By the early years of the twentieth century, astronomers regarded photography as one of the most valuable tools at their disposal, a technique which not only provided an accurate and reliable representation of astronomical phenomena, but also radically changed the role of the astronomical observer. Herbert Hall Turner, professor of astronomy at Oxford, wrote in 1905: ‘The wonderful exactness of the photographic record may perhaps best be characterised by saying that it has revealed the deficiencies of all our other astronomical apparatus – object-glasses and prisms, clocks, even the observer himself.’ H. C. Russell, government astronomer in Sydney, suggested that photography might in the future make the observer redundant: ‘In many cases the observer must stand aside while the sensitive photographic plate takes his place and works with the power of which he is not capable… I feel sure that in a very few years the observer will be displaced altogether.’ Such visions were not uncommon at the time, emanating from the trust invested in the photographic process after the spectacular achievements of the late nineteenth century.

In the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin (1809–82) briefly drew an analogy between languages and species, suggesting that the genealogical relationships between languages provide a model for discussing the descent and modification of species. Further, he suggested that just as languages often contain some vestige of earlier speech, for example silent, unpronounced letters, so the rudimentary organs of animals can provide clues about genealogy and descent.

The Benzolfest of 1890 in honour of August Kekulé fell into that economically prosperous, politically peaceful period of European imperialism which is characterized by the splendour of the courts of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India; Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, King of Hungary; and the German Emperor Wilhelm II, King of Prussia. Whoever could afford it (and even some of those who could not) tried to imitate these models and to participate at least to a modest extent in the glamour of the imperial courts. Merits were honoured by the bestowal of titles, orders and medals, and many an effort to the benefit of the common weal in deeds and money was induced by the prospect of becoming a Privy Councillor (Geheimrat) or a Councillor of Commerce (Kommerzienrat), of being awarded the Order of the Red Eagle [of Prussia] (the fourth class being almost automatically given to a major of the Prussian army who in this peaceful time had never had a chance to distinguish himself, and not so automatically to a distinguished professor on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday), or even of being raised to hereditary nobility, the epithet von added to the name being the permanently visible sign of particular excellence.

Science in the twentieth century has relied on enormous financial investment for its survival. Once departed from an amateur pursuit, industry, charity and government have ploughed huge resources into it, supplying the professional occupation of science with a complex of institutional facilities – full-time posts, research laboratories, students and journals. Financial support, however, has always been a limited resource and has gone most generously to those areas of research which appear particularly novel, innovative or promising, that is to the ‘leading edges’. To secure the funds necessary to maintain their life-style, then, scientists have had to make their activities scientifically and economically attractive to the funding bodies. Historians and sociologists of twentieth-century science have tended to follow these priorities and have concentrated on the leading edges. We have studied at length the acquisition of new knowledge through research, the creation of the institutional complex and the furtherance of science through innovation, specialty and discipline formation, part and parcel of which is the gathering of the necessary funds. The competition for funds has been investigated in analyses of controversy between competing groups within a research area, which has provided important models for the social and conceptual development of science. This emphasis, however, may have missed a great deal of what happens in science.