Local Colour: John Dalton and the Politics of Colour Blindness

Morus Iwan Rhys , Frankenstein's children: Electricity, exhibition, and experiment in early nineteenth-century London (Princeton, N.J., 1998); Dalton John , “Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colours, with observations”, Memoirs and proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, v (1798), 23–45, pp. 29–30. He read the paper on 31 October 1794.

I have identified a loosely knit, multi-generational set of practitioners who shared an interest in the nervous system and a need to organize idiosyncratic experiences into systematic knowledge. The actual social ties that bound these men and women together were complex. Most of this group knew each other through universities (especially Cambridge and Edinburgh), through scientific societies (especially the Royal Society, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and provincial organizations), and in some cases through government bodies (like the Greenwich Observatory and the Board of Longitude). Most of my protagonists identified with a moderate Whiggism for most of their careers. Most came from financially comfortable families, some of them titled. All believed in God, and if they were not Anglican, they at least played their non-conformism in a minor key (with the notable exceptions of Joseph Priestley and David Brewster). When their differences threatened to rend their social fabric, they fell back on a common commitment to the sciences as the best adhesive for British society. For a fuller discussion, see Musselman Elizabeth Green , “Persistence of sight: Problems of idiosyncratic vision and knowledge in British natural philosophy, 1780–1860” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1999).

Morrell Jack Thackray Arnold , Gentlemen of science: Early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1981), 28.

My model for this portion of my argument is Alborn Timothy L. , “The business of induction: Industry and genius in the language of British scientific reform, 1820–1840”, History of science, xxxiv (1996), 91–121. Alborn honours the broadly shared interests among several of Morrell and Thackray's gentlemen of science, while also acknowledging their more particular differences.

Broadly similar arguments to those I make here can be found in Poovey Mary , Making a social body: British cultural formation 1830–1864 (Chicago, 1995).

Eastwood David , Governing rural England: Tradition and transformation in local government, 1780–1840 (Oxford, 1994); Langford Paul , Public life and the propertied Englishman 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1991); Prest John , Liberty and locality: Parliament, permissive legislation, and ratepayers' democracies in the nineteenth century (Oxford, 1990); Read Donald , The English provinces ca. 1760–1960: A study in influence (London, 1964); Jenkins Philip , The making of a ruling class: The Glamorgan gentry 1640–1790 (Cambridge, 1983); Money John , Experience and identity: Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1800 (Manchester, 1977).

Wahrman Dror , “National society, communal culture: An argument about the recent historiography of eighteenth-century Britain”, Social history, xvii (1992), 43–72, p. 45.

Ibid., 71–72; Thackray Arnold , “Natural knowledge in cultural context: The Manchester model”, American historical review, lxxix (1974), 672–709.

Herschel John , A preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy (1831; reprint, Chicago, 1987), 133. I thank one of my reviewers for reminding me of this passage.

Inkster Ian Morrell Jack (eds), Metropolis and province: Science in British culture, 1780–1850 (Philadelphia, 1983); Morrell Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 3).

Gascoigne John , Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful knowledge and polite culture (Cambridge, 1994), chap. 6; Miller David P. , “The Royal Society of London 1800–1835: A study in the cultural politics of scientific organization” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981).

Morrell Jack , “Economic and ornamental geology: The Geological and Polytechnic Society of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1837–53”, in Inkster Morrell , op. cit. (ref. 10), 231–56.

Cawood John , “Terrestrial magnetism and the development of international collaboration in the early nineteenth century”, Annals of science, xxxiv (1977), 551–87; idem, “The magnetic crusade: Science and politics in early Victorian Britain”, Isis, lxx (1979), 493–518; Morrell Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 3), 353–70; Stafford Robert A. , “Geological surveys, mineral discoveries, and British expansion, 1835–71”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth history, xii/3 (1984), 5–32.

Sorrenson Richard J. , “Towards a history of the Royal Society in the 18^th century”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London , 1 (1996), 29–46; Roberts Lissa , “The death of the sensuous chemist: The ‘new’ chemistry and the transformation of sensuous technology”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xxvi (1995), 503–29, pp. 514–19.

Orange Derek , “The British Association for the Advancement of Science: The provincial background”, Science studies, i (1971), 315–29; Morrell Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 3), 92–93, 124–5; Lowe Philip , “The British Association and the provincial public”, in MacLeod Roy Collins Peter (eds), The parliament of science: The British Association for the Advancement of Science 1831–1981 (Northwood, Middlesex, 1981), 118–44; Yeo Richard , “Scientific method and the image of science 1831–1891”, ibid. , 65–88. On a similar, though earlier movement in medicine, see Warner John Harley , “The idea of science in English medicine: The ‘decline of science’ and the rhetoric of reform, 1815–45”, in French Roger Wear Andrew (eds), British medicine in the age of reform (London, 1991), 136–64.

Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 8).

Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 8), 684. For the Unitarians' importance to Newcastle science, see Orange Derek , “Rational dissent and provincial science: William Turner and the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society”, in Inkster Morrell , op. cit. (ref. 10), 205–30.

RMI Council Minute Book, 445–446, M 6/1/1/2, Manchester Central Reference Library, quoted in Wach Howard M. , “Culture and the middle classes: Popular knowledge in industrial Manchester”, Journal of British studies, xxvii (1988), 375–404, p. 388.

Neve Michael , “Science in a commercial city: Bristol 1820–60”, in Inkster Morrell , op. cit. (ref. 10), 179–204; Kitteringham Guy , “Science in provincial society: The case of Liverpool in the early nineteenth century”, Annals of science, xxxix (1982), 329–48. Also see Smith Crosbie Wise M. Norton , Energy and empire: A biographical study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge, 1989), espec. chap. 2.

Emerson Roger L. , “The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh 1768–1783”, The British journal for the history of science, xviii (1985), 255–303; idem, “The Scottish Enlightenment and the end of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh”, ibid., xxi (1988), 33–66; idem, “Science and the origins and concerns of the Scottish Enlightenment”, History of science, xxvi (1988), 333–66; Shapin Steven , “The audience for science in eighteenth-century Edinburgh”, ibid., xii (1974), 95–121; Morrell Jack , “Reflections on the history of Scottish science”, ibid., xii (1974), 81–94.

Shapin Steven , ‘“Nibbling at the teats of science’: Edinburgh and the diffusion of science in the 1830s”, in Inkster Morrell (eds), op. cit. (ref. 10), 151–78, pp. 170–1.

Cunningham Andrew , “Medicine to calm the mind: Boerhaave's medical system, and why it was adopted in Edinburgh”, in Cunningham Andrew French Roger (eds), The medical Enlightenment of the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1990), 40–66.

The first paper that directly addressed colour blindness seems to have been Tubervile Dawbeney , “Two letters from the great, and experienced oculist Dr. Turberville [sic] of Salisbury, … containing several remarkable cases of physick, relating chiefly to the eyes”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, xiv (1684), 736–8.

This passage appears in both Babbage Charles , The exposition of 1851; or views of the industry, the science, and the government of England , 2nd edn (London, 1851), pp. viii–xi; and idem, Passages from the life of a philosopher , ed. by Campbell-Kelly M. (1864; reprint, New Brunswick, N.J., and Piscataway, N.J., 1994), 128.

Holmes Oliver Wendell , Mechanism in thought and morals: An address delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, June 29, 1870 (Boston, 1872), 96–97.

“Last case of colour-blindness”, Punch, xlix (1865), 216.

Darwin Charles , The autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. by Barlow Nora (New York and London, 1958), 91.

Cantor Geoffrey , Optics after Newton: Theories of light in Britain and Ireland, 1704–1840 (Manchester, 1983).

Newton Isaac , Opticks; or, a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections, and colours of light, 4th edn (1730; reprint, New York, 1952), 82–107, especially pp. 102–3. These pages correspond to Book I, Part I, Proposition VII.

Hutchison Keith , “Idiosyncrasy, achromatic lenses, and early romanticism”, Centaurus, xxxiv (1991), 125–71. Also see Jackson Myles W. , “A spectrum of belief: Goethe's ‘republic’ versus Newtonian ‘despotism’”, Social studies of science, xxiv (1994), 673–701; Shapiro Alan E. , Fits, passions, and paroxysms: Physics, method, and chemistry and Newton's theories of colored bodies and fits of easy reflection (Cambridge, 1993).

Herschel , op. cit. (ref. 9), 246–7.

Yeo Richard R. , Defining science: William Whewell, natural knowledge, and public debate in early Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 1993), 95–96.

Brewster David , “Observations on the supposed achromatism of the eye”, Philosophical magazine, vi (1835), 161–4.

Turner R. Steven , “Paradigms and productivity: The case of physiological optics, 1840–94”, Social studies of science, xvii (1987), 35–68; Musselman Green , op. cit. (ref. 2).

Dalton , op. cit. (ref. 1), 29–30. For a full explanation of the nature of Dalton's colour blindness, see Wright W. D. , “The unsolved problem of ‘daltonism’”, in Cardwell D. S. L. (ed.), John Dalton and the progress of science (Manchester and New York, 1968), 309–28.

His former pupil Mrs Cookson in Henry William Charles , Memoirs of the life and scientific researches of John Dalton (London, 1848), 5.

Greenup Thomas to Dalton John , 9–10 April 1790, in Henry , op. cit. (ref. 36), 15; Lonsdale Henry , John Dalton, vol. v of The worthies of Cumberland (6 vols, London, 1874), 74–77.

Lonsdale , op. cit. (ref. 37), 19–20. In a review of Henry's biography, George Wilson devoted nearly as much space to Dalton's early, frustrated circumstances and character quirks as to his chemical philosophy. See Wilson George , “Dalton”, Fraser's magazine, 1 (1854), 554–72.

On Dalton's actual financial and social circumstances, see Thackray Arnold , John Dalton: Critical assessments of his life and science (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 42–48, 142, 144–6; Patterson Elizabeth C. , John Dalton and the atomic theory: The biography of a natural philosopher (Garden City, N.Y., 1970), 44–46.

Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 39), 23, 42–48, 54–55, 85.

Dalton lecture in Edinburgh in 1807, quoted in Roscoe H. E. , John Dalton and the rise of modern chemistry (London, 1895), 166–7.

Geikie Archibald , Life of Sir Roderick I. Murchison (2 vols, London, 1875), i, 187–8 (Geikie's italics); Morrell Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 3), 97.

Two hundred and eighty-eight people attended the March meeting seven months before. There were roughly equal numbers of men, women, and children, and the audience included a number of maids, shopkeepers, and tradespeople. See “Members of the Manchester meeting 3 mo. 1794”, John Dalton papers, 144, John Rylands University Library of Manchester (hereafter: Dalton MSS). Though he does not seem to have performed any further investigations into the problem of colour blindness, from then on he included a discussion of it in his many popular natural philosophy lectures. During a series of 1803 lectures at the Royal Institution, Dalton performed the following stunt while discussing optics: “I got six ribbands, blue, pink, lilac, and red, green and brown, which matched very well, and told the curious audience so. I do not know whether they generally believed me to be serious, but one gentleman came up immediately after, and told me he perfectly agreed with me; he had not remarked the difference by candle-light” ( Dalton John to Dalton Jonathan , 1 February 1804, in Henry , op. cit. (ref. 36), 47–49). Also see Dalton's lecture notes, “Optics lectures”, Dalton MSS 84.

Dalton , op. cit. (ref. 1), 30–31, 37–40; Dalton John to Robinson Elihu , 20 February 1794, in Lonsdale , op. cit. (ref. 37), 101–2. Also see his test of an unspecified boy and girl in “Optics lectures”, Dalton MSS 84.

Young was born a Friend, but later lived according to Anglican norms. See Peterfreund Stuart , “Scientific models in optics: From metaphor to metonymy and back”, Journal of the history of ideas, lv (1994), 59–73, pp. 69–70.

Huddart Joseph , “An account of persons who could not distinguish colours”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, lxvii (1777), 260–5, pp. 261–2. The man may have been related to one Thomas Harris, listed as a Manchester shoe merchant in Bancks's Manchester and Salford directory: 1800 (Manchester, 1800), 20.

The following letters detail Dalton's instructions and the Harrises' responses: John Dalton to Joseph Dickinson, 3 October 1793(?); Dickinson to Dalton , 8 February 1794; Dalton to Dickinson , 13 April 1794; Dickinson to Dalton , n.d.; all in Lonsdale , op. cit. (ref. 37), 102–9. Also see Sherman Paul D. , Colour vision in the nineteenth century: The Young-Helmholtz-Maxwell theory (Bristol, 1981), 121–6.

Huddart , op. cit. (ref. 46), 263.

Sherman , op. cit. (ref. 47), 126.

Reported in [ Brewster David ], “Dr. George Wilson On colour-blindness”, North British review, xxiv (1856), 325–58, pp. 335–6.

Patterson , op. cit. (ref. 39), 6; Lonsdale , op. cit. (ref. 37), 29–31.

Quoted in Pointon Marcia , “Quakerism and visual culture 1650–1800”, Art history, xx (1997), 397–431, p. 407.

Clarkson Thomas , A portraiture of Quakerism; taken from a view of the moral education, discipline, peculiar customs, religious principles, political and civic economy, and character of the Society of Friends (Indianapolis, Ind., 1870), 15–26, 103–15.

Ibid., 119–40.

Southey Robert , “History of Dissenters”, Quarterly review, x (1813), 90–139, pp. 111–12; Clarkson , op. cit. (ref. 53), 139.

Russell Elbert , The history of Quakerism (New York, 1942), 225, 229–30, 251–98, 331–41.

Dalton John , Elements of English grammar (Manchester, 1801). In April 1798 at the Lit and Phil, he read a paper that was never published: “Essay on the mind, its ideas, and affections; with an application of principles to explain the economy of language”. Also see Henry , op. cit. (ref. 36), 208–9; Patterson , op. cit. (ref 39), 43, 75–78, 157–8, 188–90.

Roscoe , op. cit. (ref. 41), 70–71; Lonsdale , op. cit. (ref. 37), 99–100.

[ Brewster David ], “Memoirs of John Dalton”, North British review, xxvii (1857), 465–97, pp. 490–2. John Henry Newman was likewise horrified by the British Association's conferral of DCL degrees on four Dissenters in the University church, where Newman was vicar. See Morrell Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 3), 232.

Whewell William , unnamed article in the Athenæum, 1841, 699.

Ironically, William IV's own father, George III, may have been colour-blind as well. Frances Burney described a 1785 conversation with the king in which he confessed that both he and the Duke of Marlborough were prone to confusing colours. See [ Burney Frances ], The diary and letters of Madame D'Arblay (3 vols, London, 1890), i, 307.

Babbage Charles to Henry William Charles , 7 February 1854, in Henry Henry , op. cit. (ref. 36), 185–9. The full letter can also be found in Babbage , Passages (ref. 24), 219–22.

Henry , op. cit. (ref. 36), 3; Wilson , op. cit. (ref. 39), 555, 561; Lonsdale , op. cit. (ref. 37), 50–52.

Raistrick Arthur , Quakers in science and industry; being an account of the Quaker contributions to science and industry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (London, 1950), 271.

Henry William to Babbage Charles , 19 May 1830, Charles Babbage papers, add. ms. 37185.179–80, British Library (hereafter: Babbage MSS); Babbage Charles to Rice Thomas Spring (Joint Secretary of the Treasury), 7 August 1831, Babbage MSS, add. ms. 37186.37. For Dalton's agreement with Babbage's views in Reflections, see Dalton John to Babbage Charles , 15 May 1830, Babbage MSS, add. ms. 37185.176. Also see Dalton to Babbage , 7 December 1830, Babbage MSS, add. ms. 37185.370; Babbage Charles , Reflections on the decline of science in England and on some of its causes (London, 1830).

Henry William to Babbage Charles , 22 February(?) 1832, Babbage MSS, add. ms. 37186.260–3 (emphasis in original); Henry , op. cit. (ref. 36), 173–81; Patterson , op. cit. (ref. 39), 231–5; Morrell Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 3), 326–8.

[ Holland Henry ], “Life of Dalton”, Quarterly review, xcvi (1854), 43–75, p. 49.

Miller David Philip , “Between hostile camps: Sir Humphry Davy's presidency of the Royal Society of London, 1820–1827”, The British journal for the history of science, xvi (1983), 1–47.

Davy Humphry , sketch of Dalton, dated February 1829, in Henry , op. cit. (ref. 36), 126–7; Davy , “Presidential address on the occasion of the presentation of the first Royal Medal of the Royal Society to John Dalton”, in The collected works of Sir Humphry Davy (9 vols, London, 1839), vii, 92–99; Patterson , op. cit. (ref. 40), 217–21.

Wilson George , Religio chemici (London and Cambridge, 1862), 310.

“Blunders of vision — Color-blindness”, Eclectic magazine, xlviii (1859), 513–7, p. 517.

Ibid., 513.

Sherman , op. cit. (ref. 47), 136. Major, early colour blindness literature included Philippe de la Hire, “Dissertation sur les differens accidens de la vue”, Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences, de Paris, ix (1678), 530–634; Boyle Robert , “Some uncommon observations about vitiated sight”, in The works of the Honourable Robert Boyle , ed. by Birch Thomas , new edn (6 vols, London, 1772), v, 445–52; Huddart , op. cit. (ref. 46); Scott J. , “An account of a remarkable imperfection of sight; in a letter from J. Scott to the Rev. Mr. Whisson, of Trinity College, Cambridge”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, lxviii (1778), 611–14; von Goethe Johann Wolfgang , Zur Farbenlehre, vol. xiii of Goethes Werke (Hamburg, 1960), 354–9; Butter John , “Remarks on the insensibility of the eye to certain colours”, Edinburgh philosophical journal, vi (1822), 135–40; Sommer Karl(?) , “Über Chromatopseudopsie, oder den manchen Menschen eigenen Mangel des Farbenunterscheidungsvermögens”, Journal der Chirurgie und Augen-Heilkunde, v (1823), 19–43; Seebeck August , “Über den bei manchen Personen vorkommenden Mangel an Farbensinn”, Annalen der Physik und Chemie; von J. C. Poggendorff, xlii (1837), 177–233; Szokalski Wiktor Felix , “Essai sur les sensations des couleurs dans l'état physiologique et pathologique de l'oeil”, Annales d'occulistique, ii, issue of October 1839, 11–21; ii, issue of November 1839, 37–50; ii, issue of January 1840, 77–92; ii, issue of March 1840, 165–77; iii, issue of April 1840, 1–20; iii, issue of May 1840, 49–64; iii, issue of June 1840, 97–122; D'Hombres-Firmas Louis Augustin , “Observations d'achromatopsie”, Comptes rendus, xxix (1849), 175–9; Firmas d'Hombres , “Nouvelles observations d'achromatopsie”, Comptes rendus, xxx (1850), 56–60, 376–9.

Forbes J. D. , The danger of superficial knowledge (London, 1849), p. vii; discussed in Yeo , op. cit. (ref. 15), 75–78.

Herschel John , “Light”, Encyclopædia metropolitana , ed. by Smedley Edward Rose Hugh James Rose Henry John (25 vols, London, 1845), iv, 434–5. The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, holds a substantial set of papers on Herschel's colour blindness studies. See especially document numbers L0254, M0351, M0564, M0565, M1142, M1154, M1187, M-W0067, M-W0072.

Werner Abraham Gottlob , Werner's nomenclature of colours , transl. by Syme Patrick (Edinburgh, 1814); Chevreul M. E. , De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs, et de l'assortiment des objets colorés, considéré d'après cette loi (Paris, 1838); translated into English as The principles of the harmony and contrast of colours and their applications to the arts , transl. by Martel Charles (London, 1854); Hay David Ramsay , A nomenclature of colours, hues, tints, and shades; applicable to the arts and natural sciences, to manufactures, and other purposes of general utility (Edinburgh, 1845).

Thomas Forster, for example, expressed his wish for such standard measures in “On a systematic arrangement of colours”, Philosophical magazine, xlii (1813), 119–21, 327–9.

Wilson George , Researches on colour-blindness; with a supplement on the danger attending the present system of railway and marine coloured signals (Edinburgh, 1855).

Maxwell James Clerk , “Experiments on colour, as perceived by the eye, with remarks on colour blindness”, reprinted in Scientific papers of James Clerk Maxwell , ed. by Niven W. D. (2 vols, Paris, 1927), i, 126–54; Wartmann Elie , “Memoir on daltonism”, Scientific memoirs selected from the transactions of foreign academies of science and learned societies, and from foreign journals, iv (1846), 176–8.

The literature on the subject of methodological changes from case narratives to standardized testing is vast, but see Schaffer Simon , “Astronomers mark time: Discipline and the personal equation”, Science in context, ii (1988), 115–45; Fissell Mary , “The disappearance of the patient's narrative and the invention of hospital medicine”, in British medicine , ed. French Wear (ref. 15), 92–109; Daston Lorraine , “Objectivity and the escape from perspective”, Social studies of science, xxii (1992), 597–618; Porter Theodore M. , “Objectivity as standardization: The rhetoric of impersonality in measurement, statistics, and cost-benefit analysis”, Annals of scholarship, ix (1992), 19–59; Matthews J. Rosser , Quantification and the quest for medical certainty (Princeton, N.J., 1995); Dror Otniel , “The scientific image of emotion: Experience and technologies of inscription”, Configurations, vii (1999), 355–401.

Coon Deborah J. , “Standardizing the subject: Experimental psychologists, introspection, and the quest for a technoscientific ideal”, Technology and culture, xxxiv (1993), 757–83; Daston , op. cit. (ref. 80).

Ash Mitchell G. , “Historicizing mind science: Discourse, practice, subjectivity”, Science in context, v (1992), 193–207.

Alborn Timothy , “Wasted work: Doctors and bodies in early Victorian life insurance” (Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the History of Science Society, Kansas City, 24 October 1998); Daston , op. cit. (ref. 80), 600, 607–14; Fissell , op. cit. (ref. 80); Foucault Michel , The birth of the clinic: An archaeology of medical perception (New York, 1973).

Marey E. J. , La méthode graphique dans les sciences expérimentales et particulièrement en physiologie et en médecine (Paris, 1878), pp. iii–vi, quoted in Daston Lorraine Galison Peter , “The image of objectivity”, Representations, xl (1992), 81–128.

Turner , op. cit. (ref. 34).