Abstract
The Science Museum became an independent entity in the prosperous, if wet, summer of 1909.1 It was a step that had demanded forty years of subterfuge and political manoeuvre from a small group of men who could be regarded as ‘scientific evangelists’. Without a large constituency behind them but with tenacity, daring and ingenuity, and a nose for publicity, these scientists and Civil Servants had been determined to build their country’s scientific muscle. They fought not just for a museum, but also for a particular vision of the relationship between science and practice. Success had followed from adherence to a new creed of ‘pure and applied science’. This explains their vision of the linkage of science and practice, which drew together the constituencies of industry and science, and provided an account of progress to integrate history and science. The very title ‘Science Museum’ is an indicator of their values, and the strength of the brand today a testament to their success.
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Notes
The Museum was founded on 26 June 1909. For the weather and the business climate in the summer of 1909 see Wesley Clair Mitchell, Business Cycles (New York: Burt Franklin, 1970, first published in 1913) p. 79.
G.R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency. A Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).
Roy M. Macleod, ‘The Support of Vlctorian Science: The Endowment of Research Movement in Great Britain, 1868–1900’, Minerva 4 (1971), pp. 197–230.
H.G. Wells, War in the Air (London: George Bell and Sons, 1908).
David I. Harvie, ‘The Radium Century’, Endeavour 23 (1999), pp. 100–5.
Anthony Burton, Vision & Accident: The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: V&A Publications, 1999).
Robert Bud and (i.K. Roberts, Science versus Practice: Chemistry in Victorian Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).
See also Bud and Roberts, ‘Chemistry and the Concepts of Pure and Applied Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, in E. Torracca and F. Calascibetta, eds Storia e Fondamenti della Chimica (Rome: Accademia Nazionale delle Scienza, 1988, pp. 19–33);
Bud and Roberts, ‘Thinking About Science and Practice in British Education: The Victorian Roots of a Modern Dichotomy’, in P.W.G. Wright, ed. Industry and Higher Education (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1990, pp. 18–30). I should like to express my debt to Gerrylynn Roberts for the many conversations and discussions that underlie our shared publications.
‘Memorandum by the Prince Consort as to the Disposal of the Surplus from the Great Exhibition of 1851’, published as an appendix to Sir Thomas Martin, The Life of his Royal Highness the Prince Consort, 2 vols (London: Smith Elder, 1876), vol. 2, pp. 391–2 and 569–73.
Quoted in Christine Macleod, Heroes of Invention: Technology, Liberalism and British Identity, 1750–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 260.
Bennet Woodcroft, A Sketch of the Origin and Progress of Steam Navigation (London: Taylor, Walton and Maberley, 1848).
William Stanley Jevons, ‘The Use and Misuse of Museums’, in his Methods of Social Reform and other Papers (London: Macmillan, 1883), pp. 53–81.
Burton, Vision & Accident; see also Timothy Stevens and Peter Trippi, ‘An Encyclopaedia of Treasures’, in Malcolm Baker and Brenda Richardson, eds The Grand Design: The Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum. (London: V&A Publications, 1997), pp. 149–160.
See James Lees-Milne, The Bachelor Duke: William Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, 1790–1858 (Edinburgh: John Murray, 1991).
On Lockyer, see Jack Meadows, Science and Controversy: A Biography of Sir Norman Lockyer (London: Macmillan, 1972).
Indeed, Cole had already shown the south arcades to Bennet Woodcroft in February 1874. See Cole Diary 1874, 3 February. On George Wilson and technology, see R.G.W. Anderson, ‘What Is Technology?: Education through Museums in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, British Journal for the History of Science 25 (1992), pp. 169–84;
Geoffrey N. Swinney, ‘Reconstructed Visions: The Philosophies That Shaped Part of the Scottish National Collections’, Museum Management and Curatorship 21 (2006), pp. 128–42. I am grateful to Dr Swinney for the opportunity to discuss the nature of George Wilson’s museum.
See Ann Cooper, ‘For the Public Good: Henry Cole, His Circle and the Development of the South Kensington Estate’, unpublished PhD thesis, Open University, 1992, p. 284.
Deborah Jean Warner, ‘What Is a Scientific Instrument, When Did It Become One, and Why?’, British Journal for the History of Science 23 (1990), pp. 83–93.
See J.C. Maxwell, ‘General Considerations Concerning Scientific Apparatus’, in Handbook to the Special Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus, South Kensington Museum London, 1876, pp. 1–21.
General Scott, 1851 Commissioners to The Secretary of the Treasury, 21 June 1876, ‘A Museum of Scientific Instruments and Objects’, SMD, ED 79/23. See also ‘Eighth Report of the Special Committee of Enquiry appointed at the 104th Meeting of the Royal Commission’ 20 July 1877 Appendix A, Minutes of the 113th Meeting of the Commissioners of the 1851 Commission, p. 8, Archives of the Commissioners of the 1851 Commission, Imperial College London. Also see Hermione Hobhouse, The Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition. Art Science and Productive Industry. A History of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 (London: Athlone Press, 2002, p. 204).
John Percy, Letter from Dr [John] Percy to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and correspondence relating to the proposed removal of the Metallurgical Department of the Royal School of Mines from the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, to South Kensington (London: William Clowes, 1879).
On the history of the Pitt Rivers collection see Alison Petch, ‘Chance and certitude. Pitt Rivers and his first collection’, Journal of the History of Collections 18 (2006), pp. 256–66, and the papers in
B.A.L Cranstone and S. Seidenberg, The General’s Gift — A celebration of the Pitt Rivers Museum Centenary 1884–1984. JASO Occasional Paper No. 3 (Oxford: JASO/Pitt Rivers Museum, 1984).
Henry Roscoe, The Life and Experiences of Henry Enfield Roscoe D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S. Written by Himself (London: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 297–8.
A.G. Green, ed., Jubilee of the discovery of mauve and of the foundation of the coal-tar colour industry by Sir W. H. Perkin (London: Perkin Memorial Committee, 1906);
A.S. Travis, ‘Decadence, Decline and Celebration: Raphael Meldola and the Mauve Jubilee of 1906’, History and Technology 22 (2006), pp. 131–52.
See Dominik Geperth and Robert Gerwarth, Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain: Essays on Cultural Affinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Also see Gerard Delanty, ‘Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism: The Paradox of Modernity’, in Gerard Delanty and Krishan Kumar, eds The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism (London: Sage, 2006), pp. 357–68.
R.L. Morant, ‘The Complete Organisation of National Education of All Grades as Practised in Switzerland (1898)’, Special Reports on Educational Subjects, Vol. 3, c. 8988, p. 24, cited in G.R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency. A Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), chapter 7, p. 210.
See, for instance, the treatment of Morant by Michael Sanderson, Education and Economic Decline in Britain, 1870 to the 1990s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
E.J.R. Eaglesham, ‘The Centenary of Robert Morant’, British Journal of Educational Studies 12 (1963), pp. 5–18.
J. Dover Wilson, Humanism in the Continuation School (London: HMSO, 1921), pp. 67–8.
On the British Science Guild, and its links to the early Science Museum committees, see Roy Macleod, ‘Science for Imperial Efficiency and Social Change: Reflections on the British Science Guild, 1905–1936’, Public Understanding of Science 3 (1994), pp. 155–93.
David Follett, The Rise of the Science Museum under Henry Lyons (London: Science Museum, 1978).
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Bud, R. (2010). Infected by the Bacillus of Science: The Explosion of South Kensington. In: Morris, P.J.T. (eds) Science for the Nation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230283145_2
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