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Chronology of Science and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Shelley

David H. Guston, Ed Finn, Jason Scott Robert, Joey Eschrich, and Mary Drago (eds)

in Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds

The editors provide a brief chronology of important dates in the history of science in the context of Mary Shelley’s life and important aspects of the novel.

Science in the Basement: Selling the Home Lab in the Interwar Years

Rebecca Onion

in Innocent Experiments: Childhood and the Culture of Public Science in the United States

Companies selling chemistry sets expanded their offerings greatly in the years between World War I and World War II. In their marketing materials, the box design of the sets themselves, and the ... More

Companies selling chemistry sets expanded their offerings greatly in the years between World War I and World War II. In their marketing materials, the box design of the sets themselves, and the manuals included in the sets, companies articulated a vision of home science as a project pursued by boys in small groups, away from their mothers and sisters.Less

Architectures of Air: Media Ecologies of Smart Cities and Pollution¹

Jussi Parikka

in Architectural Materialisms: Nonhuman Creativity

In this chapter Jussi Parikka discusses air pollution and waste as media, data and environmental art created in the contemporary smart city. The way these, otherwise unwanted, elements are sensed and ... More

In this chapter Jussi Parikka discusses air pollution and waste as media, data and environmental art created in the contemporary smart city. The way these, otherwise unwanted, elements are sensed and perceived unveil the political subjectivity in an urban context and as data feedback from various readings, understandings and governance of the city. This sort of a materiality is one that is about folds between architectures, data and the chemistry of the air -a sort of a media ecology of multiple materialities. The creative power of smog that intertwines old computational infrastructures of urban pollution and new infrastructures such as monitors, programming and data storage is explained. The chapter focuses on urban environments as defined by the emergence of new forms of measurement of the city -and its airborne pollution - through smog sensors. The smart, modern city as defined through its unwanted elements, in this case, pollution and waste, are further discussed.Less

Introduction: Slow-Motion Mobiles

Matthew C. Hunter

in Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object

Scottish-born banker James Coutts sat for a portrait with painter Joshua Reynolds in the early 1770s. Painted on a panel of unprimed mahogany, the resulting picture is now a wreck. Flakes tear ... More

Scottish-born banker James Coutts sat for a portrait with painter Joshua Reynolds in the early 1770s. Painted on a panel of unprimed mahogany, the resulting picture is now a wreck. Flakes tear through the forehead, eye, and cheeks; they pierce Coutts’s visible ear and tatter his throat. So problematic was the panel that it was given in the 1850s to Scotland’s national art gallery as a means for teaching a moral lesson to aspiring artists about the dangers of Reynolds’s risky painting techniques. That conception of the first president of Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts is difficult to square with familiar assessments. Yet, Reynolds’s chemical experiments were intensively discussed and collected by his votaries. By the mid-nineteenth century, they were seen to bear on painting and photography alike. This introduction argues that the force of Reynolds’s chemical experiments is reducible to neither painting nor photography; instead, it opens a history of “temporally evolving chemical objects”—of materials known and valued for changing visibly in time, while affording conceptual reflection on time. This introduction defines the temporally evolving chemical object and maps the structure of the book as a relay through and beyond British pictorial arts of the long eighteenth century.Less

“Pictures … in time petrify’d”

Matthew C. Hunter

in Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object

This chapter surveys research into artificial phosphorus conducted in the 1670s by leading figures in the early Royal Society of London. Mastered by itinerant chymists from German-speaking lands, ... More

This chapter surveys research into artificial phosphorus conducted in the 1670s by leading figures in the early Royal Society of London. Mastered by itinerant chymists from German-speaking lands, artificial phosphorus could be synthesized from human waste, then rubbed onto visual art to make it glow in the dark. But, it also spoke to broader interests: studies of light and combustion, production of organic vitality, and other problems of central interest to Restoration experimentalists. Tracking phosphorus research through those networks, the chapter centers on a spectacular lecture read twice before the Royal Society in summer 1682 by Robert Hooke. The final installment of his lectures on light, Hooke’s text used competing preparations of artificial phosphorus to model the ontology of time and to explain key features of human temporality. Examining how Hooke’s controversial claims about time would be reconfigured by contemporaries such as Nehemiah Grew, the chapter concludes by examining the ways in which the phosphorus research theorized by Hooke would later be claimed in larger chemical genealogies of photographic image-making.Less

Space, Time, and Chemistry: Making Enlightenment “Photography” in the 1860s

Matthew C. Hunter

in Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object

This chapter considers how late-eighteenth-century chemical replicas after chemically unstable academic paintings were rediscovered in the early 1860s. Seeking to acquire a prototype of James Watt’s ... More

This chapter considers how late-eighteenth-century chemical replicas after chemically unstable academic paintings were rediscovered in the early 1860s. Seeking to acquire a prototype of James Watt’s steam engine from the Soho manufactory established by Matthew Boulton in the mid-1760s, curator Francis Pettit Smith unearthed a set of replicas, which he called “sun pictures.” Smith identified the images as early photographs. On that basis, he claimed that photography must have been invented at Soho in the final decades of the eighteenth century. Although Smith’s story found support among several leading photographers in the 1860s, it was strongly opposed by Matthew Piers Watt Boulton, grandson of the Soho industrialist. This chapter demonstrates how M.P.W. Boulton destroyed Smith’s story. It also highlights the ways in which Boulton simultaneously integrated Smith’s chemo-mechanical findings into his own aircraft designs. The chapter concludes by arguing for the extensive connections between the leading inventors of photography and combustion-engine research.Less

Art History in/as an Age of Combustion

Matthew C. Hunter

in Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object

The conclusion critically examines one possible legacy for the relay of chemical image-making and its fusions with combustion-engine research examined in this book: the Anthropocene. Noting ways in ... More

The conclusion critically examines one possible legacy for the relay of chemical image-making and its fusions with combustion-engine research examined in this book: the Anthropocene. Noting ways in which James Watt and British industrialism have figured in the historiography of an epoch of humanity’s influence on the global climate (and in critiques of the Anthropocene), the conclusion highlights the abiding, art-historical force of tools and concepts rooted in the work of Alois Riegl. Against persisting resistance within art history to interpretations privileging materials and techniques, it concludes by considering the contours and possibilities of an “elemental art history.”Less

The wonder of coal tar dyes

Carolyn Cobbold

in A Rainbow Palate: How Chemical Dyes Changed the West's Relationship with Food

British newspapers immediately heralded the invention of coal tar dyes as a victory for chemists and, in particular, Britain’s William Perkin. While experimenting with coal tar distillations of ... More

British newspapers immediately heralded the invention of coal tar dyes as a victory for chemists and, in particular, Britain’s William Perkin. While experimenting with coal tar distillations of aniline, Perkin synthesized mauveine, a vivid purple dye. Much of the rhetoric of wonder used by journalists was directly sourced from chemists themselves, particularly August Wilhelm von Hofmann, who ran the Royal College of Chemistry where Perkin made his discovery. However, it was not long before commentators became more skeptical of the dyes when their use in food and possible toxicity became known. The dyes became seen as foreign substances being used in food to deceive the consumer. Their image as a foreign interloper increased as production of the new dyes rapidly moved from Britain to Germany. By 1900, Germany manufactured 85% of the world’s production of chemical dyes compared with Britain’s 3%. Moreover, just five industrial companies controlled 90% of German production including BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and AGFA. The German chemical industry benefitted from a close allegiance between industry, the government, and academia, part of the Naturwissenschaft, or science-based technology integral to Germany’s social, cultural, and political unification and its attempt to compete with the colony-rich economies of Britain and France.Less

Introduction

Wolfgang Banzhaf and Lidia Yamamoto

in Artificial Chemistries

The introduction to Artificial Chemistries discusses its root in Artificial Life research before explaining with a simple example from the mathematical area of Arithmetic what we can imagine under an ... More

The introduction to Artificial Chemistries discusses its root in Artificial Life research before explaining with a simple example from the mathematical area of Arithmetic what we can imagine under an artificial chemistry. It explains how some fundamental questions of Artificial Life are connected to questions of Artificial Chemistry and shows a few of the general features we’d expect to be exhibited by an AC.Less

Optical Devices and Social Networks: 1804–1809

Melvyn C. Usselman

in Pure Intelligence: The Life of William Hyde Wollaston

This chapter describes how W. H. Wollaston’s expertise in linear optics led him to design and patent in 1804 meniscus lenses for improved eye glasses which he called periscopic spectacles. He also ... More

This chapter describes how W. H. Wollaston’s expertise in linear optics led him to design and patent in 1804 meniscus lenses for improved eye glasses which he called periscopic spectacles. He also suggested improvements to the camera lucida and microscopes that took advantage of curved lenses. He designed and patented in 1806 a novel and compact drawing aid he named a camera lucida, which was used by the sculptor Francis Chantrey to make preliminary drawings of his subjects. The device remained in wide use for sketching until well into the 20th century. The chapter also discusses Wollaston’s1805 paper on the forces of moving bodies in which he placed emphasis on the work potential of a body supplying energy to another over a finite distance. Wollaston’s move into new social and scientific networks in London, such as the Chemistry Club and the Geological Society, is described.Less

Meselson and Stahl

Frederic Lawrence Holmes

in Meselson, Stahl, and the Replication of DNA: A History of "The Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology"

This chapter focuses on Matthew Meselson, and how he subsequently came to make the acquaintance of Frank Stahl. Meselson, a first-year graduate student in the Chemistry Division at Caltech in 1953, ... More

This chapter focuses on Matthew Meselson, and how he subsequently came to make the acquaintance of Frank Stahl. Meselson, a first-year graduate student in the Chemistry Division at Caltech in 1953, first came face to face with the two papers Crick and Watson had recently published in Nature through an appointment with Max Delbruck. Delbruck was known to be friendly but characteristically abrupt, and the first thing he asked Meselson when they met was what Meselson thought about the two papers. When Meselson confessed that he knew nothing about them, Delbruck tossed reprints of the papers at Meselson and remarked, “Go and read these papers, and don't come back until you have.” Meselson took these remarks not as a sign of rejection but as an invitation to return when he was prepared to talk, and thus began his journey to become an electrochemist who might find some way to create life.Less

Small deformation theory of species diffusion coupled to elasticity

Lallit Anand and Sanjay Govindjee

in Continuum Mechanics of Solids

This chapter presents a coupled theory for transport of a single atomic (or molecular) chemical species through a solid that deforms elastically. Consideration is limited to isothermal conditions and ... More

This chapter presents a coupled theory for transport of a single atomic (or molecular) chemical species through a solid that deforms elastically. Consideration is limited to isothermal conditions and circumstances in which the deformations are small and elastic, and the changes in species concentration from a reference concentration are small --- a framework known as the theory of linear chemoelasticity. Underlying the presented approach is the notion that the solid can deform elastically but it retains its connectivity and does not itself diffuse. To account for the energy flow due to species transport, the notion of chemical potential of the species is introduced. First the basic equations of the fully-coupled linear theory of anisotropic linear chemoelasticity are derived, and then these equations are specialized for the case of isotropic materials.Less

The Great War: mobilising colonial knowledge and connections

Tamson Pietsch

in Empire of scholars: Universities, networks and the British academic world, 1850-1939

This chapter examines the role played by settler universities and scholars in the First World War. It argues that the war solidified the previously more porous borders of the British academic world, ... More

This chapter examines the role played by settler universities and scholars in the First World War. It argues that the war solidified the previously more porous borders of the British academic world, curtailing relations with Germany, and intensifying those with the settler empire. Focusing on mobilization and recruitment, war related research and schemes for soldier education, this chapter shows that – although missing from current accounts – colonial knowledge and connections were inscribed deep within British wartime science. Indeed, by drawing settler scholars into Britain and fostering their connections, the conflict helped extend into the interwar period the intimate scholarly networks that, since the end of the nineteenth century, had tied the British and settler universities to each other.Less

Oil Palms and the Industrial Revolution

Jonathan E. Robins

in Oil Palm: A Global History

Africa’s expanding exports of palm oil during the nineteenth century were mostly consumed by European industries. Palm oil became an important substitute commodity in the Industrial Revolution in ... More

Africa’s expanding exports of palm oil during the nineteenth century were mostly consumed by European industries. Palm oil became an important substitute commodity in the Industrial Revolution in products like soap, candles, and lubricating grease. Palm oil also served an important role in tinplating, enabling the mass production of canned industrial foods. Palm oil entered industrial foods by the 1870s in the form of margarine, leading to even greater demand for palm oil in Europe.Less

Medical Care and Medical Education, 1750–1825

William G. Rothstein

in American Medical Schools and the Practice of Medicine: A History

Medical care at the end of the eighteenth century, like that in any period, was determined by the state of medical knowledge and the available types of treatment. Some useful knowledge existed, but ... More

Medical care at the end of the eighteenth century, like that in any period, was determined by the state of medical knowledge and the available types of treatment. Some useful knowledge existed, but most of medical practice was characterized by scientific ignorance and ineffective or harmful treatments based largely on tradition. The empirical nature of medical practice made apprenticeship the dominant form of medical education. Toward the end of the century medical schools were established to provide the theoretical part of the student’s education, while apprenticeship continued to provide the practical part. The scientifically valid aspects of medical science in the late eighteenth century comprised gross anatomy, physiology, pathology, and the materia medica. Gross anatomy, the study of those parts of the human organism visible to the naked eye, had benefitted from the long history of dissection to become the best developed of the medical sciences. This enabled surgeons to undertake a larger variety of operations with greater expertise. Physiology, the study of how anatomical structures function in life, had developed at a far slower pace. The greatest physiological discovery up to that time, the circulation of the blood, had been made at the beginning of the seventeenth century and was still considered novel almost two centuries later. Physiology was a popular area for theorizing, and the numerous physiologically based theories of disease were, as a physician wrote in 1836, “mere assumptions of unproved, and as time has demonstrated, unprovable facts, or downright imaginations.” Pathology at that time was concerned with pathological or morbid anatomy, the study of the changes in gross anatomical structures due to disease and their relationship to clinical symptoms. The field was in its infancy and contributed little to medicine and medical practice. Materia medica was the study of drugs and drug preparation and use. Late eighteenth century American physicians had available to them a substantial armamentarium of drugs. Estes studied the ledgers of one New Hampshire physician from 1751 to 1787 (3,701 patient visits), and another from 1785 to 1791 (1,161 patient visits), one Boston physician from 1782 to 1795 (1,454 patient visits), and another from 1784 to 1791 (779 patient visits). Less

The Unity of Diversity: Wilhelm Ostwald’s World Formations

Markus Krajewski and Charles Marcrum

in World Projects: Global Information before World War I

This chapter discusses the world plans of Wilhelm Ostwald, a tenured professor of physical chemistry in University of Leipzig who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis, ... More

This chapter discusses the world plans of Wilhelm Ostwald, a tenured professor of physical chemistry in University of Leipzig who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria, and reaction velocities. He became a member of the Délégation pour l’adoption d’une langue auxiliaire internationale that attempted to standardize an auxiliary language by developing a new code of language for trade, industry, and scientific communication through the program world auxiliary language. Ostwald also conceptualized the world currency system designed to remove money-changing practice and make international transit more accessible, and the world format system that aimed to unify the format of documents (world format) and avoid arbitrariness of writing.Less

Medical Education, 1900–1950: General Trends and Basic Medical Sciences

William G. Rothstein

in American Medical Schools and the Practice of Medicine: A History

During the first half of the twentieth century, American medical education underwent drastic changes. Greater costs of operation and the requirements of licensing agencies forced many medical ... More

During the first half of the twentieth century, American medical education underwent drastic changes. Greater costs of operation and the requirements of licensing agencies forced many medical schools to close and most of the others to affiliate with universities. The surviving medical schools were able to raise their admission and graduation requirements, which was also made possible by the rise in the general educational level of the population. The growth of the basic medical sciences led to the development of a new kind of faculty member whose career was confined to the medical school. During the first half of the twentieth century, the educational level of the population rose significantly. The proportion of the 17-year-old population with high school educations increased from 6.3 percent in 1900 to 16.3 percent in 1920, 28.8 percent in 1930, and 49.0 percent in 1940. The number of bachelors’ degrees conferred per 100 persons 23 years old increased from 1.9 in 1900 to 2.6 in 1920, 5.7 in 1930, and 8.1 in 1940. Between 1910 and 1940, the number of college undergraduates more than tripled. Because the number of medical students did not increase, medical schools were able to raise their admission standards. At the same time, many new professions competed with medicine for students. Between 1900 and 1940, dentistry, engineering, chemistry, accounting, and college teaching, among others, grew significantly faster than the traditional professions of medicine, law, and the clergy. Graduate education also became an alternative to professional training. Between 1900 and 1940, the number of masters’ and doctors’ degrees awarded, excluding medicine and other first professional degrees, increased from 1,965 to 30,021, or from 6.7 to 13.9 percent of all degrees awarded. Colleges and universities decentralized their organizational structure to deal with the increasingly technical and specialized content of academic disciplines. They established academic departments that consisted of faculty members who shared a common body of knowledge and taught the same or related courses. Departments were given the responsibility of supervising their faculty members, recruiting new faculty, and operating the department’s academic program. By 1950, departments existed in most of the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Less

An Uncertain Enterprise: Learning to Heal in the Enlightenment

Thomas Neville Bonner

in Becoming a Physician: Medical Education in Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, 1750-1945

There was no more turbulent yet creative time in the history of medical study than the latter years of the eighteenth century. During this troubled era, familiar landmarks in medicine were fast ... More

There was no more turbulent yet creative time in the history of medical study than the latter years of the eighteenth century. During this troubled era, familiar landmarks in medicine were fast disappearing; new ideas about medical training were gaining favor; the sites of medical education were rapidly expanding; and the variety of healers was growing in every country. Student populations, too, were undergoing important changes; governments were shifting their role in medicine, especially in the continental nations; and national differences in educating doctors were becoming more pronounced. These transformations are the subject of the opening chapters of this book. These changes in medical education were a reflection of the general transformation of European society, education, and politics. By the century’s end, the whole transatlantic world was in the grip of profound social and political movement. Like other institutions, universities and medical schools were caught up in a “period of major institutional restructuring” as new expectations were placed on teachers and students. Contemporaries spoke of an apocalyptic sense of an older order falling and new institutions fighting for birth, and inevitably the practice of healing was also affected. From the middle of the century, the nations of Europe and their New World offspring had undergone a quickening transformation in their economic activity, educational ideas, and political outlook. By 1800, in the island kingdom of Great Britain, the unprecedented advance of agricultural and industrial change had pushed that nation into world leadership in manufacturing, agricultural productivity, trade, and shipping. Its population growth exceeded that of any continental state, and in addition, nearly three-fourths of all new urban growth in Europe was occurring in the British Isles. The effects on higher education were to create a demand for more practical subjects, modern languages, and increased attention to the needs of the thriving middle classes. Although Oxford and Cambridge, the only universities in England, were largely untouched by the currents of change, the Scottish universities, by contrast, were beginning to teach modern subjects, to bring practical experience into the medical curriculum, and to open their doors to a wider spectrum of students. Less