This address was delivered at the Annual General Meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, at Chelsea College, London, on 24 May 1980.

In keeping with the conventions of such a lecture, documentation has been confined to basic references.

Acknowledgements: It is a pleasure to thank the archivists of the University of Glasgow (Mr M. Moss), the University of Strathdyde (Professor S. G. E. Lythe), Imperial College London (Mrs Jeanne Pingree), and the City & Guilds (Mr T. G. Bunce) for their assistance. Professor Tomasuka Terakawa (University of Hiroshima) kindly answered my Japanese queries, while Dr Olive Checkland, of the University of Glasgow, and Professor Sami Kita, of the University of Soka, Tokyo, enthusiastically shared with me their research findings on the social and economic connexions between Victorian Scotland and Japan.

¹ Prince Itō, as quoted by Sharp, W. H., The educational system of Japan, Bombay, 1906, p. 206.Google Scholar Compare Itō's statement ‘That Japan can boast today of being able to undertake such industrial works as the construction of railways, telegraphs, telephones, shipbuilding, working of mines, and other manufacturing works entirely by the hands of Japanese engineers is mainly attributable to the College so ably established and set in motion by [Dyer]’, quoted in Dyer, Henry, Dai Nippon, the Britain of the East: A study in national evolution, London, 1904, p. 7.Google Scholar For the College's significance as a training ground for Japanese electrical prowess, see Imazu, Kenji, ‘The beginning of electric engineers [sic] in Japan’, Japanese studies history of science, 1978, 17, 13–26.Google Scholar

² Perry, John, ‘W. E. Ayrton’, The central [journal of the City and Guilds of London Institute, Central Institution, South Kensington], 1910, 7, 70.Google Scholar

³ Japan weekly mail, 24 08 1878.Google Scholar

⁴ Walker, E. G., ‘Finsbury Technical College’ The central, 1933, 30, 35–48 (35).Google Scholar

⁵ Dyer, H., Technical education in Glasgow and the West of Scotland, Glasgow, 1893, p. 5 (reprinted from Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow).Google Scholar

⁶ Japan weekly mail, 1878, 2, 52.Google Scholar

⁷ Hobsbawm, E. J., Industry and empire, London, 1968, p. 123Google Scholar; Burn, W. L., ‘Free trade in land: an aspect of the Irish question’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1949, 31, 61–74 (68).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also MacLeod, R. M., ‘Scientific advice for British India: imperial perceptions and administrative goals, 1898–1923’, Modern asian studies, 1975, 9, 343–84 (343–4).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Crowther, J. G., ‘Alexander Strange’, in Statesmen of science, London, 1965, 237–69 (242).Google Scholar

⁹ Fox, Grace, Britain and Japan, 1858–1883, Oxford, 1969.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Barr, Patt, The coming of the barbarians, London, 1967Google Scholar; The deer cry pavilion. A story of Westerners in Japan, 1868–1905, London, 1968.Google Scholar Other works which I have found useful, and which are not otherwise cited below, include: Ransome, Stafford, Japan in transition, London & New York, 1899Google Scholar, which describes the later engineering faculty of Tokyo University in 1896; Black, John R., Young Japan: Yokohama and Yedo. A narrative of the settlement and the city from the signing of the treatises in 1858 to the close of the year 1879, 2 vols., New York, London, & Yokohoma, 1883 (reprint ed. by Grace Fox, Tokyo, 1968)Google Scholar; ‘Les sciences physiques au Japon, 1868–92’, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, 1956, 9, 3–12Google Scholar; Hari, Masatoshi, ‘Introduction to the education of descriptive geometry and engineering drawing in the later Tokugawa regime and early Meiji period’, Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of the history of science, 1975, iii, 142–5Google Scholar; Ishiyama, Hiroshi, ‘Henry Dyer(1848–1918) and his draft regulations for [the] proposed institution of engineers’Google Scholar, ibid., iii, 211–14; Watanabe, Masao, ‘American science teachers in the early Meiji period’, Japanese studies in the history of science, 1976, 15, 127–44Google Scholar; Koizumi, Kenkichiro, ‘The emergence of Japan's first physicists, 1868–1900’, Historical studies in the physical sciences, 1975, 6, 3–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allen, G. C., ‘Education, science and the economic development of Japan’, Oxford review of education, 1978, 4, 27–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Chambers' encyclopaedia, London and Edinburgh, 1886, v, 687.Google Scholar

¹² Fox's study, op. cit. (9), is partly based upon the Jardine Matheson archives deposited at Cambridge.

¹³ Fox, ibid., p. 261.

¹⁴ From a speech to graduates of the Imperial University, quoted by Bartholomew, J. R., ‘Japanese modernization and the Imperial universities, 1876–1920’. Journal of Asian studies, 1978, 37, 251–71 (254).Google Scholar

¹⁵ ibid., p. 271.

¹⁶ ibid., p. 271. Inkster, Ian, ‘Meiji economic development in perspective. Revisionist comments upon the industrial revolution in Japan’, The developing economies (Tokyo), 1979, 17, 45–68, especially p. 54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Inkster, I., Japan as a development model? Relative backwardness and technological transfer, Bochum, 1980, chapter V.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Fox, , op. cit. (9), p. 548.Google Scholar

¹⁸ ibid., pp. 458–9. Harris, J. and Brock, W. H., ‘From Giessen to Gower Street: towards a biography of A. W. Williamson (1824–1904)’, Annals of science, 1974, 31, 95–130, especially pp. 122–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Between 1863 and 1866 Jardine & Matheson connived to send several other students to England before the Shogunate officially permitted overseas study after 1866. According to Fox (p. 460) some twenty Japanese students' names are found in the Calendars of University College London, 1865–70. Fox comments, on the basis of diplomatic correspondence, that many students ‘were in general without guidance and of some concern to the British Foreign Office, which wished the Japanese government to make an independent arrangement for their supervision’. Large numbers were recalled to Japan in 1874; see Japan weekly mail, 19 06 1874, 8 07 1874.Google Scholar The large influx of Japanese students at the University of Glasow did not begin until 1879 when the first graduates of the Imperial College of Engineering became eligible for study abroad. These students, and their later careers in Japan, are the subject ofa study, ‘Scotland and the industrialization of Japan, 1860–1914’, being made jointly by Mrs Olive Checkland (University of Glasgow) and Dr Masami Kita (University of Soka, Tokyo).

¹⁹ For Itō (1841–1909), see Hamada, Kenji, Prince Itō, London, 1936Google Scholar, and Morris, J., Makers of modern Japan, London, 1906, pp. 119–53.Google Scholar In 1868 Itō was Secretary of the Bureau of Foreign Affairs and a provincial governor. In 1869 he became Vice-Minister of the Department of Finance and Home Affairs, spending 1870–71 in America studying financial institutions. For convenience in citing Japanese names, I have followed Western practice in placing the family name last, viz, Hirobumi Ito, rather than Itō Hirobumi. In transliteration, a macron denotes a long vowel.

²⁰ UNESCO, History of industrial education in Japan, Tokyo, 1959, p. 31.Google Scholar I have amended the syntax.

²¹ Fox, , op. cit. (9), p. 464.Google Scholar

²² The Iwakura Mission was away from Japan from 23 December 1871 until 13 September 1973. See Mayo, Marlene J., ‘The Iwakura Mission to the United States and Europe, 1871–1873’, Researches in the social sciences in Japan, Columbia University East Asian Studies, No 6, 1959, pp. 28–47.Google Scholar Mayo implies that the English engineer Richard Brunton, then on leave of absence in Britain from building lighthouses, telegraphs, and railways in Japan, showed the Mission around the chief industrial sites of England and Scotland. On Brunton, see Fox, , op. cit. (9), chapter XIII.Google Scholar

²³ Cuddy, Brendan P., ‘The Royal Indian Engineering College, Cooper's Hill, 1871–1906. A case study of state involvement in professional civil engineering education’, University of London PhD thesis, 1980.Google Scholar

²⁴ The Ross-shire journal and general advertiser for the northern counties, 15 09 1882, p. 3Google Scholar (copy at Colindale Newspaper Library); partly quoted in History of the Kobu-daigako, Tokyo, 1931Google Scholar (the text is otherwise in Japanese).

²⁵ Dyer, , op. cit. (1), chapter I.Google Scholar

²⁶ Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1875–1878, 9, 212–16.Google Scholar See Oakley, C. A., A history of a faculty: engineering at Glasgow university, Glasgow, 1973.Google Scholar

²⁷ Low, D. A. (ed.), The Whitworth book, London, 1926, p. 151.Google Scholar Dyer also won Glasgow University's Watt Prize for an essay on Newtonian science in the eighteenth century (copy Glasgow University archives).

²⁸ Ransome's comment, made in 1899, is relevant: ‘The work accomplished by Mr. Dyer and his able staff of foreign professors will ever remain less noticed by the world in general than it ought to be, for the reason that it was all carried out so quietly; and although within twenty miles of a treaty port [Yokohoma], and in the capital of the country, it was out of the regular track of the tourist and the treaty-port resident. The professors, too, who did the work were leading a more or less retired life, as far as the rest of the European world in Japan was concerned’; Ransome, , op. cit. (10), p. 96.Google Scholar For an obituary of Dyer, see Engineering, 1918, 126, 291.Google Scholar

²⁹ Dyer, H., The education of civil and mechanical engineers, London, 1880.Google Scholar

³⁰ Dyer, , op. cit. (1), p. 2.Google Scholar

³¹ Russell, J. Scott, Systematic technical training for the English people, London, 1869.Google Scholar See Emmerson, George S., John Scott Russell, a great Victorian engineer and naval architect, London, 1977, especially pp. 253–7Google Scholar; and, in more detail, Emmerson, George S., Engineering education: a social history, Newton Abbot & New York, 1973Google Scholar, chapter IX (Emmerson's chapter on Japan, pp. 225–30, is disappointing). Note also Mabon, G. P., ‘Russell. A forgotten champion of technical education’, Vocational aspect, 1965, 17, 228–9.Google Scholar

³² The education and status of civil engineers in the United Kingdom and in foreign countries, London, 1870.Google Scholar For a good recent account of the debate, see Cuddy, , op. cit. (23), chapter I.Google Scholar

³³ Jenkin, F., ‘Technical education’ (11 01 1869)Google Scholar, reprinted in Papers, literary, scientific, etc, by the late Fleeming Jenkin, FRS, LLD, 2 vols., London, 1887, ii, 157–82.Google Scholar

³⁴ The half-time system of children's education established by the Factory Acts of 1833 and 1844, was another possible model. See Edmund, and Frow, Ruth, A survey of the half-time system of education, Manchester, 1970.Google Scholar For comments on the development of sandwich courses, and the rival claims of Glasgow University, the University College of Bristol, and Glasgow Technical College to have originated the system, see Smithers, Alan G., Sandwich courses: an integrated education?, Windsor, Berks, 1976, pp. 15–16.Google Scholar Colonel George Chesney, who had been professor of Surveying at the ‘Thomasson’ Civil Engineering College at Roorkee, which the British Government had established in 1848 in order to train Indians and Europeans for employment in the Indian Public Works Department (Cuddy, , op. cit. (23), chapter IIGoogle Scholar), also established the ‘sandwich principle’ at Cooper's Hill in 1871 (ibid., p. 91, and chapter IV, passim). Chesney's proposals, which are not mentioned by Dyer, could nevertheless have been known to him through ‘A return to an address of the Honourable the House of Commons dated 15 March 1871, for a copy of all correspondence which has taken place up to the present time between the Secretary of State for India in Council and the Governor General of India in Council, in reference to the establishment of an engineering college at Cooper's Hill’, Parliamentary papers, 1871, No 115.Google Scholar Since the Glasgow University Engineering Department feared that Cooper's Hill would undermine its near monopoly of placing its graduates in India, it seems very probable that Dyer would have been interested.

³⁵ For Thomson's physics laboratory, see Thompson, S. P., The life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs, 2 vols., London, 1910, ii, chapter VIIGoogle Scholar, and the letter from Thomson to the Trustees of the Ferguson Trust Fund, 4 February 1858, Glasgow University Library, Kelvin Papers, MS.T154.

³⁶ Dyer's ‘sources’ are discussed in his letter to Itō, 1 October 1877, printed in Imperial College of Engineering, Reports by the principal and professors for the period 1873–1877, Tokei, 1877, pp. 3–62 (copy Mitchell Library, Glasgow).Google Scholar

³⁷ Fox, , op. cit. (9), p. 464.Google Scholar

³⁸ Dyer, , op. cit. (1), p 2.Google Scholar

³⁹ Akabane was 12 km. north of the College and about 8 km. north-west from Hongō, the present site of the University of Tokyo. The Akabane works were given over to the Japanese navy in 1883. See Yamamura, Kozo, ‘Success illgotten? The role of Meiji militarism in Japan's technological progress’, Journal of economic history, 1977, 37, 113–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁰ A committee history of the Kobu-daigakko was published in Japanese in Tokyo in 1931 (n. 24, above), and there exists a Japanese thesis on the College by Somchai Priyawatanawit of Hitotsubashi University; I thank Ian Inkster for this reference. Information on the College in English is readily obtainable from its annually published Calendar (collections at British Library, and Universities of Glasgow and Toronto), and from contemporary accounts in English periodicals and newspapers. See also Dyer, , op. cit. (1)Google Scholar; Dixon, William Gray, The land of the morning: an account of Japan and its people based on four years' residence in that country, Edinburgh, 1882Google Scholar; and the Report of Her Majesty's Secretary of the British Legation (Robert G. Watson), ‘On the present education system of Japan’, Parliamentary papers, 1874, 65, 53–81.Google Scholar Watson's description is clearly drawn from the College's first Calendar. For contemporary views, see Japan weekly mail, 9 02 1878, pp. 132–5Google Scholar; 16 February 1878, pp. 152–6.

⁴¹ Chastel de Boinville was the son of an Anglo-French clergyman who moved to Glasgow in 1871 and was posted to Japan as a draughtsman. He became head of the Public Works Building Department in 1874. See his obiluzry, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1896–1897, 4, 359–60.Google Scholar

⁴² The quadrangle, which is illustrated in Kobu-daigakko (n. 24, above) and Reports (n. 36, above), was never completed.

⁴³ Dixon, , op. cit. (40), pp. 170–1.Google Scholar For some more details connected with earthquake precautions, see Dyer, , Minutes and Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers, 1885–1886, 83, 309–12.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ For Ayrton (1847–1908), see (i) Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1911, 85A, i–viiiGoogle Scholar, and (ii) the special issue of The central, 04 1910, 7.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Reports, op. cit. (36), 29–30.Google Scholar Contrast Perry's description of Ayrton's 1878 laboratory in his ‘The teaching of technical physics’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 1880, 28, 167–76Google Scholar; reprinted in Perry, J., England's neglect of science, London, 1900.Google Scholar His description comes from an anonymous article, ‘A visit to Professor Ayrton's laboratory’, Japan weekly mail, 26 10 1878, pp. 1129–31.Google Scholar Perry's lecture was illustrated with drawings of the College which do not appear to have survived, though some details of fixtures are to be found in Robins, E. C., Technical school and college buildings, London, 1887.Google Scholar It is clear to me that Ayrton's laboratory at Finsbury was modelled on its predecessor in Tokyo. For Finsbury see Robins, ibid., pp. 145–6.

⁴⁶ For Perry (1850–1920), who had studied engineering at Queen's University, Belfast (BE, 1870), taught physics at Clifton College, Bristol, and been a research assistant of W. Thomson's at Glasgow, 1874–5, see Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1926, 111A, i–vii.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ For a list of these, see Reports, op. cit. (36), p. 30.Google Scholar In an obituary of Ayrton, op. cit. (44, i), p. ii, Perry implies that the research was done at night.

⁴⁸ Besides Ayrton and Perry, who had both been personal assistants to Thomson in Glasgow (Ayrton was also known to Williamson as a former graduate of University College London), the staff consisted of: Edward Divers (1837–1912), chemistry (a pupil of Williamson's); David F. Marshall, mathematics (an Edinburgh graduate); John Milne (1850–1913), mining geology and mineralogy; Edmund F. Mondy, metallurgy and technical drawing (a product of the School of Mines); Josiah Condor (1852–1920), architecture; R. Rymer Jones, surveying; and William Craigie, English (Craigie died in 1877 and was succeeded by Dixon). For other assistants, see the College Calendars.

⁴⁹ Japan weekly mail (1873), as quoted by Watson, , op. cit. (40), p. 106.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ The number of foreigners in government employment reached its peak in 1874, with two percent of national expenditure going on their salaries which, individually, were often ten times those paid to native Japanese. See Nakayama, Shigeru, Characteristics of scientific development in Japan, New Delhi, 1977, p. 44.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ayrton, W. E., ‘Presidential address: electrotechnics’, Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1892, 21, 5–36 (6).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵² Bellot, H. H., University College London, 1826–1926, London, 1929, pp. 308–9.Google Scholar

⁵³ Livery Companies' Committee, Report on technical education, London, 1878.Google Scholar See also Girtin, Tom, The triple crown: a narrative history of the Drapers' Company, 1364–1964, London, 1964Google Scholar; Lang, Jennifer, City and Guilds of London Institute centenary, 1878–1978, London, 1978.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Walker, , op. cit. (4)Google Scholar; Armstrong, H. E., ‘The City and Guilds of London Institute: its origins and development’, The central, 1938, 35, 14–45Google Scholar; Eyre, J. V., Henry Edward Armstrong, 1848–1937, London, 1958Google Scholar; Brock, W. H., ‘An experiment in technical education’, New scientist, 22 11 1979, pp. 622–3.Google Scholar The surviving papers of the College are housed with the City and Guilds' archives which are at present being transferred to the Guildhall Library, London.

⁵⁵ See Eyre, , op. cit. (54)Google Scholar, and Brock, W. H. (ed.), H. E. Armstrong and the teaching of science, 1880–1930, Cambridge, 1973.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Armstrong, H. E., ‘The beginnings of Finsbury and the Central’, The central, 1934, 31, 1–15 (7).Google Scholar The historian will concur with Armstrong's judgement. Ayrton and Armstrong both moved to the Central Institution established by the City and Guilds at South Kensington, but their teaching there was compartmentalized and divorced. Perry stayed at Finsbury until 1896, when he moved to the Royal College of Science at South Kensington, an institution then quite separate from the Central Institution.

⁵⁷ Brock, W. H., ‘Observe, experiment and conclude. Finsbury College's new course of experimental philosophy in 1879–80’, History of Education Society bulletin, Autumn 1980, 26, 46–50.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Brock, W. H. and Price, M. H., ‘Squared paper in the nineteenth century: instrument of science and engineering, and symbol of reform in mathematical education’, Educational studies in mathematics, 1980, 11, 365–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁹ Ayrton, , op. cit. (51), p. 6.Google Scholar See also Magnus, Philip, Technical education. The introductory address… at the opening of the Finsbury technical college on February 19th, 1883, London, 1883.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Ayrton, , op. cit. (51), p. 9.Google Scholar

⁶¹ , J. S. and Thompson, H. G., Silvanus Phillips Thompson: his life and letters, London, 1920.Google Scholar For Thompson's support of the sandwich principle, in which cites his experience of it when a lecturer at University College, Bristol, see Report to the committee [of the City and Guilds] on the status and outlook of the City & Guilds Technical College, Finsbury, n.d. [1901], p. 7 (copy City & Guilds archives).

⁶² Smithers, , op. cit. (34).Google Scholar See Report of the committee appointed on 24 November 1903 … upon the subject of the best methods of education and training for all classes of engineers, London, 1906.Google Scholar

⁶³ The evidence for Queen's University, Belfast, is equivocal. According to Moody, T. W. and Beckett, J. C., Queen's Belfast, 1845–1949: the history of a university, 2 vols., Belfast and London, 1959Google Scholar, the two-year diploma course in engineering established in 1849 had to be followed by three years in an engineering workshop before a diploma examination could be sat (p. 146). The requirement of workshop training was abandoned in 1859 when the academic course was increased to three years. The BE degree was introduced in 1868, and it seems some candidates, most notably John Perry himself, sat the degree ‘sandwich’ style, see Perry, 's obituary, op. cit. (46), p. i.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Following the creation of Western-style government under Itō in December 1885, the Ministry of Public Works was abolished and many government enterprises placed in the hands of private companies. The Kobu-Daigakko became the responsibility of a new Ministry of Education which made it part of a new Imperial University of Tokyo on 2 March 1886. Dyer's successor as Professor of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Charles Dickinson West, remained in the Engineering Faculty well into the twentieth century. However, with the exception of Divers, who stayed as Professor of Chemistry until 1899, the other British professors were replaced by Japanese. Teaching continued in the original premises until new buildings on the Imperial University site at Hongō were opened in 1888. The original College buildings continued in use as museums and schools until destroyed in the great earthquake of 1 September 1923. The site is at present occupied by the Ministry of Education.

⁶⁵ Rae, J. A., ed., History of Allan Glen's school, 1853–1953, Glasgow, 1953.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Dyer fits the interpretation of ‘public science’ offered by Turner, Frank M., ‘Public science in Britain’, Isis, 1980, 71, 589–608.Google Scholar Dyer's later writings include Valedictory address to the students of the Imperial College of Engineering, Tokyo, 1882Google Scholar; The foundation of social politics, Glasgow, 1889Google Scholar; A modern university with special reference to the requirements of science, Perth, 1889Google Scholar; Christianity and social problems, Glasgow, 1890Google Scholar; The influence of modern industry on social and economic conditions, Manchester, 1892Google Scholar; Technical education, loc. cit. (5)Google Scholar; Science teaching in schools, London, 1893Google Scholar; Education and work, Dunfermline, 1906Google Scholar; Education and the industrial training of boys and girls, Glasgow, 1913.Google Scholar Most of Dyer's library of about 4,000 volumes, including the works cited, were donated to the Mitchell [Public] Library in Glasgow, c 1920.

⁶⁷ See, for example, The Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College Calendar for the year 1888–89—et seq. A set is kept in the Andersonian Library Archives, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

⁶⁸ ibid., p. 43.

⁶⁹ Dyer, , op. cit. (5), p. 5Google Scholar and Dyer, , op. cit. (1), p. 11 for the same claim.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Armytage's, W. H. G. essays are: The American influence on English education, London, 1967Google Scholar; The French influence on English education, London, 1968Google Scholar; Looking north; influence and inference from Sweden in English education, Arthur Mellows Memorial Trust Lecture, Peterborough, 1969Google Scholar; The German influence on English education, London, 1969Google Scholar; The Russian influence of English education, London, 1969.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Dyer, , Education and work, op. cit. (66), p. 20Google Scholar. Dyer, Compare, op. cit. (1), 13Google Scholar: ‘The engineer is the real revolutionist, for his work changes social and economic conditions and brings forces into action which are more powerful than anything which can be done by mere legislation’.