Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T23:33:06.893Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Replication, re-placing and naval science in comparative context, c.1868–1904†

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2012

DON LEGGETT
DON LEGGETT*
Affiliation:
Centre for the History of the Sciences, School of History, Rutherford College, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NX, UK. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The test tank broadly embodied the late nineteenth-century endeavour to ‘use science’ in industry, but the meaning given to the tank differed depending on the experienced communities that made it part of their experimental and engineering practices. This paper explores the local politics surrounding three tanks: William Froude's test tank located on his private estate in Torquay (1870), the Denny tank in Dumbarton (1884) and the University of Michigan test tank (1903). The similarities and peculiarities of test tank use and interpretation identified in this paper reveal the complexities of naval science and contribute to the shaping of an alternative model of replication. This model places the emphasis on actors at sites of replication that renegotiated the meaning of the original Froude tank, and re-placed the local values and conditions which made it a functional instrument of scientific investigation.

All the European [test tank] stations are modelled on the station at Haslar; [yet] each station had its own individuality which I will try to throw into relief, avoiding tedious repetitions or comparisons.1

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2012

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 Peabody, Cecil H., ‘Personal impressions of ship-model towing stations’, Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (1906) 14, pp. 43–51, 46Google Scholar.

2 Peabody, op. cit. (1), p. 43.

3 For nineteenth-century hydrodynamics and experiment see Marsden, Ben, ‘The administration of the “engineering science” of naval architecture at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831–1872’, Yearbook of European Administrative History (2008) 20, pp. 67–94Google Scholar.

4 Peabody, op. cit. (1), p. 46.

5 Peabody, op. cit. (1), p. 47.

6 Ophir, Adi and Shapin, Steven, ‘The place of knowledge: a methodological survey’, Science in Context (1991) 1, pp. 1–16, 15–16Google Scholar.

7 Collins, H.M., Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985, pp. 79–112Google Scholar; Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 225–272, 226–27Google Scholar.

8 Peter Galison, ‘Material culture, theoretical culture, and delocalization’, in John Krige and Dominique Pestre (eds.), Companion to Science in the Twentieth Century, London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 669–682, 675–676.

9 Galison, op. cit. (8), p. 680; idem, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997, pp. 803–844.

10 Simon Schaffer, ‘Late Victorian metrology and its instruments: a manufactory of ohms’, in Robert Bud and Susan E. Cozzens (eds.), Invisible Connections: Instruments, Institutions and Science, Bellingham: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1991, pp. 23–49, 23.

11 The phrase ‘experienced communities’ is used by Benedict Anderson to refer to the unique, local facets of life, work and ideology that bind a group of people in a place. See Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1983Google Scholar. Also see de Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life (tr. Steven F. Rendall), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, p. 16Google Scholar; Livingstone, David N., Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, p. 12Google Scholar.

12 For a fuller discussion of these issues see Kohler, Robert E., ‘Lab history: reflections’, Isis (2008) 99, pp. 761–768, 766–767Google Scholar.

13 Jay Winter, ‘The practices of metropolitan life in wartime’, in Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919, a Cultural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 1–19, 8–9. Also see Grew, Raymond, ‘The case for comparing histories’, American Historical Review (1980) 85, pp. 763–788, 766CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Secord, James A., ‘Knowledge in transit’, Isis (2004) 95, pp. 654–672, 659Google Scholar.

15 Sachse, Carola and Walker, Mark, ‘Introduction: a comparative perspective’, Osiris (2005) 20, pp. 1–20, 10Google Scholar; Mark Walker, Science and Ideology: A Comparative History, London: Routledge, 2003; Roy Porter and Mikulás Teich (eds.), The Scientific Revolution in National Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992; Adams, Mark B. (ed.), The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil and Russia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990Google Scholar.

16 Cohen, Deborah, ‘Comparative history: buyer beware’, Germany History Institute Bulletin (2001) 29, pp. 24–26Google Scholar.

17 Cohen, op. cit. (16), pp. 23–33, 28–29.

18 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison recently argued that there are ‘developments that unfold on a temporal and geographic scale that can only be recognized at the local level once they have been spotted from a more global perspective’. See Daston and Galison, Objectivity, New York: Zone Books, 2007, p. 47Google Scholar.

19 Thiesen, William, Industrializing American Shipbuilding: The Transformation of Ship Design and Construction, 1820–1920, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2006Google Scholar.

20 These model experiments are examined in detail in Simon Schaffer, ‘Fish and ships: models in the age of reason’, in Soraya de Chadarevian and Nick Hopwood (eds.), Models: The Third Dimension of Science, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, pp. 71–105, 91–96.

21 Morrell, Jack and Thackray, Arnold, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981, pp. 259–260Google Scholar.

22 Tom Wright, ‘Ship hydrodynamics, 1710–1880’, PhD thesis, Science Museum/University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, 1983, p. 97.

23 Rankine, W.J. Macquorn, ‘Remarks on Mr Froude's theory on the rolling of ships’, Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects (1862) 3, pp. 22–45Google Scholar; Russell, John Scott, ‘Postscript to Mr Froude's remarks on rolling’, Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects (1863) 4, pp. 276–283Google Scholar.

24 For these theories of ship resistance and their BAAS context see Marsden, op. cit. (3), pp. 67–94.

25 Copy of Reports of the Behaviour of H.M.S. ‘Devastation’ on her Passage from England to Malta. London: HMSO, 1876; Brown, David K., ‘William Froude and “the way of a ship in the sea”’, Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and the Arts (1992) 124, pp. 207–231Google Scholar, esp. 216.

26 William Froude to Hugh Childers, 11 December 1868, Admiralty papers, National Archive, London (subsequently ADM), 116/167.

27 Froude to Childers, 11 December 1868, ADM 116/167.

28 Froude to Childers, 11 December 1868, ADM 116/167.

29 Henry Marc Brunel to Froude, 14 July 1873, Henry Marc Brunel papers, Bristol University, Special Collections, Letter Book 14.

30 [Lords of the Admiralty], Design of Ships of War: Copy of the Instructions Given by the Admiralty to the Committee on Designs for Ships of War, London: HMSO, 1871, p. xi.

31 James Spedding to Childers, 2 April 1869, ADM 116/167.

32 The project to establish a test tank at the National Physical Laboratory (1911) was pursued after the Admiralty's repeated refusal to INA shipbuilders. The NPL did not wish to finance a tank for the shipbuilding industry, and so it was only established after Alfred Yarrow agreed to pay for the tank in full. [Biles, J.H.], ‘Introductory proceedings’, Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects (1902) 44, p. xlGoogle Scholar; ‘The opening of the National Experimental Tank at the National Physical Laboratory’, Nature (13 July 1911) 87, pp. 57–58.

33 Pollard, Sidney and Robertson, Paul, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870–1914, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979, pp. 133–134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 For Victorian shipbuilding on the Clyde see Smith, Crosbie and Scott, Anne, ‘“Trust in providence”: building confidence into the Cunard line of steamers’, Technology and Culture (2007) 48, pp. 471–496Google Scholar. For the Dennys see Denny, William & Brothers, Denny, Dumbarton, 1844–1950, Edinburgh: McLagan & Cumming, 1950Google Scholar.

35 Ward, John, ‘Memoir of the late William Denny, F.R.S.E., President of the Institution’, Transactions of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland (1887) 30, pp. 257–258Google Scholar.

36 Bruce, A.B., The Life of William Denny. Shipbuilder, Dumbarton, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1889, pp. 40–42, 59–70Google Scholar.

37 Bruce, op. cit. (36), p. 70; Smith, Crosbie and Wise, M. Norton, Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 24, 730Google Scholar.

38 Italics in the original. William H. White, [a memoir of William Denny], May 1888, quoted in Bruce, op. cit. (36), p. 227; Ward, op. cit. (35), pp. 269–270; William Denny to Froude, 17 February 1873, in Bruce, op. cit. (36), p. 141. Dennys were not alone in seeking to apply science to the shipbuilding industry, but the majority of other Clyde-based shipbuilders tended to focus on the thermodynamics of steam engines rather than on the hydrodynamics of hull shapes. See Marsden, Ben and Smith, Crosbie, Engineering Empires: A Cultural History of Technology in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 107–128Google Scholar.

39 Denny to Froude, 17 February 1873, in Bruce, op. cit. (36), p. 141.

40 Denny, William, ‘The difficulties of speed calculations’, Transactions of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland (1875) 18, quoted in Bruce, op. cit. (36), p. 144Google Scholar.

41 Denny to Froude, 14 August 1878, quoted in Bruce, op. cit. (36), p. 196.

42 Froude, William, ‘On the ratio of indicated to effective horse-power as elucidated by Mr Denny's M.M. trials at varied speeds’, Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects (1876) 17, pp. 167–181Google Scholar; Froude, William, ‘On experiments upon the effect produced on the wave-making resistance of ships by length of parallel middle body’, Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects (1877) 18, pp. 77–97Google Scholar.

43 Froude, ‘Indicated to effective horse-power’, quoted in Bruce, op. cit. (36), pp. 149–150.

44 Denny to Froude, 17 February 1873, quoted in Bruce, op. cit. (36), p. 141.

45 Frank Purvis to R.E. Froude, 8 June 1881, quoted in an appendix in P.A. Watts, ‘The inception of the Denny Tank’, MA thesis, University of Strathclyde, p. 82.

46 This correspondence is presented in Watts, op. cit. (45). The location of the originals is unclear.

47 Denny to R.E. Froude, 26 January 1884, quoted in Watts, op. cit. (45), p. 95.

48 Quoted in Bruce, op. cit. (36), p. 203.

49 Peabody, op. cit. (1), p. 47.

50 Bruce, op. cit. (36), p. 205.

51 Discussion following Parsons, Charles, ‘The application of the compound steam turbine to the purpose of marine propulsion’, Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects (1897) 38, pp. 232–242Google Scholar, esp. 307.

52 William Denny to R.E. Froude, 17 July 1882, quoted in an appendix in Watts, op. cit. (45), p. 86.

53 Peabody, op. cit. (1), p. 47.

54 Ward, op. cit. (35), pp. 276–277.

55 In 1896 the British Admiralty excluded international students from attending the Royal School of Naval Architecture, extending the need for American programmes to teach naval architecture. McBride, William M., ‘The “greatest patron of science”? The Navy–academic alliance and U. S. naval research, 1896–1923’, Journal of Military History (1992) 56, pp. 7–34, 14–15Google Scholar.

56 Cooley, Mortimer E. (with the assistance of Vivien B. Keatley), Scientific Blacksmith, Ann Arbor: Arno Press, 1972Google Scholar (first published 1947), p. 43.

57 W. Webster to Cooley, 15 August 1881, Mortimer E. Cooley Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (subsequently CP), Box 1, original emphasis.

58 Sadler, Herbert C., ‘The experimental tank at the University of Michigan’, Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (1906) 14, pp. 51–63, 62Google Scholar.

59 Cooley to Charles C. Cook, 28 January 1902, CP, Box 10.

60 For the North British network see Smith, Crosbie, The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998Google Scholar.

61 Asa W. Matten to Cooley, 24 August 1881, CP, Box 1.

62 Cooley, op. cit. (56), pp. 89–90.

63 Cooley, op. cit. (56), pp. 109–10.

64 Cooley, op. cit. (56), p. 118.

65 Marsden, Ben, ‘Engineering science in Glasgow: economy, efficiency and measurement as prime movers in the differentiation of an academic discipline’, BJHS (1992) 25, pp. 319–346Google Scholar.

66 Holden A. Evans to Cooley, 9 June 1900, CP, Box 8.

67 Sadler to Cooley, 10 July 1900, CP, Box 8.

68 Cooley, op. cit. (56), p. 118.

69 Sadler to Cooley, 10 July 1900, CP, Box 8.

70 Cooley, Mortimer, ‘The New Engineering Buildings, University of Michigan’, Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers (1903) 15, pp. 908–918, 918Google Scholar.

71 Cooley, op. cit. (70), p. 913.

72 Sadler, op. cit. (58), pp. 51, 56.

73 Cooley, ‘New Engineering Buildings’, pp. 911–912.

74 Charles Denison, ‘The new engineering building for the University of Michigan’, 1902, CP, Box 48.

75 Gooday, Graeme J.N., The Morals of Measurement: Accuracy, Irony, and Trust in Late Victorian Electrical Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 16–23Google Scholar.

76 Collins, op. cit. (7), p. 143.