This paper presents the story of two calculating machines invented by Sir Samuel Morland (1625–95) in the 1660s. These instruments are the earliest known mechanical calculators made in England. Their designs are unusual and very much of their time. They appealed to some, especially at court, and were dismissed by others, such as Robert Hooke. The first part of the paper introduces Morland and the courtier–inventor's world, in which a reputation as a ‘machinist’ or an engineer could accompany high social status. It considers why a former diplomat and postal spy would turn to invention in general and to mechanical calculators in particular as a career move in the Restoration court. The second part addresses the instruments – attention to their design reveals Morland's inspiration. The paper concludes with an examination of the market for the calculators in London, Paris and Florence. While it is notable that the calculators circulated both in court and in the commercial sphere, even more interesting is the contrast between their receptions in these two spheres. The story of these machines and their maker helps flesh out the poorly understood world of the courtier–inventor in early modern England.

A significant but neglected theme in the history of British science in the nineteenth century is the funding of institutional research. The subscription to the ‘great battery’ at the Royal Institution in 1808 and 1809 provides the first instance of named individuals prepared to commit themselves to the provision of apparatus to be used for research in the new field of electrochemistry. This paper analyses the subscribers who were deemed to be ‘enlightened’ and whom Humphry Davy subsequently described as ‘a few zealous cultivators and patrons of science’. Using information from the subscription list, a distinction is made between the individual subscriptions pledged and the sums actually paid. In contextualizing the subscription, insights are provided into the Royal Society, the contemporary scientific community and the politics of metropolitan science. The voltaic subscription represents an early example of the repercussions of the nature of research funding for institutional finances and governance.

John Fleming (1785–1857), later professor in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, made his combative contribution to natural history between 1812 and 1832. As an Edinburgh student he had followed Robert Jameson's ‘Wernerian’ lead. His earliest publications, from 1813, expressed what was to be a lifelong hostility to the work of James Hutton. Yet his own thinking moved increasingly towards a ‘uniformitarian’ as opposed to a ‘catastrophist’ view of earth history. His Philosophy of Zoology (1822) embodied criticism of Cuvier. More dramatically, he became embroiled in controversy with Buckland and later with Conybeare. By then the ‘uniformitarian’ hypothesis had been adopted by Lyell, with whom Fleming was in close touch from the mid-1820s. Fleming may have had some grounds for feeling that his priority in advocating uniformitarianism was later overlooked. His History of British Animals (1828) included a preface in which he elaborated his earlier hypothesis as to ‘revolutions … in the animal kingdom’ correlated with six geological epochs. Tension had then developed in Fleming's relationship with Jameson, and the early 1830s found him in a mood of increasing frustration. Reconciliation with Buckland and approval by Sedgwick still left ‘the Zoological Ishmael’ feeling that his advancement in the scientific world was blocked, perhaps permanently. In historical perspective Fleming may be seen as a minor but not insubstantial figure in the scientific landscape of the early nineteenth century.

The establishment of research and development (R & D) laboratories by the UK affiliates of overseas-controlled firms was a feature of the R & D landscape throughout the twentieth century and had its origins even earlier. From their foundation they served as sites for international scientific and technological collaboration and exchange. Here I draw on both quantitative and qualitative evidence to examine the research and development activities of overseas multinational enterprises in the UK. This activity has a longer history than most previous commentators have suggested. The integration of at least some R & D facilities into international research networks was already a feature during the inter-war years. This became far more common after the early 1960s, as firms worked hard to integrate previously independent laboratories into coordinated research organizations. Far from being a ‘new collaborative mode’ in the late twentieth century, cross-border networks of industrial laboratories have long contributed to the internationalization of science.

This paper explores the relationship between operations research (OR) as practised during the Second World War and the claims of many of its proponents that it constituted an application of scientific method. It begins with an examination of the pre-war work of two of the most notable leaders in wartime OR, the British experimental physicist Patrick Blackett and the American theoretical physicist Philip Morse. Despite differences in their scientific work, each saw science as an essentially creative act relying on the skill and judgement of the individual scientist in the deployment of rational methods for the development of legitimate conclusions. When scientists began to study military operations, their investigations were defined by the technically sophisticated heuristic practices already surrounding military planning. They did not seek to replace these practices with their own rational methods. Rather, they became scholars of the military's methods and adapted their pre-war experience by shifting their self-disciplined attitude to their own work to bodies of military knowledge. Thus scientists learned so well to navigate an alien heuristic system that investigations they conducted within it took on the characteristics that they judged defined scientific work.