Testing Power and Trust: The Steam Indicator,the ‘Reynolds Controversy’,and the Relations of Engineering Science and Practice in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain

Low Frederick Rollins , Indicators for steam-engines (New York, 1898), Preface.

Gooday G. J. N. , The morals of measurement: Accuracy, irony and trust in late Victorian electrical practice (Cambridge, 2004), 16–23.

See Miller David Philip , James Watt, chemist: Understanding the origins of the steam age (London, 2009), 162–4. Modern studies of the indicator are few. The most comprehensive and detailed in terms of studying indicator design is Walter J. , The engine indicator: A short history of the autographic patterns from 1800 to the present day (Calgary, 2008), at http://www.archivingindustry.com/indicator/contentback.htm. An excellent overview of its scientific role and experimental development is Zoller Paul , “The steam engine indicator: 19th century tool of science and stethoscope of the engineer”, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, no. 67 (2000), 9–22. On Watt and the indicator see: Dickinson H. W. Jenkins Rhys , James Watt and the steam engine (Oxford, 1927), 228–33; Hills Richard L. , James Watt, iii: Triumph through adversity (Ashbourne, 2006), 83–6; and Hills Richard L. Pacey A. J. , “The measurement of power in early steam-driven textile mills”, Technology and culture, xiii (1972), 25–43.

Perhaps because of Watt's secrecy there was considerable confusion in the nineteenth century about the early history of the indicator. The prominent engineer W. H. Preece, for example, argued that Watt had a recording indicator in 1785, and exhibited the very instrument so inscribed. In his defence it must be said that he did this on the basis of misleading material evidence. This supposed “1785 recording indicator” was tied in with the tendency of nineteenth-century engineers to attribute proto-thermodynamic ideas to Watt. On this see Miller David Philip , “The mysterious case of James Watt's “‘1785” steam indicator’: Forgery or folklore in the history of an instrument?”, International journal for the history of engineering and technology, lxxxi (2011), 129–50.

See Dickinson Jenkins , James Watt (ref. 3), 231.

For Watt's description of the indicator see Robison John , A system of mechanical philosophy (4 vols, Edinburgh, 1822), i, 156–7. This was written much earlier (c. 1814) but publication delayed until after Watt's death.

Jun H. H. , “Account of a steam engine indicator”, Quarterly journal of science, xiii (1822), 91–6.

See Hills Richard L. , Power from steam: A history of the stationary steam engine (Cambridge, 1989), Figure 26, 93. Zoller , “Steam engine indicator” (ref. 3), 9 and 19 n.4, identifies “H. H. Jun” as probably a Mr Hutton, following Dickinson and Jenkins , James Watt (ref. 3), 231. However the designation “Jun” and other circumstances point to Houldsworth. See Miller , James Watt, chemist (ref. 3), 154–5.

See “Joshua Field's diary of a tour in 1821 through the Midlands”, introduction and notes by Hall J. W. , Transactions of the Newcomen Society, vi (1925–26), 1–41.

See Jones Peter M. , “Industrial Enlightenment in practice: Visitors to the Soho Manufactory 1765–1820”, Midland history, xxxiii (2008), 68–96, and idem, Industrial Enlightenment: Science, technology and culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1820 (Manchester, 2008).

On Farey see Woolrich A. P. , “Farey, John (1791–1851)”, Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford, 2004; hereafter ODNB), online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9155]; idem, “John Farey and his Treatise on the steam engine (1827)”, History of technology, xxii (2000), 2000–106. Farey's testimony on this point is in Report of the Select Committee on the law relative to patents for inventions, British Parliamentary Paper HC332 (London, 1829), 138. Farey was making a claim that Watt's resort to secrecy with the indicator, and other of his inventions, was a reaction to the difficulty in taking out patents and the anxiety experienced in pursuing law suits to enforce them. This he argued, supported the view that taking out and defending patents should be made easier.

Walter , The engine indicator (ref. 3), chap.1, 12–13; Description and use of Macnaught's improved indicator or dynamometer for steam engines (Glasgow, 1828). The attribution to Field depends on reference to a Maudslay & Field Indicator of early design in Bourne John , A treatise on the steam engine (London, 1846), and in Main T. J. Brown T. , The indicator and dynamometer with their practical applications (London, 1847).

William McNaught became more famous than his brother as the designer of an important compound steam engine. See Hills , Power from steam (ref. 8), 157–9.

See Walter , The engine indicator (ref. 3), chap. 1, 23–5.

Hopkinson Joseph , The working of the steam engine explained by the use of the indicator, 4th edn, enlarged and improved (London, Manchester and Huddersfield, 1863; first pub. 1854).

Hopkinson recounted many instances of resistance to the indicator. He found at a Dewsbury mill in 1859, for example, that “The Engineer in this case could not agree with the report, as established by the diagram, that his Engine valves were improperly set” — Because, as he said, “he had had great practice with Engines. He would not accept the facts pointed out by the Indicator, because of that most silly of reasons — Long habit in a certain rule and routine” (Hopkinson, Working of the steam engine (ref. 15), 145).

Porter Charles T. , Engineering reminiscences (New York, 1908), 58–90, p. 84. On Elliott Brothers see Williams Mari E. W. , The precision makers: A history of the instruments industry in Britain and France, 1870–1939 (London, 1994), 17–19; Clifton G. , “Introduction to the history of Elliott Brothers up to 1900”, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, no. 36 (1993), 2–7; Bristow H. R. , “Elliott, instrument makers of London: Products, customers and development in the 19th century”, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, no. 36 (1993), 8–11.

Porter , Engineering reminiscences (ref. 17), 84.

The address establishes that this is a reference to Elliott Brothers' workshop where instruments were made, not to their retail premises. See Porter , Engineering reminiscences (ref. 17), 88. On the address of the workshop see Clifton , “History of Elliott Brothers” (ref. 17), 4.

Porter C. T. , “Richards's indicator for steam engines”, Transactions of the Sections, Report of the thirty-third meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; held at Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in August and September 1863 (London, 1864), 178–80. Porter , Engineering reminiscences (ref. 17), 99–100, recalls the occasion. The British patent for the Richards Indicator (no. 1450) had been taken out in 1862 and the U.S. Patent (no. 37980) on 24 March 1863. Richards had assigned the patents to Porter for a $100 fee plus a 10% royalty on each instrument.

See, for example, the Elliott Brothers' Catalogue bound in Hoare Charles , The slide-rule and how to use it (London, 1868). The catalogue is at the end of the publication, separately paginated, and the advertisement for the Richards Indicator is on the penultimate page.

See Porter , Engineering reminiscences (ref. 17), 90. Zoller , “Steam engine indicator” (ref. 3), 9 notes that there is an Elliott—Richards Indicator, numbered 13779, in the Science Museum.

Mayr Otto , “Yankee practice and engineering theory: Charles T. Porter and the dynamics of the high-speed steam engine”, Technology and culture, xvi (1975), 570–602.

Ibid., 601–2.

See Walter , The engine indicator (ref. 3), chap. 6, 3ff.

Miller , James Watt, chemist, chap. 6. See also, and compare, Baird Davis , Thing knowledge: A philosophy of scientific instruments (Berkeley, 2004), 170–88.

Clapeyron Émile , “Mémoire sur la puissance motrice de la chaleur”, Journal de l'Ecole Polytechnique, xiv (1834), 153–90. An edited translation of this paper is available in Reflections on the motive power of fire by Sadi Carnot and other papers on the second law of thermodynamics by E. Clapeyron and R. Clausius, ed, by Mendoza Eric (New York, 1960), 71–105.

Cardwell D. S. L. , From Watt to Clausius: The rise of thermodynamics in the early industrial age (Ithaca, NY, 1971), 220–1 is convinced that Clapeyron had encountered the indicator diagram but is not sure how. On Clapeyron's presence and activities in Russia at this time see Bradley Margaret , “Franco-Russian engineering links: The careers of Lamé and Clapeyron, 1820–1830”, Annals of science, xxxviii (1981), 1981–312. On the prominent Scottish engineers and the practicalities and theory of the steam engine see Smith Crosbie Wise M. Norton , Energy and empire: A biographical study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge, 1989), 53, 290–1, 357–8.

Rankine William John Macquorn , A manual of the steam engine and other prime movers (London and Glasgow, 1859), 47–52, 417–25. For the cultural context of Rankine's work see Smith Crosbie , The science of energy: A cultural history of energy physics in Victorian Britain (London, 1998), 150–66, and Ben Marsden, “Engineering science in Glasgow: Economy, efficiency and measurement as prime movers in the differentiation of an academic discipline”, The British journal for the history of science, xxv (1992), 319–46.

Rankine W. J. Macquorn , Introductory lecture on the harmony of theory and practice in mechanics, delivered to the class of civil engineering and mechanics in the University of Glasgow, on Thursday, January 3, 1856 (London and Glasgow, 1856).

Fairbairn William Pole William , The life of Sir William Fairbairn, Bart., partly written by himself, edited and completed by Pole William (London, 1877), 268–9.

Bartrip Peter W. J. , “The state and the steam-boiler in nineteenth-century Britain”, International review of social history, xxv (1980), 77–105. For a longer-term view of problems of pressure-vessel integrity and the means of trying to ensure it, including in the nuclear era, see Harrop L. P. , “The integrity of pressure vessels”, Science progress, lxviii (1983), 423–57.

See, for example, Hopkinson , Working of the steam engine (ref. 15), 53–4, 116–18, 153–7, 177.

Collins Harry , Changing order: Replication and induction in scientific practice (Chicago, 1992; first pub. 1985); Collins Harry Evans Robert , Rethinking expertise (Chicago, 2007).

Bourne John , Handbook of the steam engine (New York, 1865), 333.

Rankine , Manual of the steam engine (ref. 29), 417 addresses this point also.

Reynolds Osborne , “On the theory of the indicator and the errors in indicator-diagrams”, Minutes of proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, lxxxiii (1886), 1–19.

Key biographical sources on Reynolds include: Allen Jack , “The life and work of Osborne Reynolds”, in Osborne Reynolds and engineering science today, ed. by McDowell D. M. Jackson J. D. (Manchester, 1969), 1–82; Jackson J. D. , “Osborne Reynolds: Scientist, engineer and pioneer”, Proceedings of the Royal Society, A/cdli (1995), 49–86; Jackson Derek Launder Brian , “Osborne Reynolds and the publication of his papers on turbulent flow”, Annual review of fluid mechanics, xxxix (2007), 2007–35. See also Crowther J. G. , Scientific types (London, 1968), 244–63, which conveys something of Reynolds's quirky and contrarian disposition.

Reynolds's certificate of nomination to the Fellowship described him as “Eminent in the Science of Engineering and in Physics”, and signatories included Thomson William Maxwell J. C. Joule J. P. Roscoe H. E. Schorlemmer C. Tyndall J. Merrifield C. W. (see Royal Society, Certificates of Election and Candidature EC/1877/16, available online via http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=1684).

Warwick Andrew , Masters of theory: Cambridge and the rise of mathematical physics (Chicago, 2003), 3.

Brightmore A. W. , “Experiments with the steam-engine indicator”, Minutes of the proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, lxxxiii (1886), 20–41.

See “Discussion”, Minutes of the proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, lxxxiii (1886), 42–103.

On Hirn see Papanelopoulou Faidra , “Gustave-Adolphe Hirn (1815–90): Engineering thermodynamics in mid-nineteenth-century France”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxix (2006), 231–54.

Rankine , Manual of the steam engine (ref. 29), 422.

Reynolds , “On the theory of the indicator” (ref. 37), 2.

Ibid., 8–9.

Ibid., 9.

Ibid., 19.

See Carlyle E. I. , “Kennedy, Sir Alexander Blackie William (1847–1928)”, rev. by Gooday Graeme J. N. , ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/viw/article/34278].

“Prof. J. H. Cotterill, F.R.S.”, Nature, cix (1922), 115–16. See also Charleton T. M. , “Maxwell, Jenkin and Cotterill and the theory of statically-indeterminate structures”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xxvi (1971), 233–46. Maxwell was among the signatories of Cotterill's nomination certificate for the Royal Society.

Carlyle E. I. , ” anderson, Sir William (1835–1898)”, rev. by Ian St. John, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/507].

See Birse Ronald M. , “Cowper, Edward Alfred (1819–1893)”, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37317]; “Edward Alfred Cowper”, Minutes of proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, cxiv (1892–93), 369–72; “Mr. E. A. Cowper”, Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects, xxxiv (1893), 241–2.

“Discussion” (ref. 42), 45.

Ibid., 46. William Edmund Rich (1844–86) died on 22 December 1886. He had been apprenticed at 16 to the engineering works of Messrs Palmer of Jarrow (where A. B. W. Kennedy was draughtsman) before going to the Engineering School at Glasgow University in 1866, where, under Rankine, he obtained high academic honours. In 1868 he joined Messrs. Easton & Amos (later Easton & Anderson) as an assistant engineer, becoming a partner in the firm ten years later, and he was therefore closely associated with another discussant William Anderson. Rich did important work on pumping engines and on hydraulic lifts. Just before his death he was working, in collaboration with Kennedy, on testing one of the Davey engines used to drive the Electric Light Installation at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition. See “William Edmund Rich”, Minutes of proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, lxxxix (1886–87), 484–5.

Bramwell also reinforced this point in a contribution from the chair (“Discussion” (ref. 42), 49–50).

“Discussion” (ref. 42), 47.

John George Mair is a rather shadowy figure. At his death on 20 December 1920 he was known, and had been since the early 1890s, as John George Valentine Mair-Rumley. He was born in the early 1840s. Later in life he was a Director of Gwynnes Engineering Company Ltd, a Hammersmith-based pump manufacturer, and also became a Director of Babcock & Wilcox Ltd when it was formed in Britain. His brief obituary in Nature describes him as a consulting engineer on steam engines. He became a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1873, and subsequently a Life Member, serving on the Council from 1888 to 1899. (Oddly, neither its Proceedings nor those of the Civil Engineers contains an obituary.) Mair's early accounts of his experimental work on steam engines suggest that he long had a close association with Messrs James Simpson of Pimlico, London, which provided the opportunity for many of his engine trials. (See: Obituary, Nature, cvi (1921), 605; The Times, 23 December 1920, 1; Bruland Kristine , “The Babcock & Wilcox Company: Strategic alliance, technology development and enterprise control, circa 1860–1900”, in From family firms to corporate capitalism: Essays in business and industrial history in honour of Peter Mathias, ed. by Bruland K. O'Brien P. (Oxford, 1998), 219–46, p. 239).

“Discussion” (ref. 42), 50.

Mair J. G. , “On the independent testing of steam engines and the measurement of heat used”, Minutes of proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, lxx (1882), 313–49, and idem, “The results of some independent engine tests”, Minutes of proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, lxxix (1885), 1885–46. These papers certainly show that Mair was not credulous so far as the accuracy of the indicator diagrams produced in testing engines was concerned. Indeed, he took a number of precautions with the indicator that Reynolds claimed were not taken. Of course, Reynolds, in finding deficiencies, was not addressing himself to the best experimental practice but rather to “ordinary” indicator practices. In that sense both Mair and Reynolds could claim to be right.

“Discussion” (ref. 42), 51. Zoller , “Steam engine indicator”, 14–18 discusses a range of experimental work carried out on the indicator in France and Germany in the later nineteenth century and notes that the Physikalische-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin did a good deal of calibration and standardization work especially on indicator springs. See also Cahan David , An institute for an empire: The Physikalische-Technische Reichsanstalt 1871–1918 (Cambridge, 1989), 163–4. Cahan informs us that late in the nineteenth century, and early in the twentieth, the Heat and Pressure Laboratory remained the largest at the Reichsanstalt despite the enormous growth of the Electrical Laboratory (p. 163). This is relevant to my argument below about the technological inertia of steam technology and the possibly non-representative nature of the socio-technical relations of the electrical industry, it being of very recent vintage in the period we are concerned with.

“Discussion” (ref. 42), 54–5.

“Discussion” (ref. 42), 55.

See Cowper E. A. , “On the inventions of James Watt and his models preserved at Handsworth and South Kensington”, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, xxxiv (1883), 599–631, and plates 55–87.

“Discussion” (ref. 42), 60.

Harris Henry Graham (1850–1910) served an apprenticeship at the Thames Ironworks, Shipbuilding and Engineering Company. He worked variously for: Messrs Ravenhill, Hodgson & Co., Marine Engineers of Ratcliff; Messrs Hodge and Sons of Millwall; and a Mr Perrett. In 1874 he became chief assistant to Sir Frederick Bramwell and later a partner in that consulting business. He was active in the Institutions of Mechanical, Electrical and Civil Engineers, as well as in the Royal Society of Arts. He also worked as an arbitrator (Minutes of proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, clxxxvi (1911), 449).

“Discussion” (ref. 42), 67.

Ibid., 68.

Ibid., 71.

Ibid., 78. I have as yet been unable to identify Wingfield.

Ibid., 48.

Ibid., 49.

Cotterill refers here to Minutes of proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, lxxix, 323, one of Mair's papers.

“Discussion” (ref. 42), 49.

Ibid., 61.

It is interesting that Zoller , “Steam engine indicator” (ref. 3), 21, n40 in briefly noticing the ‘Reynolds Controversy’ and the fact that many of the engineers considered Reynolds's equipment obsolete, observes: “Poor academics: We are rarely up to date with our equipment. This gives practical engineers a chance to pounce on the results without having to understand them”.

Reynolds Osborne , “The causes of the racing of the engines of screw steamers investigated theoretically and by experiment”, Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects, xiv (1873), 56–67.

Ibid., 64. Though the issue of scaling up from models, the problem of similitude, had received considerable attention already by this time, it is clear that it had not progressed to the point where practical engineers trusted it. See Wright Thomas , “Scale models, similitude and dimensions: Aspects of mid-nineteenth-century engineering science”, Annals of science, xlix (1992), 233–54, and also Darrigol Olivier , Worlds of flow: A history of hydrodynamics from the Bernoullis to Prandtl (Oxford, 2005), 173–8, 257–8, 278–9. Reynolds is, of course, recognized as one of the key architects of the understanding of similitude, though the attribution of this to him was perhaps a generous one.

Reynolds , “Causes of the racing” (ref. 76), 66.

Thomson , quoted in Allen, “Life and work of Osborne Reynolds” (ref. 38), 25. Olivier Darrigol has noted that because Reynolds “did not bother scanning older literature on his subject, he often duplicated previously known results”, and gives examples of this ( Darrigol , Worlds of flow (ref. 77), 245–6).

The Times, 21 July 1880, 6, col. B. For the mention of Reynolds's theoretical work see Merrifield C. W. , “Heavy guns” [Letter to the Editor], The Times, 14 April 1880, 6, col. G.

Reynolds O. , “The storage of electricity”, The Times, 18 June 1881, 6; Reynolds O. , “Self-righting lifeboats”, The Times, 5 January 1887, 7, col. C.

Jackson Launder , “Osborne Reynolds” (ref. 38), 23.

Ibid., 22.

Ibid., 26–7.

“Address by the Right Hon. Lord Rayleigh, … President”, Report of the fifty-fourth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Montreal in August and September 1884 (London, 1885), 1–23, p. 13.

Crookes and Reynolds crossed swords on the radiometer in a way that highlights Crookes's empiricism and Reynolds's convoluted, difficult, theoretical and impatient-of-needless-experiment approach. See Brock William H. , William Crookes (1832–1919) and the commercialization of science (Aldershot, 2008), 167–72, p. 169.

Stokes George Sir , “President's address”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xlv (1888–89), 48–58, p. 57.

This did not mean, however, that Reynolds failed to support engineering, and defend it from the condescension of scientific élites. Thus, when his friend Horace Lamb referred to the “empirical formula adopted by engineers” in discussing a particular piece of research, Reynolds responded that it was not “polite or true” to speak in that way “since it is engineers who have done the scientific investigations which alone have given us accurate data”. (See Allen , “Life and work of Osborne Reynolds” (ref. 38), 32–3.).

This diagnosis of the situation is reinforced by remarks made almost forty years later in a symposium on Indicators at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The exchanges on that occasion still betrayed tensions between the practical and the academic engineer, but the balance had tilted towards the likes of Professor P. M. Baker who sounded much like Reynolds when he stated in a written response to the symposium that there was “scarcely sufficient of the spirit of scientific unbelief amongst engineers, many of whom were prepared to accept statements as to the accuracy of the appliances which they used without endeavouring to test them”. Baker also complained, as had Reynolds, of the working out of results of indicator measurements to an unwarranted degree of accuracy. The Symposium had been introduced by Loughnan Pendred by noting that some members might recall the discussion provoked by Reynolds nearly forty years before at the Institution of Civil Engineers: ” The famous professor ventured to assert, and endeavoured to prove by mathematics and by the analysis of experiments made by Mr. Brightmore … that the steam-engine indicator was a much more fallible instrument than was generally supposed. Many of the great engineers of that day stoutly denied the charges and affirmed their unshaken belief in cards taken by skilled operators”. But Reynolds was vindicated, Pendred thought, because although there was some difference of opinion about his quantitative results, “he examined with his accustomed skill and accuracy all the qualitative faults of indicators and their gear”. The matters that Reynolds had dealt with had, Pendred stated, become “familiar to every student of engineering”, and were still the problems of the indicator. [“Symposium of papers on indicators”, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, civ (1923), Part 1, 95–197. Pendred's paper, ” The problems of the engine indicator”, is at 95–110.] This invocation of the ‘Reynolds Controversy’ does suggest that it was something of a cause célèbre in the engineering community for many years. Compare also the remarks in Stewart James G. , “Indicators”, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, lxxxiv (1913), 7–81. The discussion of this paper on indicator errors was dominated by professors of engineering, but some remarks did hark back to the kind of complaints from practical industrial engineers that Reynolds had faced. See, for example, the communication of Mr George Ness at 72–4.

For general treatments of these trends see: The science-industry nexus: History, policy, implications, ed. by Grandin Karl Wormbs Nina Widmalm Sven (Sagamore Beach, MA, 2004); Shinn Terry , “The industry, research and education nexus”, in The Cambridge history of science, v: The modern physical and mathematical sciences, ed. by Nye Mary Jo (Cambridge, 2003), 133–53; Wengenroth Ulrich , “Science, technology, and industry”, in From natural philosophy to the sciences: Writing the history of nineteenth-century science, ed. by Cahan David (Chicago, 2003), 221–53.

König Wolfgang , “Science-based industry or industry-based science? Electrical engineering in Germany before World War I”, Technology and culture, xxxvii (1996), 70–101. On the importance of relatively invisible improvement work in industrial settings, especially in Britain, see Fox Robert Guagnini Anna , “Life in the slow lane: Research and electrical engineering in Britain, France, and Italy, ca. 1900”, in Technological development and science in the industrial age: New perspectives on the science-technology relationship, ed. by Kroes Peter Bakker Martijn (Dordrecht, 1992), 133–54.

Fox Robert Guagnini Anna , Laboratories, workshops, and sites: Concepts and practices of research in industrial Europe, 1800–1914 (Berkeley, 1999), 95.

Ibid., 97.

“Discussion” (ref. 42), 48.

Fox Guagnini , Laboratories (ref. 92), 109.

Guagnini Anna , “Worlds apart: Academic instruction and professional qualifications in the training of mechanical engineers in England, 1850–1914”, in Fox Robert Guagnini Anna (eds), Education, technology and industrial performance in Europe, 1850–1939 (Cambridge, 1993), 16–41.

The late 1880s and 1890s were a period of rapid development in the field of steam engineering, a field that some had written off as “old hat”. Reynolds himself referred to this in his address as President of Section G of the BAAS in 1888. He devoted much of that address to steam engineering and had interesting things to say about the location of research. He considered that industry-based research had been unforthcoming (for good commercial reasons) and that university-based engineering laboratories were the place to take it up. See Reynolds Osborne , [Presidential Address to Section G], Report of the fifty-seventh meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at Manchester in August and September 1887 (London, 1888), 855–61.

Anderson William , “The interdependence of abstract science and engineering”, Minutes of proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, cxiv (1893), 255–83.

See Morus Iwan Rhys , When physics became king (Chicago, 2005), 226–60; Schaffer Simon , “Late Victorian metrology and its instrumentation: A manufactory of Ohms”, in Invisible connections: Instruments, institutions, and science, ed. by Bud Robert Cozzens Susan E. (Bellingham, WN, 1992), 23–56; Gooday Graeme J. N. , The morals of measurement: Accuracy, irony, and trust in late Victorian electrical practice (Cambridge, 2004); and the important essays collected in The values of precision, ed. by Wise M. Norton (Princeton, 1995).

Anna Guagnini makes a similar point about the effect of Britain's “deeply rooted industrial tradition” and methods for training engineers upon the late recognition of academic instruction in engineering as crucial to professional qualification. See Guagnini , “Worlds apart” (ref. 96), 17.

See Gooday , Morals of measurement (ref. 99), 270.

On the issue of “appropriate simplification” see Hilgartner Stephen , “The dominant view of popularization: Conceptual problems, political uses”, Social studies of science, xx (1990), 519–39, pp. 528–30.

The phrase is Graeme Gooday's in “Precision measurement and the genesis of physics teaching laboratories in Victorian Britain”, The British journal for the history of science, xxiii (1990), 25–51.

We need to acknowledge inertia here in a way parallel to David Edgerton's insights in The shock of the old: Technology and global history since 1900 (Oxford, 2007).