Natural History in the Dark: Seriality and the Electric Discharge in Victorian Physics

Spottiswoode William , A lecture on the electrical discharge, its forms and its functions (London, 1881), 46. The lecture was also published as two instalments in Nature: William Spottiswoode, ” The electrical discharge, its forms and its functions [Part I]”, Nature, xxiv (1881), 1881–51; Spottiswoode William , “The electrical discharge, its forms and its functions [Part II]”, Nature, xxiv (1881), 1881–73.

Spottiswoode , Electrical discharge (ref. 1), 38.

On visual demonstration and the magic lantern in Victorian science lectures, see Morus Iwan Rhys , “Seeing and believing science”, Isis, xcvii (2006), 101–10; Morus Iwan Rhys , “‘More the aspect of magic than anything natural’: The philosophy of demonstration”, in Lightman Bernard Fyfe Aileen (eds), Science in the marketplace: Nineteenth-century sites and experiences (Chicago, 2007), 336–70.

Spottiswoode , Electrical discharge (ref. 1), 45–6.

Huxley Thomas Henry , “The rise and progress of palaeontology”, Nature, xxiv (1881), 452–5.

Huxley , op. cit. (ref. 5), 454.

Huxley , op. cit. (ref. 5), 453. The quotation is from Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon, Les époques de la nature (2 vols, Paris, 1780), i, 1–2.

The term ‘stria’ was frequently used in the period to describe banded patterns found in botanical, zoological, and mineralogical specimens, as well as in manufactured materials like glass.

As James Secord and Martin Rudwick have argued, the elucidation of the stratigraphical succession in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was primarily a descriptive, taxonomical project, its immediate goal not the developmental history of the earth but a coherent description and classification of the spatial structure of the earth's surface. Secord James A. , Controversy in Victorian geology: The Cambrian—Silurian dispute (Princeton, 1985); Rudwick Martin , The great Devonian controversy: The shaping of scientific knowledge among gentlemanly specialists (Chicago, 1985). The rise of a temporalized and specifically geohistorical approach to the stratigraphic record — One which favoured reconstructing the earth's history as a sequence of contingent events and distinctive periods in the distant past — Is traced in Rudwick Martin , Bursting the limits of time: The reconstruction of geohistory in the age of revolution (Chicago, 2005); Rudwick Martin , Worlds before Adam: The reconstruction of geohistory in the age of reform (Chicago, 2008).

Thomson J. J. , Recollections and reflections (Edinburgh, 1936), 383–4.

On mathematical discipline and physics at Cambridge, see Warwick Andrew , Masters of theory: Cambridge and the rise of mathematical physics (Chicago, 2003). On precision measurement, telegraphy, metrology, and physics see Gooday Graeme , “Precision measurement and the genesis of physics teaching laboratories in Victorian Britain”, The British journal for the history of science, xxiii (1990), 1990–51; Schaffer Simon , “Late Victorian metrology and its instrumentation: A manufactory of Ohms”, in Invisible connections: Instruments, institutions, and science (Bellingham, WA, 1992), 23–56; Hunt Bruce J. , “The ohm is where the art is: British telegraph engineers and the development of electrical standards”, Osiris, ix (1994), 1994–63.

Maxwell James Clerk , A treatise on electricity and magnetism (Oxford, 1873), 58.

The biographical information in this paragraph draws on the following sources: Crilly A. J. , “Spottiswoode, William (1825–1883)”, in Matthew H. C. G. Harrison Brian (eds), Oxford dictionary of national biography, online edn (Oxford, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26171; “William Spottiswoode, F.R.S., D.C.L., &c”, The university magazine, a literary and philosophic review, ii (1878), 1878–78; Ritchie James Ewing , “The late Mr. W. Spottiswoode”, in Famous city men, 2nd edn (London, 1884), 236–49; A. B. K., “Obituary notices of fellows deceased: William Spottiswoode”, Proceedings of the Royal Society, xxxviii (1884), 1884–9; Lockyer J. N. , “William Spottiswoode”, Nature, xxviii (1883), 1883–18.

His father's family controlled two of the largest printing and publishing firms in England: Eyre & Spottiswoode was Queen's Printer and long-time holders of a profitable Bible monopoly, while Spottiswoode & Co. specialized in books and lithographic prints. His mother's family ran the influential Longman's publishing house. Ritchie , op. cit. (ref. 13), 237.

On Spottiswoode and the X-Club see Barton Ruth , “‘An influential set of chaps’: The X-Club and Royal Society politics 1864–85”, The British journal for the history of science, xxiii (1990), 53–81; Barton Ruth , “‘Men of science’: Language, identity and professionalization in the mid-Victorian scientific community”, History of science, xli (2003), 2003–119; Barton Ruth , “‘Huxley, Lubbock, and half a dozen others’: Professionals and gentlemen in the formation of the X-Club, 1851–1864”, Isis, lxxxix (1998), 1998–44; MacLeod Roy , “The X-Club: A social network of science in late-Victorian England”, Notes and records of the Royal Society, xxiv (1970), 1970–22.

The circumstances of Spottiswoode's election as President of the Royal Society, over the Cambridge mathematician Stokes G. G. , are described in Barton, “An influential set of chaps” (ref. 15), 68–9.

Spottiswoode William , “Address by William Spottiswoode, Esq. M.A., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., F.R.A.S., F.R.G.S.”, Report of the forty-eighth meeting of the British Association for the Aadvancement of Science held at Dublin in August 1878 (London, 1879), 1–28, p. 1; Spottiswoode William , “Mr. Spottiswoode's lecture to working men on sunlight, sea, and sky”, Nature, vi (1872), 1872–6, p. 336. For commentary on these quotations see Barton , “Men of science” (ref. 15), 73, 86, 96, 114 (n.68).

For example, see A. B. K., op. cit. (ref. 13); Lockyer , op. cit. (ref. 13).

Moulton Hugh Fletcher , The life of Lord Moulton (London, 1922); Mathew Theobald Mooney Hugh , “Moulton, John Fletcher, Baron Moulton (1844–1921)”, in Matthew Harrison (eds), op. cit. (ref. 13), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35132.

Sources for De la Rue's biography are: Hartog P. J. Meadows A. J. , “Rue, Warren de la (1815–1889)”, in Matthew Harrison (eds), op. cit. (ref. 13), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7447; “Warren de la Rue,” Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, l (1890), 1890–64; Rothermel Holly , “Images of the sun: Warren De La Rue, George Biddell Airy and celestial photography”, The British journal for the history of science, xxvi (1993), 1993–69.

On the history of the Thomas De la Rue company and Warren de la Rue's role in it, see Houseman Lorna , The house that Thomas built: The story of De La Rue (London, 1968). The company is now the world's largest commercial banknote printer and banknote paper manufacturer.

Armstrong Henry E. , “Obituary notice: Hugo Müller”, Journal of the Chemical Society, Transactions, cxi (1917), 572–88; Travis Anthony S. , “Müller, Hugo Heinrich Wilhelm (1833–1915)”, in Matthew Harrison (eds), op. cit. (ref. 13), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/56146.

Anderson Patricia , The printed image and the transformation of popular culture, 1790–1860 (Oxford, 1991).

Rothermel , op. cit. (ref. 20).

Quoted in Rothermel , op. cit. (ref. 20), 151. Emphasis in original. The use of sequential illustrations of the sun to construct a visual narrative tracking the day-to-day movements of sunspots was not unprecedented; see for example Biagioli Mario , “Picturing objects in the making: Scheiner, Galileo and the discovery of sunspots”, in Dettel Wolfgang Zittel Claus (eds), Ideals and cultures of knowledge in early modern Europe (Berlin, 2002), 39–95.

During the period from February 1862 to January 1871, 2778 pictures were obtained, on 1724 days. De la Rue Warren , “Letter from W. De La Rue, F.R.S., to Prof. Stokes, Sec. R.S., relative to the observations taken with the Kew heliograph”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xx (1872), 199.

De la Rue Warren , “The Bakerian lecture: On the total solar eclipse of July 18th, 1860, observed at Rivabellosa, near Miranda de Ebro, in Spain”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, clii (1862), 333–416. The positive response to De la Rue's results is described in Rothermel , op. cit. (ref. 20), 154–8.

De La Rue Warren Müller Hugo W. Spottiswoode W. , “Experiments to ascertain the cause of stratification in electrical discharges in vacuo”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxiii (1875), 356–61.

Spottiswoode William , “Experiments on stratification in electrical discharges through rarefied gases”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxiii (1875), 455–62; Spottiswoode William , “On stratified discharges. — II. Observations with a revolving mirror”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxv (1876), 1876–82; Spottiswoode William , “On stratified discharges. — III. On a rapid contact-breaker, and the phenomena of the flow”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxv (1876), 1876–50; Spottiswoode William , “On stratified discharges. — IV. Stratified and unstratified forms of the jar-discharge”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxvi (1877), 1877–93; Spottiswoode William , “On stratified discharges. — V. Discharge from a condenser of large capacity”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxvii (1878), 1878–2; Spottiswoode William Moulton John Fletcher , “On the sensitive state of vacuum discharges. Part I”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, clxx (1879), 1879–229; Spottiswoode William Moulton John Fletcher , “On the sensitive state of vacuum discharges. Part II”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, clxxi (1880), 1880–652; Spottiswoode William Moulton John Fletcher , “On the movement of gas in ‘vacuum discharges’”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxxiii (1881), 1881–5; Spottiswoode William Moulton John Fletcher , “On stratified discharges. — VI. Shadows of striae”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxxii (1881), 1881–7; Spottiswoode William Moulton John Fletcher , “On stratified discharges. — VII. Multiple radiations from the negative terminal”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxxii (1881), 1881–90.

Grove William Robert , the first British experimenter to observe the strata, and John Peter Gassiot were important exceptions. Grove W. R. , “On the electro-chemical polarity of gases”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, cxlii (1852), 87–101, p. 100; Grove William Robert , “On the striae seen in the electrical discharge in vacuo”, Philosophical magazine, xvi (1858), 1858–22; Gassiot J. P. , “The Bakerian lecture: On the stratifications and dark band in electrical discharges as observed in Torricellian vacua”, Philosophical transactions, cxlviii (1858), 1858–16.

Spottiswoode , “Experiments on stratification”, op. cit. (ref. 29); Spottiswoode , “On stratified discharges. — II.”, op. cit. (ref. 29); Spottiswoode , “On stratified discharges. — III.”, op. cit. (ref. 29).

Newton Isaac , Opticks: Or, a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of light, 2nd edn (London, 1718).

Wheatstone first made his rotating mirror public in a series of lectures at London's Royal Institution in the early 1830s; it was first described in print in Wheatstone Charles , “An account of some experiments to measure the velocity of electricity and the duration of electric light”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, cxxiv (1834), 583–91.

Spottiswoode , “On stratified discharges. — II.”, op. cit. (ref. 29), 73.

Spottiswoode , “On stratified discharges. — II.”, op. cit. (ref. 29).

Spottiswoode , “On stratified discharges. — II.”, op. cit. (ref. 29), 81.

De la Rue Warren Müller Hugo W. , “Experimental researches on the electric discharge with the chloride of silver battery. Part I: The discharge at ordinary atmospheric pressures”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, clxix (1878), 55–121, pp. 88–90.

Crookes William , “Contributions to molecular physics in high vacua”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, clxx (1879), 641–62, pp. 642–3.

Spottiswoode Moulton , “On stratified discharges. — VII.”, op. cit. (ref. 29), 389.

Spottiswoode Moulton , “On the sensitive state of vacuum discharges. Part I”, op. cit. (ref. 29), 201.

Spottiswoode Moulton , “On the sensitive state of vacuum discharges. Part I”, op. cit. (ref. 29), 209.

For the history of pre-cinematic animation technologies, see Mannoni Laurent , The great art of light and shadow: Archaeology of the cinema, transl. by Crangle Richard (Exeter studies in film history, Exeter, 2000).

“Mr. Muybridge at the Royal Institution”, Photographic news, xxvi, issue of 17 March 1882. Spottiswoode is listed among the attendees, as “President of the Royal Society”. Muybridge's chrono-photographic practice is examined in detail in Phillip Prodger, Time stands still: Muybridge and the instantaneous photography movement (Oxford, 2003).

The paper by Muybridge which Spottiswoode communicated to the Royal Society was not published: Eadweard Muybridge, ” The attitudes of animals in motion”, 1883, Royal Society Archives, London, AP/62/5. Spottiswoode is listed among the subscribers to Muybridge's album, although it was published only after his death. “Announcement and subscription order form. Animal locomotion: An electro-photographic investigation of connective phases of animal movements, by Eadweard Muybridge”, June 1887, Muybridge Collection, University of Pennsylvania Archives, Philadelphia, UPT 50 M993, Box 62 FF 5.

Spottiswoode Moulton , “On the sensitive state of vacuum discharges. Part II”, op. cit. (ref. 29), 627.

Spottiswoode Moulton , “On stratified discharges. — VII. Multiple radiations from the negative terminal”, op. cit. (ref. 29), 390.

Spottiswoode Moulton , “On the sensitive state of vacuum discharges. Part II”, op. cit. (ref. 29), 641–2.

Spottiswoode Moulton , “On the sensitive state of vacuum discharges. Part I”, op. cit. (ref. 29), 203.

Spottiswoode Moulton , “On the sensitive state of vacuum discharges. Part II”, op. cit. (ref. 29), 640.

This is the heading under which De la Rue and Müller placed the tube ‘histories’ described in this section. De la Rue Warren Müller Hugo W. , “Experimental researches on the electric discharge with the chloride of silver battery. Part II: The discharge in exhausted tubes”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, clxix (1878), 155–241, p. 171.

While the experiments appear to have been fully collaborative, the text of all the articles was written by De la Rue alone: See Armstrong , op. cit. (ref. 22). The papers are: De la Rue Müller , op. cit. (ref. 37); De la Rue Müller , op. cit. (ref. 49); De la Rue Warren Müller Hugo W. , “Experimental researches on the electric discharge with the chloride of silver battery. Part III: Tube potential; potential at a constant distance and various pressures; nature and phenomena of the electric arc”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, clxxi (1880), 65–116; De la Rue Warren Müller Hugo W. , “Experimental researches on the electric discharge with the chloride of silver battery. Part IV: Pressure of least resistance dependent on the shape and dimension of vessel”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, clxxiv (1883), 1883–517; De la Rue Warren Müller Hugo W. , “Experimental researches on the electric discharge with the chloride of silver battery. Part V: Plasticity and viscosity of strata”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xxxvi (1883), 1883–7.

De la Rue Müller , op. cit. (ref. 49), 156.

De la Rue Müller , op. cit. (ref. 49), 156.

This repetitive experimental procedure is described in De la Rue and Müller , op. cit. (ref. 49), 156–9.

Reynolds's role in the eclipse expedition is described in De la Rue, op. cit. (ref. 27), 335, 360, 362.

Galton's composite portraits were devised to allow the extraction of “typical characteristics” from a group of similar portraits of a racial or social type, by the serial superposition of images onto a single photographic plate rather than through the exercise of “pictorial imagination”. References to Reynolds appear in Galton Francis , “Composite portraits”, Nature, xviii (1878), 97–100; Galton Francis , “Composite portraits, made by combining those of many different persons into a single resultant figure”, The journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, viii (1879), 132–44.

Some of the engraved reproductions of photographs are described as “facsimiles of photographs”; others as “partly copied from a photograph, partly from drawings” due to the difficulty of obtaining “well-defined” photographs of moving strata. The images were signed by the well-known portrait engraver Daniel J. Pound, who had also made engravings based on solar photographs from Kew. It is possible that De la Rue participated in the engraving process himself, as he wanted to do for reproductions of his photographs of the sun at Kew. De la Rue's eagerness to engage in “touching up” solar photographs for engraving is described in Rothermel , op. cit. (ref. 20), 158; Pang Alex Soojung-Kim , “Victorian observing practices, printing technology, and representations of the solar corona, (1): The 1860s and 1870s”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xxv (1994), 249–74.

De la Rue Müller , op. cit. (ref. 49), 193.

Ibid., 210.

On the productive work required to assemble sequences of images into narratives of development in another context, see Hopwood Nick , “Producing development: The anatomy of human embryos and the norms of Wilhelm His”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, lxxiv (2000), 29–79.

De la Rue , op. cit. (ref. 27).

The strata were described as resembling everyday objects (cups, saucers, bells, umbrellas, hammers and screws), animals (serpents, worms, shells, fish, and even fish-mouths opening and closing), body parts (lips, eyes, mouths, fingers) and atmospheric or astronomical entities (clouds, comets, and stars).

De la Rue Müller , “Experimental researches on the electric discharge with the chloride of silver battery. Part IV”, op. cit. (ref. 50), 486. Spottiswoode and Moulton, “On the sensitive state of vacuum discharges. Part I”, op. cit. (ref. 29), 205. Increasingly confident assertions of this claim appear in Spottiswoode and Moulton's later papers: Spottiswoode and Moulton, “On stratified discharges. — VI.”, op. cit. (ref. 29); Spottiswoode Moulton , “On stratified discharges. — VII.”, op. cit. (ref. 29).

One such textbook, in widespread use by electrical engineers, was Gordon J. E. H. , A physical treatise on electricity and magnetism, 3rd edn (London, 1891), 67–111.

De la Rue delivered a Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution in early 1881. Warren De la Rue, ” The phenomena of the electric discharge with 14,400 chloride of silver cells: A discourse”, 1881, University of Reading Special Collections, De la Rue Collection, RUL MS 937 10/1. J. J. Thomson later described the event as taking place “on a heroic scale”, with nine months of preparation and hundreds of pounds invested into the performance. Thomson , op. cit. (ref. 10), 384–5.

This has also been the assessment of most historians of physics. Darrigol Olivier , Electrodynamics from Ampère to Einstein (Oxford, 2000), 274–87; Davis Edward Arthur Falconer Isabel , J. J. Thomson and the discovery of the electron (Boca Raton, 1997), 51; Hiebert E. , “Electric discharge in rarefied gases: The dominion of experiment. Faraday, Plücker, Hittorf”, in Klein M. J. Kox A. J. Siegel D. M. (eds), No truth except in the details: Essays in honor of Martin J. Klein (Dordrecht, 1995), 95–134.

Dekosky Robert K. , “William Crookes and the fourth state of matter”, Isis, lxvii (1976), 36–60. Crookes William , “Electricity in transitu: From plenum to vacuum”, Electrician, xxvi (1891), 1891–7, 354–60, 389–92, pp. 324–5.

Schuster Arthur , “Bakerian lecture: The discharge of electricity through gases”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xlvii (1889), 526–81, p. 554.

Thomson , op. cit. (ref. 10), 383–5.

Thomson , op. cit. (ref. 10), 385.

Thomson J. J. , Notes on recent researches in electricity and magnetism: Intended as a sequel to Professor Clerk-Maxwell's ‘Treatise on electricity and magnetism’ (Oxford, 1893), 53–207.

Thomson , op. cit. (ref. 70), 111, 115.

Thomson , op. cit. (ref. 70), 109, 112, 128–31. The quotation is from p. 130.

For accounts of Thomson's developing theory of electrical conduction in the years leading up to the discovery of the electron that leave out Thomson's fascination with the experiments described here, see Davis Falconer , op. cit. (ref. 65), 45–94; Smith George E. , “J. J. Thomson and the electron, 1897–1899”, in Buchwald Jed Z. Warwick Andrew (eds), Histories of the electron: The birth of microphysics (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 21–76.

Thomson , op. cit. (ref. 70), 194–9. The reference to the series of boys on stepping stones is on p. 197.

Thomson's “asymmetrical” approach to electric charge was one of the most distinctive features of his electrical theories, in the years leading up to the discovery of the electron and the decade afterwards (including his famously incorrect “plum pudding” model, which posited negative corpuscles embedded in a continuous matrix of positive charge). Smith , op. cit. (ref. 73).

Assmus Alexi Galison Peter , “Artificial clouds, real particles”, in Gooding David Schaffer Simon Pinch Trevor (eds), The uses of experiment: Studies in the natural sciences (Cambridge, 1989), 224–74; Galison Peter , Image and logic: A material culture of microphysics.