Book contents
- Imperial Science
- Science in History
- Imperial Science
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Prologue: “An Imperial Science”
- 1 “An Ill-Understood Effect of Induction”
- 2 Wildman Whitehouse, William Thomson, and the First Atlantic Cable
- 3 Redeeming Failure
- 4 Units and Standards
- 5 The Ohm, the Speed of Light, and Maxwell’s Theory of the Electromagnetic Field
- 6 To Rule the Waves
- Epilogue Full Circle
- Bibliography
- Index
Prologue: “An Imperial Science”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
- Imperial Science
- Science in History
- Imperial Science
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Prologue: “An Imperial Science”
- 1 “An Ill-Understood Effect of Induction”
- 2 Wildman Whitehouse, William Thomson, and the First Atlantic Cable
- 3 Redeeming Failure
- 4 Units and Standards
- 5 The Ohm, the Speed of Light, and Maxwell’s Theory of the Electromagnetic Field
- 6 To Rule the Waves
- Epilogue Full Circle
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In January 1889, in the wake of Heinrich Hertz’s dramatic discovery of electromagnetic waves, the British physicist Oliver Lodge declared that with this experimental confirmation of James Clerk Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory of light, “the whole domain of Optics is annexed to Electricity, which has thus become an imperial science.” Lodge had hit on a very up-to-date way to express the preeminence electrical science had achieved by the last decades of the nineteenth century. But in 1889 electricity was an imperial science in a less metaphorical sense as well: it lay at the scientific heart of submarine telegraphy, one of the characteristic technologies of the Victorian British Empire.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Imperial ScienceCable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire, pp. 1 - 2Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021