Abstract
Reviewing Fleeming Jenkin’s Electricity and Magnetism in Nature in 1873 an anonymous reviewer (probably James Clerk Maxwell) remarked that “at the present time there are two sciences of electricity — one that of the lecture-room and the popular treatise; the other that of the testing-office and the engineer’s specifications.” In this paper I want to look behind Maxwell’s remark and examine the relationship between the “two sciences” of electricity during the third quarter or so of the 19th century. In particular I want to look at them in terms of their instrumental technologies. How did apparatus travel between the lecture-room or exhibition-hall and the testing-office or the laboratory? How did skills cross between these different spaces? How did the earlier Victorian culture of electricity as “entertainment and edification” become transformed into late 19th century metrological culture? How did these cultures overlap and how did they differ?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Campbell, L. & Garnett, W.: 1882, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, Macmillan, London, p. 355.
Collins, H.: 1988, ‘Public Experiments and Displays of Virtuosity: The Core-set Revisited’, Social Studies of Science 18, 725–748.
Collins, H.: 1985, Changing Order, Sage, London.
deKosky, R.: 1976, ‘William Crookes and the Fourth State of Matter’, Isis 67, 36–60.
Gooday, G.: 1990, ‘Precision Measurement and the Genesis of Physics Teaching Laboratories in Britain’, British Journal for the History of Science 23, 25–251.
Gooday, G.: 1991, ‘Teaching Telegraphy and Electrotechnics in the Physics Laboratory: William Ayrton and the Creation of an Academic Space for Electrical Engineering in Britain’, History of Technology 13, 73–111.
Gooding, G.: 1985, ‘In Nature’s School: Faraday as an Experimentalist’, in D. Gooding and F.A.J.L. James (eds.), Faraday Rediscovered, Macmillan, London, pp. 105–135.
Hunt, B.: 1994, ‘The Ohm is where the Art is: British Telegraph Engineers and the Development of Electrical Standards’, Osiris 9, 48–63.
Hunt, B.: 1997, ‘Doing Science in a Global Empire: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in Victorian Britain’, in B. Lightman (ed.), Victorian Science in Context, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Jenkin, F.: 1873, Electricity and Magnetism, London, pp. v–vi.
Latour, B.: 1987, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Open University Press, Milton Keynes.
Lodge, O.: 1931, Past Years, Stodder & Haughton, London, p. 185.
Martin, T.C.: 1995 (orig. pub. 1893), The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla, Barnes & Noble, New York, NY, pp. 198–293.
Maxwell, J.C.: 1873a, ‘Electricity and Magnetism’, Nature 9, 42–43.
Maxwell, J.C.: 1873b, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism 2 vols, Oxford, vol. 1, p. ix.
Morus, I.: 1998, Frankenstein s Children: Electricity, Exhibition and Experiment in early Nineteenth-century London, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Morus, I.R.: 1992, ‘Different Experimental Lives: Michael Faraday and William Sturgeon’, History of Science 30, 1–28.
Noad, H.M.: 1859, A Manual of Electricity: Including Galvanism, Magnetism, Diamagnetism, Electro-dynamics, Magneto-electricity, and the Electric Telegraph, George Knight & Co. London, pp. 728–746.
Richardson, B.W.: 1869, ‘On Research with the Large Induction Coil of the Royal Institution, with Special Reference to the Cause and Phenomena of Death by Lightning’, Medical Times and Gazette, 38, 511–514; 595–599; 39, 183–186; 373–376, 598.
Schaffer, S.: 1983, ‘Natural Philosophy and Public Spectacle in the Eighteenth Century’, History of Science 21, 1.43.
Schaffer, S.: 1992, ‘Late Victorian Metrology and its Instrumentation: A Manufactory of Ohms’, in R. Bud and S. Cozzens (eds.), Invisible Connections: Instruments, Institutions and Science, SPIE Optical Engineering Press, Bellingham.
Schaffer, S.: 1997, ‘Metrology, Metrication and Victorian Values’, in B. Lightman (ed.), Victorian Science in Context, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Shapin, S.: 1988, ‘The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-century England’, Isis 79, 373–404.
Shapin, S. & Schaffer, S.: 1985, Leviathan and the Air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Sturgeon, W.: 1823, ‘Portable Electro-magnetic Apparatus’, Transactions of the Society of Arts 41, 47–52.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Morus, I.R. The Two Cultures of Electricity: Between Entertainment and Edification in Victorian Science. Sci Educ 16, 593–602 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-006-9023-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-006-9023-0