Making Instruments Count: Essays on Historical Scientific Instruments Presented to Gerard L'Estrange Turner

edited by R.G.W. Anderson, J.A. Bennett, W.F. Ryan

ISBN 10: 0860783944 / ISBN 13: 9780860783947

Published by Aldershot, Hampshire ; Brookfield, Vt. : Variorum, 1993

About this Item

xix, 492 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm Contents: Electricity from Steam: Armstrong's Hydroelectric Machine in the 1840's / Willem Hackmann -- The Pendulum as the British Length Standard: A Nineteenth-Century Legal Aberration / A.D.C. Simpson -- 'A Very Artificial Workman': The Altitude Sundials of Humphrey Cole / Denys Vaughan -- An Equinoctial Ring Dial by Ralph Greatorex / A.V. Simcock -- Francis Hall's Sundial for the Blind / Jan de Graeve -- Early Navigational Instruments in Scotland: Icons and Survivals / A.D. Morrison-Low -- Equipping the Radcliffe Observatory: Thomas Hornsby and his Instrument-Makers / J.A. Bennett -- William Prout and the Urinometer: Some Interpretations / John Burnett -- Brittle Glass: A Fragile Chapter in the History of Experimental Physics / Peter de Clercq -- Frederik Kaiser and his 'Steady Boat Compass with Nightly Illumination' / Elly Dekker -- Elisa van der Ven and the Physical Laboratory of the Teyler Foundation (Haarlem), 1878-1909 / Marijn van Hoorn. A Tale of Two Instruments / Roderick Webster and Marjorie Webster -- Seventeenth-Century Simple Microscopes / Brian Bracegirdle -- The True Name of Selligue / Margarida Archinard -- Utrecht University and its Microscopes / J.C. Deiman -- The Spectaclemakers' Company and the Origins of the Optical Instrument-Making Trade in London / Gloria C. Clifton -- A 1701 Dictionary of Mathematical Instruments / D.J. Bryden -- Illustrations of Scientific Instruments in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1746-1796 / Peter Delehar -- Some Notes on Benjamin Ayres / J.H. Leopold -- Jeppe Smith (1759-1821): A Danish Instrument-Maker / Hemming Andersen -- Scientific Instruments and Industrial Innovation: The Achievement of Jesse Ramsden / Allan Chapman -- Thomas Cooke's Order Book: Analysis of an Optical Business, 1856-1868 / Anita McConnell -- The Irish National Inventory and One of its 'Discoveries' / Charles Mollan -- The Astronomical Clocks of Andreas Hohwu: A Checklist / Willem F.J. Morzer Bruyns.

Seller Inventory # 16jbew717

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Making Instruments Count: Essays on Historical Scientific Instruments Presented to Gerard L'Estrange Turner
• Publisher: Aldershot, Hampshire ; Brookfield, Vt. : Variorum
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0860783944
• ISBN 13: 9780860783947
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science

About this title

Synopsis

This collection of essays, bringing together many of the established curators and historians in the field of scientific instruments and ranging widely over their interests, represents a branch of the history of science whose activity, output and significance within the discipline have blossomed in recent years. It is no longer possible to fence off a grand conceptual succession and represent this as the only essence of scientific development. Practices - in discovery, experiment, application and teaching - are integral parts of what science does and are therefore all part of what it is, and instruments were central to each of these varieties of scientific practice.
The instrument historian comes in a number of guises - the scholar, the collector, the curator, the dealer - and the discipline is practised in a variety of settings. The university has very different priorities from the salesroom, the museum from the antiques fair, but the challenge of instrument history is to integrate connoisseurship, technical insight and historical sensitivity, while not neglecting the trade institutions and practices of the makers and remaining familiar with instrument populations in both the captivity of museums and the relative freedom of the market-place.
This volume is presented to Gerard Turner, who has been at the forefront of promoting instrument studies in recent years. After a twenty-five-year association with the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford, a Visiting Professorship in the History of Scientific Instruments was established for him at the Imperial College, London, in 1988, from where he has been able to increase his research in this field. Gerard Turner has also been, amongst other positions in his distinguished career, the first Chairman of the Scientific Instrument Society, the President of the Royal Microscopical Society and the President of the British Society for the History of Science. In addition, he currently holds the position of Editor of the journal Annals of Science.
The volume includes papers on instruments for mathematics, astronomy, navigation, horology, chemistry, physics, optics and medicine, together with studies of the instrument-making trade and reflections on the significance of such work for our understanding of the past.