Mechanics and mathematicians: George Biddell Airy and the social tensions in constructing time at Parliament,1845–1860

Abstract

In mid-Victorian Britain, reconciling elite mathematical expertise with practical mechanical experience presented both engineering and social challenges. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the construction of the Westminster Clock at Britain’s Houses of Parliament. Realizing this scheme engendered the collaboration between Cambridge mathematicians George Biddell Airy and Edmund Beckett Denison, and the clockmaker Edward John Dent. Transforming theoretical mathematical drawings into physical apparatus challenged existing relations between conveyors of privileged scientific knowledge and those with practical experience of what was, and what was not, mechanically possible. My article demonstrates how, within this project, physical models and devices provided material solutions to ambiguities over authority and social disorder in Victorian Britain.