power.20 Others have followed suit – including Rebekah the biographies of the institutions that hold them.26 Higgitt and others in this issue – tracking the chan- Foundings attract considerable attention, but the sub- ging values, meanings and functions of instruments sequent development of collections can be more re- as they come out of a life of use (if they had one) into vealing of the changing functions of instruments. The Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/31/3/445/5214359 by National Museums Scotland user on 09 December 2019 their (often far longer) afterlife in a museum. many reinventions of the Musée des Arts et Métiers To understand the transition between these lives since its early establishment in 1790s Paris, for example, is to understand the circulation and trade in instru- illustrate the place of science and its tools in Western ments (post-use, as opposed to their original market, culture; quieter institutions such as the extraordinary which is tackled by the ‘making’ literature mentioned Teylers Museum (founded in Haarlem in 1784) may above).21 A. J. Turner studied the composition of col- seem frozen in time but also evidence subtle changes lections in order to reflect the trade at the time, which in approaches to heritage.27 Meanwhile, relative late- is important both to understand how the historical comers such as the Science Museum in London and dimension of instrument interest manifested, and the mid-twentieth-century dedicated history of science place of the tools of science within cultures of con- museums stimulate growing literatures.28 Historians sumption.22 As instruments came and went from pri- are focusing not only on founders and directors, but vate collections (even from institutional collections as also on donors and curators, and telling rich stories of A. D. Morrison-Low demonstrates) their values and how collections and disciplines are shaped with insti- meanings shifted.23 Scientific instruments, it almost tutions, as Alison Boyle, Richard Dunn and Megan goes without saying, were not only tools of knowledge Barford do in this issue. And we should not forget the but also commodities. many published catalogues of collections that provide Enrichment (in both senses) was thereby among insights into the institutions and the riches therein; a the motives for collecting scientific instruments that discursive collection-level description speaks volumes historians have explored. True, philosophers collected about the context and meanings of collections.29 instruments to learn and demonstrators to teach, For as A. J. Turner reminds us, ‘collections are not but vanity and prestige are also evident in spades – static either in their contents nor in the tasks they antiquarianism and curiosity too. What is clear is perform’.30 The motives for collections we touched on that many reasons for collecting instruments were earlier already hinted at the function of instruments decidedly not scientific. As a result, those that survive once in collections. We have already been shown that are not necessarily reflective of those that were in gen- working philosophers used them to investigate, and eral use, but rather include a disproportionate num- demonstrators to teach; later, this would translate into ber of sumptuous showpieces.24 Collecting was (and more recognizable research and teaching functions.31 is) performative, and the more spectacular the props, Institutions like the Royal Geographical Society kept the better. their collections as lending libraries for members to Once collected, a new set of meanings and val- borrow and use on expeditions.32 But there are other ues imbue objects when they join a collection. less obvious functions that rise and fall over time. Historians of early modern cabinets have been espe- Instrument collections were an expression of power,33 cially alive to this, charting carefully the social, cul- of professional pride,34 and of aesthetic taste.35 They tural and philosophical roles of instruments in the could be recreational – set-dressing for a soirée – and princely Kunstkammer and the learned Physikalisches sometimes for pure fun, as Jean-François Gauvin Kabinett.25 These instruments were not only for (wit- shows us in this issue.36 And some instruments within nessed) experiments but also to reflect honour upon collections were intended to deceive, as we know from their cultured patrons. The hundreds of cabinets of the continuing historical and contemporary interest curiosity across sixteenth- to eighteenth-century in fakes – including an enduring fascination with the Europe were not miscellaneous; but their taxonomies nefarious activities of the Dutch dealer Anton W.H. need decoding and unpacking to understand the role Mensing (1866–1936), who also features in Dunn and of the instrument therein. Barford’s article in this issue.37 For those interested in the period since that time, Among those that we take to be genuine, there has a rich vein for understanding the changing func- been an interesting tension evident in the historical tions and meanings of instrument collections are use of scientific instruments in collections that echoes

447 SAMUEL J.M.M. ALBERTI through the literature; whether they are gathered Depending on their Use’ at the Great Exhibition and used to demonstrate science of now, or then; as in London in 1851, and as one might expect, the cutting-edge tools or relics (see Higgitt’s article in 1876 Loan Exhibition of Scientific Apparatus has 38 43 this issue). When were science collections afforded also attracted attention. Scientific instruments Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/31/3/445/5214359 by National Museums Scotland user on 09 December 2019 this heritage function? It is tempting to seek to pin- then continued to be prominent in later expositions point a moment when contemporary instruments be- such as the British Empire Exhibition of 1924–5.44 came historical – the emergence of dedicated history As intersections of commodification, progress of science museums and the turn to history in large narratives, and national pride, these ‘expos’ are industrial museums in the mid-twentieth century (see rich sites for analysis of the multiple meanings of Boyle’s paper in this issue), or the heritage elements instruments. of the 1876 Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus? They also have considerable potential for the study The nineteenth-century vogue for antiquarianism of the consumption of instruments; both in the com- or the stirrings of scientific hagiography? Wherever mercial sense and in terms of audiences more gen- one looks, past and present have always been jux- erally. Richard Kramer has carefully considered taposed in instrument collections. Tycho Brahe the reception of the scientific instruments on dis- bought Copernicus’s triquetrum not for use, but for play at the United States Centennial Exhibition in veneration.39 Philadelphia in 1876 by accessing the accounts of Veneration is one of the functions of collections judges and journalists, and by analysing their cata- that make it more likely that an object will survive; logues, and photographs of displays.45 Studying the some of the more hands-on uses entail a greater risk, ‘users’ of displayed instruments can be as fruitful in and a great many instruments, of course, do not last. accessing their meanings and values as the accounts of Whole collections have been lost, sold, dilapidated, or their pre-museum users alluded to above.46 But histo- destroyed. This does not deter historians of instru- ries of the audiences for scientific instrument exhibi- ments, a redoubtable bunch, and there is a charm- tions remain largely unwritten. ing sub-genre of the study of lost collections.40 This Whether in terms of their situation, content or painstaking work can tell us a great deal about the val- reception, analyses of exhibitions thereby have rich ues and meanings placed upon such lost pieces, and historiographical potential. But further, exhibitions provides are richer, fuller history. can in themselves be historiographically innovative. Sophisticated displays generate new understandings;47 they are, I would argue, material historiography. In col- Exhibiting and expositions lecting, investigating, and juxtaposing these artefacts, Perhaps the most obvious thing to do with a collection the curator is making meanings out of material cul- is to display it, and sure enough, there is a strong cur- ture that are distinct from those generated via textual rent in literature concerning exhibitions. Analysing or visual research. Maurice Daumas’ appreciation of the position and contexts of instruments in accounts, instrument history both fed into and benefitted from images and surviving displays is revealing of the chan- his curatorial work at the Conservatoire National, in ging status of science in museum interpretation, and which he wanted to establish a history of instruments of museums in what we now call science communi- distinct from other histories of science;48 curators cation.41 Historians have assessed where instruments since have made new and different histories in exhi- were in spaces that were not their original site of use, bitionary contexts. They are sometimes recorded for in relation to each other, and how this changes over posterity in a catalogue as discussed above (although time (as Boyle does in this issue); not only in public ironically this is more likely to be the case for tempor- museums but also more private and restricted-access ary exhibitions than for permanent galleries); images displays.42 may remain (Fig. 1); but too often they are ephem- A rich site for analysing instrument displays were eral. And not all exhibitions are unqualified successes, the world fairs and expositions of the nineteenth nor match the intentions of their curators, of course. and twentieth centuries. The wares of the scientific Reflecting on the processes of exhibition making – instrument makers alluded to earlier were visible as what one might grandly term ‘reflective museology’ – ‘Class x – Philosophical Instruments and Processes then provides another level of understanding,

448 SHAPING SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT COLLECTIONS

Fig. 1. Material historiography: the Instruments of Science gallery at the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1991. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/31/3/445/5214359 by National Museums Scotland user on 09 December 2019 (Image: National Museums Scotland.) Opening originally in 1986, it was researched and curated by Allen Simpson and Alison Morrison-Low under the new Director, Robert Anderson. Shown here is Section 1: early astronomy, navigation and surveying. See P. Delehar, ‘Museum report: The Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society 30 (1991), pp. 13–17. For other photographs of this genre, see the figures in Dunn and Barford’s article in this special issue.

especially about the nuances of the museum as a pro- I shall indicate the shared direction of travel of the cess and a setting.49 seven papers that follow. Our broad scope relates more Just as exhibitions are only one use of collections, to the later sections of my discussion above; this is a so they are only one of the ways that collection his- contribution to the history of plural scientific instru- tory can inform and be informed by museum practice. ment collections rather than the history of singular The very definition of scientific instruments guides instruments. And given the rich stream already avail- collection development and management; taxonomies able on the early modern period we have concentrated change with changing scientific and museum prac- more on the nineteenth and (especially) twentieth tice. What curators collect is determined by historical centuries. understandings of what constitutes an instrument, as Although our ostensible focus is on objects, the sto- both Taub and I discuss in our respective articles; and ries that follow are actually about people. Collections this collecting then feeds back into the definition of are shaped not only by curators, we will show, but by what is interpreted. Instrument historiography may dealers, directors, amateurs and (other) scientists. We help us to understand not only the shape of collections ask how their instrument collecting and motives for but also their gaps and absences. There are also other doing so shaped disciplines, institutions and profes- museum practices that relate to historical research that sional communities (Boyle, Dunn and Barford, Higgitt, are not so often discussed: documentation in particu- Alberti). Each author has set one or more collections lar can draw on existing research and then craft new in its political, institutional and museological contexts, histories. Furthermore, loans of instruments between better to understand what is particular to these kinds of collections enable new juxtapositions and conclusions collections as compared to, say, natural history collec- to be drawn. Perhaps the questions posed and answers tions or art museums. In tracing their collective lives in suggested in this issue may have bearing for those who museums of private collections, contexts that were not collect, curate and care for scientific instruments, and their original use, we explore different functions of sci- perhaps other artefacts besides.50 entific collections, including commemoration (Higgitt, But just what are the questions we ask here? Having Tybjerg), teaching, and sheer fun (Gauvin). Insofar outlined the historiographical waves we are surfing, as they are ‘pack animals rather than lone wolves’, in

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Tybjerg’s words, instruments mean different things 3 Examples of equivalents include M. C. Lourenço, ‘Est-ce when they are in collections, and these meanings then qu’elles le méritent? Les collections d’instruments scientifiques dans les universités européennes’, inPatrimoine vary across audiences and users, including museum et communautés savants, ed. A. Rasmussen, S. Boudia and visitors, students, and practitioners. (Several authors S. Soubiran (Rennes, 2009), pp. 113–22; and M. Granato and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/31/3/445/5214359 by National Museums Scotland user on 09 December 2019 also reflect on thelack of use.) M. C. Lourenço, ‘Reflexões sobre o patrimônio cultural da ciência e tecnologia na atualidade’, Revista Memória em Rede 2 Readers will encounter in the following pages col- (2010), pp. 85–104. lections in Cambridge, UK (Taub) and Cambridge, 4 See the many detailed studies in Nuncius: Journal of the Material USA (Gauvin); Edinburgh (Alberti), Greenwich and Visual History of Science (founded as Annali dell’Istituto e (Dunn and Barford) and London (Higgitt, Boyle); as Museo di storia della scienza di Firenze in 1976); Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society (1983–); Rittenhouse: Journal of well as Copenhagen (Tybjerg). We are conscious that the American Scientific Instrument Enterprise (1986–2009). in seven papers, most of which have a single collection 5 H. Michel, Scientific Instruments in Art and History, trans. focus, we could present only a drop in the ocean of R.E.W. Maddison and F. R. Maddison (London, 1967); collections world-wide (and a relatively Anglophone H. Wynter and A. J. Turner, Scientific Instruments (London, 1975). drop at that, Tybjerg notwithstanding). Nonetheless 6 R. Bud, D. J. Warner and S. Johnston (eds), Instruments we hope that the issue as a whole may prompt read- of Science: An historical encyclopedia (London, 1998); ers to reflect upon patterns of collection formation; M. Holbrook, R.G.W. Anderson, and D. J. Bryden, Science to appreciate just how fluid, contingent and human- Preserved: A directory of scientific instruments in collections in the United Kingdom and Eire (London, 1992) – on national driven they are; and how instrumental they are in the inventories (and this one in particular) see my article in this history, heritage, and historiography of science. issue. 7 M. Granato and M. C. Lourenço, Scientific Instruments in the History of Science: Studies in transfer, use and preservation (Rio Address for correspondence de Janeiro, 2014); W. D. Hackmann and A. J. Turner (eds), Learning, Language, and Invention: Essays presented to Francis Dr Sam Alberti, Keeper of Science & Technology, National Maddison (Aldershot, 1994). The ‘Scientific Instruments and Museums Scotland, and Honorary Professor, University of Stirling Collections’ series published by Brill captures themed papers Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy. National Museum of from the Scientific Instruments Commission; most recently Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh eh1 1jf. R. Dunn, S. Ackermann and G. Strano (eds), Heaven and [email protected] Earth United: Instruments in astrological contexts (Leiden, 2018). 8 The pattern of publication and author constituency of these Acknowledgements over the past quarter-century is sufficiently marked to list this genre more comprehensively than the other citations here: For their help with this introduction I would like to thank Richard A. van Helden and T. L. Hankins (eds), Instruments. Osiris Dunn, Jean-François Gauvin, Marta Lourenço, Alison Morrison- 2nd ser. 9 (Chicago, 1994); P. de Clerq and A. J. Turner (eds), Low, Tacye Phillpson and Laura Volkmer. This special issue stems ‘Origins and evolution of collecting scientific instruments’, from the 2018 Cain conference at the Science History Institute in Journal of the History of Collections 7 (1995), pp. 133–268; Philadelphia, hosted by the then director of the Beckman Center B. Lightman (ed.), ‘Museums and the history of science’, for the History of Chemistry Carin Berkowitz, who also co-edited Focus Section, Isis 96 (2005), pp. 559–608; A. Mosley (ed.), this issue. We are grateful not only to the authors but also to the ‘Objects, texts and images in the history of science’, Studies commentators and others who participated in what was a lively and in History and Philosophy of Science 38 (2007), pp. 289–492; thought-provoking meeting. L. Taub (ed.), ‘On scientific instruments’,Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 40 (2009), pp. 337–438; N. Jardine and L. Wilson (eds), ‘Recent material heritage of the sciences’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013), pp. 632– Notes and references 753; L. Taub (ed.), ‘The history of scientific instruments’, Focus Section, Isis 102 (2011), pp. 689–729; A. Maas (ed.), 1 I have attempted to survey them elsewhere: S.J.M.M. Alberti, ‘Why science museums matter: history of science in museums ‘Why collect science?’, Journal of Conservation and Museum in the twenty-first century’, Focus Section,Isis 108 (2017), Studies 15 (2017), pp. 1–10; E. Hallam and S.J.M.M. Alberti, pp. 360–406. ‘Bodies in museums’, in Medical Museums: Past Present Future, 9 J. V. Field, ‘What is scientific about a scientific instrument?’, ed. S.J.M.M. Alberti and E. Hallam (London, 2013), pp. 1–15; Nuncius 3 (1988), pp. 3–26; D. J. Warner, ‘What is a scientific see also C. Jones, ‘Surgical instruments, history and historiog- instrument, when did it become one, and why?’, British Journal raphy’, in The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Surgery, ed. for the History of Science 23 (1990), pp. 83–93. See also A. J. T. Schlich (London, 2018), pp. 235–57 and Tybjerg’s article in Turner, ‘Interpreting the history of scientific instruments’, this issue. in Making Instruments Count: Essays on historical scientific 2 For a set of more category-specific literature reviews see instruments presented to Gerard L’Estrange Turner, ed. R.G.W. B. Lightman (ed.), A Companion to the History of Science Anderson, J. A. Bennett and W. F. Ryan (Aldershot, 1993), (Chichester, 2016), part iv: ‘Tools of science’, pp. 443–586. pp. 17–62. Taub has refined these approaches and marked the

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expanding and dynamic character of scientific instrumenta- 19 Taylor, op. cit. (note 10). tion: L. Taub, ‘On scientific instruments’,Studies in History 20 Turner, op. cit. (note 13), appendix; A. J. Turner, ‘From and Philosophy of Science 40 (2009), pp. 337–43; L. Taub, mathematical practice to the history of science: the pattern ‘Introduction: Reengaging with instruments’, Isis 102 (2011), of collecting scientific instruments’,Journal of the History of pp. 689–96; and see her article in this issue. Collections 7 (1995), pp. 133–50. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/31/3/445/5214359 by National Museums Scotland user on 09 December 2019 10 M. Daumas, Les Instruments scientifiques aux xviie et xviiie 21 A. D. Morrison-Low, S. J. Schechner and P. Brenni (eds), How siècles (Paris, 1953); M. Daumas, Scientific Instruments of the Scientific Instruments have Changed Hands (Leiden, 2016). Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries and their Makers, trans. M. Holbrook (London, 1972); E.G.R. Taylor, The Mathematical 22 Turner, op. cit. (note 20). Practitioners of Tudor & Stuart England (Cambridge, 1954); 23 A. Filippoupoliti, ‘“What a scene it was, that labyrinth of E.G.R. Taylor, The Mathematical Practitioners of Hanoverian strange relics of science”: attitudes towards collecting and cir- England, 1714–1840 (Cambridge, 1966). culating scientific instruments in nineteenth-century England’, 11 S. A. Bedini, Early American Scientific Instruments and Cultural History 2 (2013), pp. 16–37; A. D. Morrison-Low, ‘Sold at Sotheby’s: Sir John Findlay’s cabinet and the Scottish their Makers (Washington, dc, 1964); D. J. Bryden, Scottish Scientific Instrument-makers (Edinburgh, 1972); J. E. Burnett antiquarian tradition’, Journal of the History of Collections 7 and A. D. Morrison-Low, ‘Vulgar and Mechanick’: The scien- (1995), pp. 197–209. tific instrument trade in Ireland 1650–1921 (Edinburgh, 1989); 24 An observation made by several historians including Field, op. T. N. Clarke, A. D. Morrison-Low, and A.D.C. Simpson, cit. (note 9). Brass and Glass: Scientific instrument making workshops in 25 Especially influential is O. Impey and A. MacGregor (eds), Scotland as illustrated by instruments from the Frank Collection The Origins of Museums: The cabinet of curiosities in sixteenth at the Royal Museum of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1989); A. D. and seventeenth-century Europe (Oxford, 1985); more recently Morrison-Low, Making Scientific Instruments in the Industrial see for example M. Korey, The Geometry of Power, the Power Revolution (Aldershot, 2007); G. Clifton, Directory of British of Geometry: Mathematical instruments and princely mechanical Scientific Instrument Makers, 1550–1851, ed. G.L’E. Turner devices from around 1600 (Munich, 2007). (London, 1995). For an important corrective of Taylor, see M. A. Crawford, ‘Makers and dates’, Bulletin of the Scientific 26 L. Taub and F. Willmoth (eds), The Whipple Museum of the Instrument Society 13 (1987), pp. 2–8. History of Science: Instruments and interpretations (Cambridge, 2006). 12 See for example R.G.W. Anderson, J. A. Bennett, and W. F. Ryan (eds), Making Instruments Count: Essays on historical 27 D. Ferriot and B. Jacomy, ‘The Musée des Arts et Métiers’, in scientific instruments presented to Gerard L’Estrange Turner Museums of Modern Science, ed. S. Lindqvist (New York, 2000), (Aldershot, 1993); G. Strano, S. Johnston, M. Miniati and pp. 29–42; M.P.M. Weiss, Showcasing Science: The history of A. D. Morrison-Low (eds), European Collections of Scientific Teylers Museum in the nineteenth century (Amsterdam, 2018). Instruments, 1550–1750 (Leiden, 2009). 28 P.J.T. Morris (ed.), Science for the Nation: Perspectives on the 13 As disaggregated in A. J. Turner, Early Scientific Instruments: history of the Science Museum (Basingstoke, 2010); M. Beretta, Europe 1400–1800 (London, 1987), and in J. Bennett, ‘Andrea Corsini and the creation of the Museum of the History ‘Knowing and doing in the sixteenth century: what were of Science in Florence (1930–1961)’, in Scientific Instruments instruments for?’, British Journal for the History of Science 36 on Display, ed. S. Ackermann, R. Kremer and M. Miniati (2003), pp. 129–50. (Leiden, 2014), pp. 1–36. 14 Taub, op. cit. (note 9). 29 A. Q. Morton and J. A. Wess, Public and Private Science: The King George III Collection (Oxford, 1993). 15 D. Gooding, T. Pinch and S. Schaffer (eds), The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the natural sciences (Cambridge, 1989); 30 Turner, op. cit. (note 20), p. 135. van Helden and Hankins, op. cit. (note 8). 31 S. Dupré and M. Korey, ‘Inside the Kunstkammer: the circu- 16 G.J.N. Gooday, ‘Instrumentation and interpretation: manag- lation of optical knowledge and instruments at the Dresden ing and representing the working environments of Victorian Court’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 40 (2009), experimental science’, in Victorian Science in Context, pp. 405–20; P. Heering and R. Wittje (eds), Learning by ed. B. Lightman (Chicago, 1997), pp. 409–37; A. Larsen, Doing: Experiments and instruments in the history of science ‘Equipment for the field’, inCultures of Natural History, ed. teaching (Stuttgart, 2011); S. C. Turner, ‘Permanent demon- N. Jardine, J. A. Secord and E. C. Spary (Cambridge, 1996), strations: the Science Teaching Museum at the University pp. 358–77. of Chicago’, in Scientific Instruments on Display, ed. S. Ackermann, R. Kremer and M. Miniati (Leiden, 2014), 17 K. Staubermann (ed.), Reconstructions: Recreating science and pp. 132–47. technology of the past (Edinburgh, 2011). 18 In the last decade, of the 136 full articles in the leading 32 On instruments and geography see F. MacDonald and C.W.J. Withers (eds), Anglophone history of science journal Isis, fourteen were Geography, Technology and Instruments of explicitly concerned with material culture and only five of Exploration (Farnham, 2015); C.W.J. Withers, ‘Science, scien- those authors evidenced close study of objects. (Thanks tific instruments and questions of method in nineteenth-cen- to Laura Volkmer for undertaking this survey.) The article tury British geography’, Transactions of the Institute of British most relevant for the present purpose was M. Keene ‘“Every Geographers 38 (2013), pp. 167–79. boy & girl a scientist”: instruments for children in interwar 33 F. Camerota, ‘The Medici collection of mathematical instru- Britain’, Isis 98 (2007), pp. 266–89. Despite appearances and ments: history and museography’, in European Collections of the list above (note 8), only two of the forty-one Isis ‘Focus’ Scientific Instruments, 1550–1750, ed. G. Strano, S. Johnston, sections in the last decade are devoted to instruments or M. Miniati and A. D. Morrison-Low (Leiden, 2009), collections. pp. 129–48.

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34 G.L’E. Turner, The Great Age of the Microscope: The collection of 43 J. A. Bennett, Science at the Great Exhibition (Cambridge, the Royal Microscopical Society through 150 years (London, 1989). 1983); G.L’E. Turner, Nineteenth-Century Scientific Instruments 35 R. Dunn, ‘“More artistic than scientific”: exhibiting instru- (London, 1983); Bud, op. cit. (note 38). ments as decorative arts in the Victoria and Albert Museum’, in 44 P. A. Kidwell, ‘Mathematical instruments changing hands at Scientific Instruments on Display, ed. S. Ackermann, R. Kremer World’s Fairs, 1851–1904’, in How Scientific Instruments have Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/31/3/445/5214359 by National Museums Scotland user on 09 December 2019 and M. Miniati (Leiden, 2014), pp. 61–76. Changed Hands, ed. A. D. Morrison-Low, S. J. Schechner and 36 S.J.M.M. Alberti, ‘Conversaziones and the experience of P. Brenni (Leiden, 2016). pp. 88–103; A. Q. Morton, ‘The science in Victorian England’, Journal of Victorian Culture 8 electron made public: The exhibition of pure science in the (2003), pp. 208–30; Filippoupoliti op. cit. (note 23). British Empire Exhibition, 1924–5’, in Exposing Electronics, ed. B. Finn (London, 2003), pp. 25–43. 37 P. de Clerq (ed.), Scientific Instruments: Originals and imita- tions (Leiden, 2000); S. Johnston, W.F.J. Mörzer Bruyns, J. C. 45 R. L. Kremer, ‘Looking at scientific instruments on display at Deiman and H. Hooijmaijers, ‘The Anton Mensing Scientific the United States Centennial Exhibition of 1876’, in Scientific Instrument Project: Final report’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instruments on Display, ed. S. Ackermann, R. Kremer and Instrument Society 79 (2003), pp. 28–32; B. Jardine, J. Nall, M. Miniati (Leiden, 2014), pp. 109–131. and J. Hyslop, ‘More than Mensing? Revisiting the question of 46 A. Maas, ‘History of science museums between academics and fake scientific instruments’,Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument audiences’, Isis 108 (2017), pp. 360–65. Society 132 (2017), pp. 22–9. 47 S. Lehmann-Brauns, C. Sichau, and H. Trischler (eds.), 38 R.G.W. Anderson, ‘Connoisseurship, pedagogy or antiquar- The Exhibition as Product and Generator of Scholarship ianism? What were instruments doing in the nineteenth-century (Berlin, 2010); P. Bjerregaard (ed.), Exhibitions as Research: national collections in Great Britain?’, Journal of the History of Experimental methods in museums (London, forthcoming). Collections 7 (1995), pp. 211–25; R. Bud, ‘Responding to stories: 48 J. L. Heilbron, ‘Some uses for catalogues of old scientific the 1876 Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus and the Science instruments’, in Making Instruments Count: Essays on historical Museum’, Science Museum Group Journal 1 (2014), pp. 1–14; scientific instruments presented to Gerard L’Estrange Turner, ed. M.P.M. Weiss, ‘“Monuments of science”: how the Teyler R.G.W. Anderson, J. A. Bennett and W. F. Ryan (Aldershot, Museum’s instrument collection became historical’, in Cabinets 1993), pp. 1–16; A. Herlea, ‘Maurice Daumas (1910–1984)’, of Experimental Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. Technology and Culture 26 (1985), pp. 698–702. J. Bennett, G. Strano and S. Talas (Leiden, 2013), pp. 195–214. 49 J.-F. Gauvin, ‘Functionless: science museums and the dis- 39 Turner, op. cit. (note 20). play of “pure objects”’, Science Museum Group Journal 5 40 J. Bennett, G. Strano and S. Talas (eds), Cabinets of Experimental (2016), pp. 1–16; R. Higgitt, ‘Challenging tropes: genius, Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Leiden, 2013); heroic invention, and the longitude problem in the mu- D. Felismino and M. C. Lourenço, ‘Les cabinets de physique des seum’, Isis 108 (2017), pp. 371–80; J. A. Wess, ‘Inside the rois du Portugal (xviiie- xixe siècles)’, Artefact. Techniques histoire atom: two sides of a story’, in Illuminating Instruments, et sciences humaines 5 (2017), pp. 11–26; Filippoupoliti op. cit. ed. P.J.T. Morris and K. Staubermann (Washington, dc, (note 23); S. Lubar, Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, past and 2010), pp. 115–29. For a reflective take on the museology present (Cambridge, ma, 2017); Morrison-Low, op. cit. (note 23). of science (and art) collections see S.J.M.M. Alberti, 41 C. Sichau, ‘Hard times: the difficult lives of three instruments S. Allen, X. Dectot and R. Gill, ‘Reflecting the now: pro- in the museum’, in Illuminating Instruments, ed. P.J.T. Morris ject management and contemporary collecting in a multi- and K. Staubermann (Washington, dc, 2010), pp. 73–94. disciplinary museum’, Museum and Society 15 (2017), pp. 324–42. 42 S. Ackermann, R. Kremer and M. Miniati (eds), Scientific Instruments on Display (Leiden, 2014). 50 See also J. Bennett, ‘Museums and the history of science: prac- titioner’s postscript’, Isis 96 (2005), pp. 602–8.

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