The physical tourist. Physics in Glasgow: a heritage tour

I trace the history of the physical and applied sciences, and particularly physics, in Glasgow. Among the notable individuals I discuss are Joseph Black (1728-1799), James Watt (1736-1819), William John Macquorn Rankine (1820-1872), William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), John Kerr (1824-1907), Frederick Soddy (1877-1956), John Logie Baird (1888-1946), and Ian Donald (1910-1987), as well as physics-related businesses. The locations, centering on the city center and University of Glasgow, include sights both recognizable today and transformed from past usage, as well as museums and archives related to the history and interpretation of physics

The construction of colorimetry by committee

This paper explores the confrontation of physical and contextual factors involved in the emergence of the subject of color measurement, which stabilized in essentially its present form during the interwar period. The contentions surrounding the specialty had both a national and a disciplinary dimension. German dominance was curtailed by American and British contributions after World War I. Particularly in America, communities of physicists and psychologists had different commitments to divergent views of nature and human perception. They therefore had to negotiate a compromise between their desire for a quantitative system of description and the perceived complexity and human-centeredness of color judgement. These debates were played out not in the laboratory but rather in institutionalized encounters on standards committees. Groups such as this constitute a relatively unexplored historiographic and social site of investigation. The heterogeneity of such committees, and their products, highlight the problems of identifying and following such ephemeral historical 'actors'

From eye to machine: shifting authority in color measurement

Given a subject so imbued with contention and conflicting theoretical stances, it is remarkable that automated instruments ever came to replace the human eye as sensitive arbiters of color specification. Yet, dramatic shifts in assumptions and practice did occur in the first half of the twentieth century. How and why was confidence transferred from careful observers to mechanized devices when the property being measured – color – had become so closely identified with human physiology and psychology? A fertile perspective on the problem is via the history of science and technology, paying particular attention to social groups and disciplinary identity to determine how those factors affected their communities’ cognitive territory. There were both common and discordant threads motivating the various technical groups that took on the problems of measuring light and color from the late nineteenth century onwards, and leading them towards the development of appropriate instruments for themselves. The transition from visual to photoelectric methods <i>could</i> be portrayed as a natural evolution, replacing the eye by an alternative roviding more sensitivity and convenience – indeed, this is the conventional positivist view propounded by technical histories. However, the adoption of new measurement technologies seldom is simple, and frequently has a significant cultural component. Beneath this slide towards automation lay a raft of implicit assumptions about objectivity, the nature of the observer, the role of instruments, and the trade-offs between standardization and descriptive power. While espousing rational arguments for a physical detector of color, its proponents weighted their views with tacit considerations. The reassignment of trust from the eye to automated instruments was influenced as much by the historical context as by intellectual factors. I will argue that several distinct aspects were involved, which include the reductive view of color provided by the trichromatic theory; the impetus provided by its association with photometry; the expanding mood for a quantitative and objective approach to scientific observation; and, the pressures for commercial standardization. As suggested by these factors, there was another shift of authority at play: from one technical specialism to another. The regularization of color involved appropriation of the subject by a particular set of social interests: communities of physicists and engineers espousing a ‘physicalist’ interpretation, rather than psychologists and physiologists for whom color was conceived as a more complex phenomenon. Moreover, the sources for automated color measurement, and instrumentation for measuring color, were primarily from the industrial sphere rather than from academic science. To understand these shifts, then, this chapter explores differing views of the importance of observers, machines and automation

Creating a Canadian profession: the nuclear engineer, c. 1940-1968

Canada, as one of the three Allied nations collaborating on atomic energy development during the Second World War, had an early start in applying its new knowledge and defining a new profession. Owing to postwar secrecy and distinct national aims for the field, nuclear engineering was shaped uniquely by the Canadian context. Alone among the postwar powers, Canadian exploration of atomic energy eschewed military applications; the occupation emerged within a governmental monopoly; the intellectual content of the discipline was influenced by its early practitioners, administrators, scarce resources, and university niches; and a self-recognized profession coalesced later than did its American and British counterparts. This paper argues that the history of the emergence of Canadian nuclear engineers exemplifies unusually strong shaping of technical expertise by political and cultural context

The Gardeners of Vimy: Canadian Corps’ Farming Operations During the German Offensives of 1918

“The Gardeners of Salonika” was Georges Clemenceau’s jibe at the French and British divisions tied down in entrenchments round the Greek port for a good part of the First World War, because all they seemed to do was dig, rather than launch a Balkan offensive. The Canadian Corps, from Field Marshal Haig’s perspective, was similarly removed from the war when Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie, strongly supported by the Canadian government, refused to accept the piecemeal breakup of the Corps to help shore up the British line during the great German offensive which began in March 1918. Haig never forgave this rebuff, and his diary is studded with unfavourable comparisons of the Canadians with the Australians, who permitted their divisions to be detached from the corps organization and shifted to menaced sectors of the Western Front. As a result of Currie’s action, which Lord Derby, the British Secretary of War, forced Haig to accept, three of the four divisions which made up the national army were restored to Canadian command, occupying the Vimy bastion and lines extending from it northward. The Corps had last fought in a major operation in October/November 1917, at Passchendaele; it was not to be employed again (except for small operations incidental to holding a substantial portion of the front) until the climactic battle of Amiens in August 1918. In the interim, while the Allies fought with their backs to the wall to stem the great series of German onslaughts, the Canadians, secure in the immensely strong lines they had created around Vimy, were given opportunity to rest and to train for the moment when they would be used to spearhead a renewal of the Allied offensive against the German army. The Canadians held a vital and extensive part of the Allied line, and were obviously performing a major defensive function during the long weeks of the German offensive, even though their relative inaction occasioned much British resentment. In that sense they bear little resemblance to the Gardeners of Salonika. In another, however, they were the genuine article, and can legitimately be termed “The Gardeners of Vimy,” for during the spring and summer of 1918, as well as guarding the Vimy lines, the Canadian Corps was also involved in battle zone farming in a big way. How did the Corps come to be engaged in an essentially peaceful and bucolic enterprise, especially during such a critical period? This activity was completely unknown to me, until a few references in the enormous finding aid to Record Group 9 in the National Archives of Canada piqued my curiosity. The Canadian Corps, as a large fighting formation of over 100,000 men, required many non-fighting units and sub-units to support it in the field, supply it, provide it with reinforcements, medical services, legal and police services, and so on. All its parts generated masses of paper, and much of this is deposited in Record Group 9. Among this immense volume of documents is to be found a memorandum of early 1918 entitled “Suggested Establishment for Agricultural Employment Coy.,” signed by Major F.C. Washington, who is identified as “Canadian Corps Agricultural Officer.” Why did the Corps need an Agricultural Officer and an Agricultural Employment Company? The story that emerges from fragmentary evidence is incomplete, yet while hardly of cosmic significance, is an unusual and interesting one

The telephone in Scotland

A social history of the use of the telephone in Scotland

Shifting perspectives: holography and the emergence of technical communities

Holography, the technology of three-dimensional imaging, has repeatedly been reconceptualised by new communities. Conceived in 1947 as a means of improving electron microscopy, holography was revitalized in the early 1960s by engineer-scientists at classified laboratories. The invention promoted the transformation of a would-be discipline (optical engineering) and spawned limited artist-scientist collaborations. However, a separate artisanal community promoted a distinct countercultural form of holography via a revolutionary technology: the sandbox optical table. Their tools, sponsorship, products, literature and engagement with wider culture differentiated the communities, which instituted a limited ‘technological trade’. The subject strikingly illustrates the co-evolution of new technology along with highly dissimilar user groups, neither of which fostered the secure establishment of a profession or discipline. The case generalises the concept of 'research-technologists' and 'peripheral science', and extends the ideas of Langdon Winner by demonstrating how the political dimensions of a technology can be important but evanescent in the growth of technical communities

In search of space: Fourier spectroscopy, 1950-1970

In the large grey area between science and technology, specialisms emerge with associated specialists. But some specialisms remain ‘peripheral sciences’, never attaining the status of ‘disciplines’ ensconced in universities, and their specialists do not become recognised professionals. A major social component of such side-lined sciences – one important grouping of technoscientific workers – is the ‘research-technology community’. An important question concerning research-technology is to explain how the grouping survives without specialised disciplinary and professional affiliations. The case discussed illustrates the dynamics of one such community

Science, technology and society for our century [inaugural lecture, 16 April 2013]

The links between science and technology, on the one hand, and wider society, on the other, have been the focus of growing attention over the past two generations. This inaugural lecture by Sean Johnston, Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Glasgow’s School of Interdisciplinary Studies, will explore the recent history of this relationship and discuss why the social implications of science and technology have become increasingly contentious. Illustrated by career experiences as a participant and researcher in emerging fields, his session will highlight the advantages of an interdisciplinary approach for creating new knowledge and opportunities. The lecture will describe how current research and postgraduate teaching seek to identify and tackle issues at the heart of our current century