Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T20:45:14.070Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lecture demonstrations and the real world: the case of cart-wheels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Jane Wess
Jane Wess
Affiliation:
Science Museum, South Kensington, London SW7 2DD.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A quotation from J. T. Desaguliers, one of the foremost scientific lecturers in England until his death in 1744, contrasts the use of demonstrations to show physical principles and those designed to imitate real situations:

I have indeed a Machine with brass wheels whose steel axes have very small pivots nicely made that any of the wheels set in motion will turn for the space of more than half an hour… but the use of my machine being chiefly to show how near these kinds of experiments may be brought to agree with a mathematical theory; we cannot expect that any carriage to bear weight can have so little friction. Therefore I choose to relate Monsieur De Camus's Experiments made on Models of Carriages of an inch to a Foot every way representing Carts and Waggons… because it shows us directly what is the real Friction in the carriages at present in use.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 79 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Desaguliers, J. T., A Course of Experimental Philosophy, 2nd edn, 2 vols., London, 1744–1745, i, 211.Google Scholar

2 Stewart, L., The Rise of Public Science, Cambridge, 1992, 106.Google Scholar

3 Stewart, , op. cit. (2), 61, 253, 361.Google Scholar

4 Morton, A. Q., ‘Lectures on natural philosophy in London, 1750–1765: S. C. T. Demainbray (1710–1782) and the “‡Inattention” of his countrymen’, BJHS (1990), 7, 411–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also in Morton, A. Q. and Wess, J. A., Public and Private Science, Oxford, 1993, chs. 2 and 3.Google Scholar

5 Heilbron, J. L., Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries. A Study of Early Modern Physics, Los Angeles and London, 1979, 14.Google Scholar

6 Morton, and Wess, , op. cit. (4).Google Scholar

7 Millburn, J. R., Benjamin Martin: Author, Instrument Maker, and ‘Country Showman’, Leyden, 1976CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also his ‘The London evening courses of Benjamin Martin and James Ferguson, eighteenth century lecturers on experimental philosophy’, Annals of Science (1983), 40, 437–55Google Scholar, and ‘James Ferguson's lecture tour of the English Midlands 1771’, Annals of Science (1985), 42, 397–415Google Scholar. Also King, H. C. and Millburn, J. R., Wheelwright of the Heavens. The Life and Work of James Ferguson FRS, London, 1988.Google Scholar

8 Hauksbee, F. and Whiston, W., A Course of Mechanical, Optical, Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Experiments. To be perform'd by Francis Hawksbee; and the explanatory notes to be read by William Whiston, M.A., London, 1714Google Scholar. Desaguliers, J. T., A Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy, c. 1717, Bodleian Library, MS Rawl d. 871Google Scholar; A Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy, London, 1739Google Scholar, Oxford Museum of the History of Science. Griffiss, W., A Short Account of a Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy and Astronomy, 1746, P. J. Wallis's collection and the Wagner Institute of Science, PhiladelphiaGoogle Scholar. Jurin, J., ‘Proposals for carrying on by subscription A Compleat Course of Mechanicks’, Newcastle Courant, 1712, 24/26 NovemberGoogle Scholar. Donn, B., An Enlarged Syllabus of a course of Lectures in Experimental Philosophy, Bristol, 1780.Google Scholar

9 Morton, and Wess, , op. cit. (4), cat. nos. D51 and D22.Google Scholar

10 Morton, and Wess, , op. cit. (4), cat. no. D10.Google Scholar

11 Albert, W., ‘The turnpike trusts’, in Transport in the Industrial Revolution (ed. Aldcroft, D. H. and Freeman, M. J.), Manchester, 1983Google Scholar, and his The Turnpike Road System in England 1663–1840, London, 1972Google Scholar. Pawson, E., Transport and Economy: The Turnpike Roads of Eighteenth Century Britain, London, 1977Google Scholar. Jackman, T. W., The Development of Transport in Modern England, 3rd edn, London, 1966.Google Scholar

12 Gentleman's Magazine (1749), 19, 219.Google Scholar

13 Gentleman's Magazine (1852), 22, 552.Google Scholar

14 Albert, W., ‘Popular opposition to turnpike trusts in early eighteenth century England’, Journal of Transport History (1979), 5 (NS), 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Pawson, , op. cit. (11), figs. 27 and 29Google Scholar, and Albert, (1983), op. cit. (11), fig. 4.Google Scholar

16 Jackman, , op. cit. (11), 285.Google Scholar

17 Hauksbee, and Whiston, , op. cit. (8)Google Scholar; Desaguliers, , op. cit. (8).Google Scholar

18 Donn, , op. cit. (8).Google Scholar

19 Desaguliers, , op. cit. (1), i, 233.Google Scholar

20 Ferguson, J., ‘The utility of large wheels in wheel-carriages demonstrated’, Gentleman's Magazine (1771), 41, 118.Google Scholar

21 Desaguliers, , op. cit. (1), i, 220.Google Scholar

22 Morton, and Wess, , op. cit. (4), cat. no. D19.Google Scholar

23 Chabrol, Le Pere F., ‘Abrege des leçons de physique experimentalle, données en 1753, par le docteur Mainbray: avec des remarques critiques’, 1753, Bordeaux Academie des Sciences.Google Scholar

24 Desaguliers, , op. cit. (1), i, 200–11.Google Scholar

25 Demainbray, S. C. T., The Syllabus of a Course of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, London, 1754Google Scholar. Oxford Museum of the History of Science.

26 Desaguliers, , op. cit. (1), i, 235–6 (kennels), 213 (shoeing with strips of iron), 234–5 (nails).Google Scholar

27 Adams, G., ‘A Description of an Apparatus for Explaining the Principles of Mechanics’, 1761/1762, MS, 74. The Science Museum.Google Scholar

28 Desaguliers, , op. cit. (1), i, 214.Google Scholar

29 Morton, and Wess, , op. cit. (4), cat. no. D112.Google Scholar

30 Gentleman's Magazine (1745), 15, 151.Google Scholar

31 Gentleman's Magazine (1751), 21, 321.Google Scholar

32 Gentleman's Magazine (1752), 22, 408.Google Scholar

33 Gentleman's Magazine (1753), 23, 291.Google Scholar

34 Gentleman's Magazine (1755), 25, 232.Google Scholar

35 Gentleman's Magazine (1754), 24, 473–4.Google Scholar

36 Gentleman's Magazine (1754), 24, 328.Google Scholar

37 Gentleman's Magazine (1754), 24, 473, and (1755), 25, 376.Google Scholar

38 Gentleman's Magazine (1755), 25, 376.Google Scholar

39 Pawson, , op. cit. (11), 53.Google Scholar

40 Sharp, J., Rolling Carts and Waggons, London, c. 1773Google Scholar. Broadsheet, Science Museum Pictorial Collection.

41 Gentleman's Magazine (1754), 24, 376.Google Scholar

42 Gentleman's Magazine (1746), 16, 318.Google Scholar

43 Albert, (1972), op. cit. (11), 134.Google Scholar

44 Gentleman's Magazine (1765), 35, 93.Google Scholar

45 Gentleman's Magazine (1773), 43, 558.Google Scholar

46 Bourn, D., A Treatise on Wheel Carriages Shewing their Present Defects With a Plan and Description of a Newly Constructed Waggon etc, London, 1763.Google Scholar

47 Sharp, , op. cit. (40).Google Scholar

48 Gentleman's Magazine (1773), 43, 558.Google Scholar

49 Jackman, , op. cit. (11), 225, footnote.Google Scholar

50 Morton, and Wess, , op. cit. (4), cat. no. D110.Google Scholar

51 Morton, and Wess, , op. cit. (4), cat. no. M58.Google Scholar

52 Jacob, J., Observations on the Structure and Draught of Wheel Carriages, London, 1773, 73.Google Scholar

53 Jacob, , op. cit. (52), 73.Google Scholar

54 I am grateful to Larry Stewart who has pointed out that Desaguliers was involved in promoting turnpikes during 1725–26. This may indicate a closer relationship between lecturers and turnpike trustees than I had previously surmised.

55 Stewart, , op. cit. (2), p. xix.Google Scholar