Herschel and Hypo

Abstract

The application by John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871) of hypo¹ as a preservative in the photographic process is an exemplar of one type of relation between fundamental and applied chemistry. Today we often hear warnings about dire consequences attending the failure of the nation to more fully support pure scientific research (that is, investigations made with no reference to possible uses,) warnings often couched as a metaphor in which the results of pure science figure as a kind of primary raw material out of which applications are made in much the same way as finished products are manufactured from natural resources. The implication is that if the stock of miscellaneous information is not constantly augmented, the applications of science will be reduced by lack of resources. I have no quarrel with this view, save that it is seldom accompanied by any historical illustration other than the now hackneyed example of the development of electrical power from Faraday’s discovery of electromagnetic induction. (‘Sir, of what use is a baby?’) But that example hardly fits the metaphor, as the application in that case followed hard on the heels of the discovery and was fairly obvious, so it was not a matter of searching with barely a clue among a host of previously discovered facts for the one that would solve a practical problem.