Liars,Experts and Authorities

The Times, 4 April 1882, 9, col. C. The allusions are to previous year's debates on the electrical exhibition in Paris as well as debates on vivisection legislation, both extensively reported in The Times; the immediate critique of the editorial was the increasing tendency of judges to defer mundane technical matters in court cases to specialist experts rather than trusting juries to use their common sense.

Giddens Anthony , The consequences of modernity (Cambridge, 1990).

Marvin Carolyn , When old technologies were new: Thinking about communications in the late nineteenth-century (Oxford, 1988); Broks Peter , Media science before the Great War (London 1996). For a contrasting approach, see Morus Iwan , Frankenstein's children: Electricity, exhibition, and experiment in early-nineteenth-century London (Princeton, NJ, 1998).

“Technical expertise is continuously re-appropriated by lay agents as part of their routine dealings”, Giddens, op. cit. (ref. 2), 144.

Collins Harry Evans Robert , Rethinking expertise (Chicago and London, 2007); Irwin Alan , Citizen science: A study of people, expertise, and sustainable development (London, 1995); Collins Harry Evans Robert , “The third wave of science studies: Studies of expertise and experience”, Social studies of science, xxxii (2002), 2002–96; Wynne Brian , “Misunderstood misunderstanding: Social identities and public uptake of science”, Public understanding of science, i (1992), 1992–304; and Wynne Brian , “May the sheep safely graze? A reflexive view of the expert—lay knowledge divide”, in Lash Scott Szerszynski Bronislaw Wynne Brian (eds), Risk, environment and modernity: Towards a new ecology (London, 1996), 44–83.

Golan Tal , Laws of men and laws of nature: The history of scientific expert testimony in England and America (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2004).

Moulton Hugh Fletcher , The life of Lord Moulton (London, 1922), 45.

Jones Carol A. G. , Expert witnesses: Science, medicine, and the practice of law (Oxford, 1994). See also Smith Roger Wynne Brian , Expert evidence: Interpreting science in the law (London, 1989).

Golan , op. cit. (ref. 6), Hamlin Christopher , “Scientific method and expert witnessing: Victorian perspectives on a modern problem”, Social studies of science, xvi (1986), 485–513, and Hamlin Christopher , A science of impurity: Water analysis in nineteenth-century Britain (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1990).

The term ‘expert’ itself seems to have been coined by the periodical press in the 1850s, as a somewhat sardonic shorthand for ‘expert witness’, e.g. “Experts in insanity”, Saturday review, vi (1858), 645. See below for further discussion of the Saturday review's advocacy of this term.

Sometime this led to whole new fields of expertise being opened up, e.g. water purity and food analysis in the mid-nineteenth century, Hamlin , op. cit. (ref. 9); or as Hans-Georg Hofer has shown, medical expertise in electrical injuries was developed in fin de siècle Vienna by Hans Jellinek to deal with the growing phenomenon of compensation claims following accidents in the electrical industry. “Dem Strom auf der Spur: Stefan Jellinek und die Elektropathologie”, Blätter für Technikgeschichte, lxv—lxvi (2004/5), 165–98.

Golan , op. cit. (ref. 6), 67. See further discussion below.

Golan , op. cit. (ref. 6).

The conference papers included Smith Robert Angus , “Science in our courts of law”, Journal of the Society of Arts, vii (1860), 135–47, and Odling William , “Science in our courts of law”, Journal of the Society of Arts, vii (1860), 1860–8. See discussion in Golan, op. cit. (ref. 6), 111–20.

“Expert witnesses”, Saturday review, xiii (1862), 32–33; Golan , op. cit. (ref. 6), 104–5.

Golan's account does not address the question of which nineteenth-century commentators used the term ‘expert’ and which preferred not to do so.

[Editorial], Chemical news, v (1862), 183; Golan, op. cit. (ref. 6), 121.

Attributed by The Times in 1882 to a “well-known judge”, it is unclear whether this quip either preceded or reworked the more famous comment concerning “lies, damned lies and statistics” commonly attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. See Twain Mark , “Chapters from my autobiography”, North American review, clxxxiii—clxxxvi (1906/7), 5 July 1907; in fact no reliable source has yet documented Disraeli's utterance of such a phrase (he died in 1881). As the first published source of this phrase is probably the first Earl of Balfour quoted in the Manchester Guardian, 29 June 1892, 5, it is arguable that the jocular dismissal of scientific experts as liars predates the joke about lies and statistics.

For gently censored recollections of the Bramwell augmentation of this joke, see Swinton Alan A. Campbell , Autobiographical and other writings (London, 1930), 61, and Moulton , op. cit. (ref. 7), 47. For discussion of the popular but unresolved attribution of the original version of the joke to Justice Bramwell, see Anisman Philip Reid Robert , Administrative law: Issues and practice (Scarborough, Ontario, 1995), 196; my thanks to Jonathan Heath for drawing my attention to this source. Golan cites this joke circulating in an address by US Judge William Foster to the New Hampshire Medical Society in 1897, Golan, op. cit. (ref. 6), 255.

Huxley Leonard , The life and letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (2 vols, London, 1900), i, 255, 257–8.

“Judicial warping of patents”, S. P. Thompson to the editor of The Times (29 June 1886), The Times, 6 July 1886, 7, col. E.

“Judges and patents”, John Imray to the editor of The Times (6 July 1886), The Times, 7 July 1886, 6, col C. For the bankruptcy of the New Telephone Company that had purchased Thompson's telephone patents in 1884 see Thompson Jane Smeal Thompson Helen G. , Silvanus Phillips Thompson: His life and letters (London, 1920), 116–18.

Right Hon. Viscount Alverstone [ Webster Richard E. ], Recollections of bar and bench (London, 1914), 282–3.

For Hopkinson see Arapostathis Efstathios , “Consulting engineers in the British electric light and power industry, c. 1880–1914”, unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2006.

Moulton , op. cit. (ref. 7), 44–45.

Such was Moulton's characteristic tendency to use his specialized knowledge of science to critique expert witnesses' testimony in cross examination that one judge remarked sarcastically: “Moulton generally gave scientific evidence while the witnesses argued the law.” Moulton , op. cit. (ref. 7), 46–47.

“Expert opinions”, Gay Albert Yeaman Charles H. , Central station electricity supply (London, 1899), 13–14 (also 2nd edn, 1906, 11). Gay was the Chief Electrical Engineer of the Metropolitan of Islington and Yeaman was Chief Electrical Engineer of the County Borough of Hanley, see Gay Yeaman , op. cit., 2nd edn, p. iii.

[The Times's Philadelphia Correspondent], “Edison's electric light”, The Times, 14 January 1880, 8, col. A.

Edison Thomas , “The success of the electric light”, North American review, cxxxi (1880), 295. For further discussion see Gooday Graeme “Illuminating the expert—consumer relationship in domestic electricity”, in Fyfe Aileen Lightman Bernard (eds), Science in the marketplace: Nineteenth-century sites and experiences (Chicago and London, 2007), 231–68.

[Editorial], The Times, 4 April 1882, 9.

[Editorial note], “Alternate current working”, Electrician, xxiv (1889), 325. For further discussion see Gooday Graeme , The morals of measurement: Accuracy, irony and trust in late Victorian electrical practice (Cambridge, 2004), chap. 5.

See Gooday , op. cit. (ref. 29).

“Execution by electricity”, The electrical review, xxv (1889), 108; Hughes Thomas P. , “Harold P. Brown and the executioner's current: An incident in the AC—DC controversy”, Business history review, xxxii (1958), 1958–65; and Essig Mark , Edison and the electric chair: A story of light and death (New York, 2003).

“Execution by electricity” (ref. 33).

Essig , op. cit. (ref. 33), 174–89.

“Electricity's victims in Europe”, The American architect and building news, xxv (1890), 27 — Quoting from The New York commercial advertiser. For Heinrichs's dependence on Westinghouse income and subsequent suicide, see “An inventor kills himself; driven to suicide for want of means to continue work”, New York Times, 15 October 1891, 5.

“Electricity's victims in Europe” (ref. 36).

Edison Thomas A. , “The dangers of electric lighting”, The North American review, cxlix (1889), 625–35; Westinghouse George , “A reply to Mr Edison”, The North American review, cxlix (1889), 1889–64; Thomson William , “Electric lighting and public safety”, The North American review, cl (1890), 1890–96; and Westinghouse George , “Sir Wm. Thomson and electric lighting”, The North American review, cl (1890), 1890–9.

Gay Yeaman , op. cit. (ref. 27).

Gibson Charles R. , The romance of modern electricity (London, 1906), 315. Gibson was one of the most prolific and internationally successful popular science writers and lecturers of the early twentieth century (approximately half of the forty-five books he published between 1906 and 1930 were on electrical topics), and all the while he was running Gibson Bros, the family's curtain manufacturing business in Glasgow. See Bowler Peter , “Experts and publishers: Writing popular science in early twentieth-century Britain, writing popular history of science now”, The British journal for the history of science, xxix (2006), 2006–87, p. 171, and Muir James , “Memoir of the late Charles R Gibson, LL.D, FRSE”, Proceedings of the Glasgow Philosophical Society, lix (1931), 1931–62.

Crookes William , “Some possibilities of electricity”, Fortnightly review, n.s., li (1892), 173. For a survey of Crooke's work in electricity see Brock William H. , William Crookes 1832–1919 and the commercialization of science (Aldershot, 2008), 243–66. For Crookes's position in the physics—spiritualism nexus see Noakes Richard , “Ethers, religion and politics in late-Victorian physics: Beyond the Wynne Thesis”, History of science, xl (2005), 2005–55, and “Cromwell Varley FRS, electrical discharge and Victorian spiritualism”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, lxi (2007), 2007–22.

As the US journals Electrical world and Manufacturer and builder both noted in 1893, it seemed “inexplicable to the public at large that the mystery surrounding electricity is not dispelled”. “What is electricity?”, Manufacturer and builder, xxv (1893), 276, quoting from Electrical world.

Fleming John Ambrose , “The electronic theory of electricity”, Popular science monthly, lxi (1902), 6–23, p. 8. Fleming thus effectively rebutted J. J. Thomson's piece published the previous year in the same journal advocating “a definite conception as to the nature of electricity”, namely corpuscles as bearers of negative electricity. Thomson J. J. , “On bodies smaller than atoms”, Popular science monthly, lix (1901), 1901–35, p. 327. However, for Thomson's later retreat from this claim in the face of Silvanus Thompson's critique see Graeme Gooday, “The questionable matter of electricity: The reception of J. J. Thomson's ‘corpuscle’ among electrical theorists and technologists”, in Buchwald Jed Z. Warwick Andrew (eds), Histories of the electron: The birth of microphysics (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2001), 101–34, pp. 121–3.

Fleming , op. cit. (ref. 43), 8. See for example the writings of the Secretary of the London Institution, Frederick Hovenden, What is heat? A peep into nature's most hidden secrets (London, 1894); What is life? or, where are we? what are we? (London, 1897); and What is heat, what is electricity? (London, 1899).

The one-fluid theory of electricity was traditionally associated with Benjamin Franklin and the two-fluid theory with Robert Symmer and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb. See Heilbron John L. , Electricity in the 17th and 18th centuries: A study of early modern physics (Berkeley and London, 1979).

See Gooday Graeme , Domesticating electricity: Technology, gender, and uncertainty, 1880–1914 (forthcoming, London, 2008), chap. 2, and later in the present article.

For an early mention of the question see “The electric telegraph”, Edinburgh review, xc (1849), 434–72, pp. 442–5. Herbert Spencer appears to be the first person to have written a piece with the question as a title: See Spencer Herbert “What is electricity?”, Eclectic magazine, lxiv (1865), 1865–302. Marvin cites the piece “What is electricity?” published in 1905 by the US telephone inventor Amos Dolbear for the Chicago journal Telephony, Marvin op. cit. (ref. 3), 111. See also chap. 4, “What was electricity?” of David Nye, Electrifying America: Social meanings of a new technology 1880–1940 (Cambridge, MA, 1990), 138–84, and Gooday, op. cit. (ref. 46).

Clark Latimer , Elementary treatise on electrical measurement for the use of telegraph inspectors and operators (London, 1868), pp. vii–viii.

Maxwell James Clerk , Treatise on electricity and magnetism (2 vols, Oxford, 1873), i; quotation from 3rd edn, ed. by Thomson J. J. (Oxford, 1891), 38. For pedagogical convenience, Maxwell's close associate Fleeming Jenkin used the single fluid theory in his 1874 textbook for “artisans and students in public and science schools”. Jenkin Fleeming , Electricity and magnetism, 2nd edn (London, 1874), 1.

This borrowed from the widely used French textbooks of Ganot and Deschanel. English translations were available as Adolphe Ganot (transl. and ed. by Atkinson E. ), Elementary treatise on physics experimental and applied (London, 1863, and many later editions); Deschanel A. Privat (transl. and ed. by Everett J. D. ), Elementary treatise on natural philosophy (London, 1872, and many later editions); Simon Josep , “The Franco—British communication and appropriation of Ganot's Physique (1851–1881)”, in Simon Josep Harran Néstor (eds), Beyond borders: Fresh perspectives in history of science (Newcastle, 2008), 141–68.

Guthrie had been the Department of Science and Art's chief examiner in physics since 1868 and Professor of Physics at the Science Schools at South Kensington since 1871. Guthrie Frederick , Magnetism and electricity, 1st edn (London, 1876), 2nd edn (London, 1884), 17. The frontispiece to the second edition indicates that the volume had sold 22,000 copies.

Lodge Oliver , “The relation between electricity and light” (1880), reproduced in Lodge Oliver , Modern views of electricity (London, 1889), 311–26, pp. 311–13.

Lodge Oliver , “The ether and its functions” (1882), reproduced in Lodge, op. cit. (ref. 52), 327–58, p. 349.

Preece William , “Juvenile lectures: Recent wonders of electricity”, Journal of the Society of Arts, xxx (1881–82), 154–61 and 172–77, pp. 156, 172. For Preece's various battles with Oliver Lodge see Hunt Bruce , The Maxwellians (Ithaca, 1991), and Edward C. Baker, Sir William Preece, F.R.S.: Victorian engineer extraordinary (London, 1976).

Lodge , op. cit. (ref. 52). For a report of the lecture see “Modern views of electricity”, Telegraphic journal and electrical review, xvi (1885), 35.

Preece William H. , “Address to BAAS Section G (Mechanical Science)”, B.A.A.S. report, Part II (1888), 790–1. For the great popularity of Preece's presentation see “British Association”, The Times, 7 September 1888, 4, col. A, and leader, ibid., 7, col. A.

Lodge Oliver , Electrons: Or the nature and properties of negative electricity (London, 1906), 203. The second edition of Lodge's Modern views was published in 1902, the third and last in 1907.

Lodge , op. cit. (ref. 52), pp. vii, ix, 9–26, 57, 221–2. After his final chapter on Hertzian waves, Lodge appended his earlier lectures of 1880 and 1882 at the London Institution so that readers might have received the impression of a return to the question “What is electricity?”, ibid., 311–58.

“SCIENCE: Modern Views of Electricity. By Oliver J. Lodge, LL.D., F.R.S. (Macmillan & Co.)”, Athenaeum, no. 3228, 7 September 1889, 324, col. 2; and [Anon.], “Modern views of electricity”, Nature, xli (1889–90), 5–6.

Walker Sydney F. , Electricity in our homes and workshops (London, 1889), 1. In 1898 the electrical engineer Percy E. Scrutton wrote in similar work that technological accomplishment was still the principal consolation for the absence of any substantial answer: “The first question which will be asked by a reader to whom the subject is new will undoubtedly be ‘What is Electricity?’ and it is a matter for regret that at the present time no satisfactory answer can be given. We know how to produce it and how to control it, and new apparatus by means of which it can be made to serve one hundred and one useful purposes is a matter of every-day invention.” Scrutton Percy E. , Electricity in town and country houses (London, 1898), 1.

“Glossary”, Lightning, i (1891), 9.

Ibid.

Gibson reported a common presumption that electrical power stations worked by analogy with coalgas works, manufacturing a “mysterious material fluid” to pump through wires to the home. Gibson , op. cit. (ref. 40), 13–14, from chap. 1, “What is Electricity?”.

For Tesla's disavowal of the two-fluid theory, following Maxwell, see Tesla Nikola , “Experiments with alternate currents of very high frequency and their application to methods of artificial illumination”, in Martin Thomas C. (ed.), The inventions, researches and writings of Nikola Tesla (New York and London, 1894), 145–97, p. 146.

See the report of Helmholtz's “Faraday Lecture” to the Chemical Society in “Professor Helmholtz in London”, The Times, 11 April 1881, 4, col. F; Lodge Oliver “On electrolysis”, B.A.A.S report, Part II (1885), 723–72.

Crookes , op. cit. (ref. 41), 174.

“Science and conjecture”, Spectator, lxvii (1891), 723.

For Thomson as authority see Smith Crosbie Wise Norton , Energy and empire: A biographical study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge, 1989), and Gooday , The morals of measurement (ref. 31). For Thomson's peerage in 1892, see Silvanus Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin (2 vols, London, 1910), ii, 905–16. Kelvin occasionally served as an expert witness in the 1880s without necessarily losing status or respectability qua authority. Crookes similarly served once as an expert witness for the Government in 1893 prior to his knighthood in 1897. D'Albe E. E. Fournier , The life of Sir William Crookes (London, 1923), 337, 355.

On Thomson's problems in taking on the Darwinian lobby in the age of the earth controversy, see Burchfield Joe D. , Lord Kelvin and the age of the earth (London, 1975).

Smith Wise , op. cit. (ref. 68); Gooday , op. cit. (ref. 31).

D'Albe Fournier , op. cit. (ref. 68), 291–310.

Smith Wise , op. cit. (ref. 68).

Cantor Geoffrey , Quakers, Jews, and science: Religious responses to modernity and the sciences in Britain, 1650–1900 (Oxford, 2005), 298–300. Crookes had evidently been asked to adjudicate on this matter in his authoritative capacity as outgoing President of the IEE.

Marvin , op. cit. (ref. 3), 9–62. For an alternative to Marvin's model for the expert—householder relationship, see Gooday , op. cit. (ref. 29).

Marvin , op. cit. (ref. 3), 16, 55.

Golan , op. cit. (ref. 6), 63–68. The Times, 18 December 1820, 3, where Faraday's name is mis-spelled as ‘Ferriday’.

Cantor Geoffrey Gooding David James Frank A. J. L. , Faraday (Basingstoke, 1991). For examples of how conflicting expert testimony influenced the trajectory of nineteenth-century scientific careers, see Hamlin , op. cit. (ref. 9).

See Morus Iwan , “‘More the aspect of magic than anything natural’: The philosophy of demonstration”, in Fyfe Lightman (eds), op. cit. (ref. 29), 336–70, p. 365.

See “Dinner of the Institution of Electrical Engineers”, Electrician, xxviii (1891), 70, subsequently reproduced in Popular science monthly for February 1892.

“Science and conjecture”, Spectator, lxvii (1891), 723. For further discussion of Crookes as a challenged authority, see Gooday Graeme , “Profit and prophecy: Electricity in the late Victorian periodical”, in Cantor Geoffrey Shuttleworth Sally (eds), Reading the magazine of nature: Science in the nineteenth-century periodical (Cambridge, 2004), 238–47.

“Science and conjecture”, op. cit. (ref. 80).

Crookes , op. cit. (ref. 41). As a journalist for The Times noted, “Considerable attention was attracted last February by an article on the future of electricity, from the pen of Professor Crookes”. See “Wire-to-wire electric communication”, The Times, 22 November 1892, 7, col. A.

“Notes”, Electrician, xxviii (1892), 341–2. Lacking the archness of the Spectator piece, the Electrician did not refer to him ironically as an ‘authority’.

See the discussion of H. G. Wells in Broks, op. cit. (ref. 3), 98–100.

D'Albe Fournier , op. cit. (ref. 68), 291–310. For an example of the troubled early history of alternating current, see discussion of the tribulations of Sebastian de Ferranti's controversial Deptford generating station in Britain, see Hughes Thomas P. , Networks of power: Electrification in Western society (Baltimore, 1983), 239–47, and Wilson John F. , Ferranti and the British electrical industry, 1864–1930 (Manchester, 1988).

Crookes , op. cit. (ref. 41), 179.

D'Albe Fournier , op. cit. (ref. 68), pp. v–vii, 309–10, and Brock , op. cit. (ref. 41), 457–77.

This paper thus complements the discussions of ‘technological expertise’ in Ben Marsden and Crosbie Smith, Engineering empires: A cultural history of technology in nineteenth-century Britain (Basingstoke, 2005). Since ‘expertise’ was not an actors' category for forms of technical knowledge in the nineteenth century, I have restricted discussion of it in this paper to authors writing in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries.