History in the Laboratory: Can We Tell What Really Went on?

Abstract

The idea of places set apart for experiment was well established by the early nineteenth century. Then, as now, some types of experiment could be made only at the site of special equipment, while others could be made only in unusually large spaces.¹ Still others, such as the mapping of geomagnetic phenomena or testing the effectiveness of a vaccine, could not be made within the confines of a building at all.² The legitimacy of reducing the scale of natural phenomena to get them inside the laboratory and of reproducing them by artificial means was still contested during the last century.³ None the less, natural science — already associated with ‘the laboratory’ — became increasingly identified with it during the nineteenth century. The importance of laboratory work to the development of science, to deciding technical issues in legal proceedings, to industry and to national security was widely accepted. The nation needed science and scientists needed places to conduct experiments.⁴ A book about such places would not be complete without an account of experimentation in them. This chapter addresses the recovery of experimental activity rather than the social, epistemological, architectural or other characteristics of the space in which it took place. My examples are a public trial by John Herschel in the lecture theatre of the London Institution in 1823 and some private, exploratory work done by Faraday in the basement laboratory in which he assisted Humphry Davy and Thomas Brande at the Royal Institution in 1821.