Scientific instrument makers at the Royal Mint

Dr Gloria Clifton

For much of its history the Royal Mint was situated in the Tower of London and was one of a number of government institutions that made use of the services of instrument makers. The metropolitan makers who had connections with the Mint can be divided into two groups: those who acted as regular contractors, supplying equipment or services, and those who were engaged as employees. The paper will seek to trace these different connections from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, to draw out common themes and to assess their significance, both in relation to the instrument making trade and with respect to wider economic and administrative developments. Among the craftsmen who will be discussed are Humfrey Cole, a number of leading metropolitan balance makers, and some more obscure figures, such as John Coventry and John Field.

Instrument maker on the run: a case of technology transfer

Dr Olov Amelin

In 1761 the Swedish instrument-maker John Ahl fled from his creditors and settled in the neighbouring country of Denmark. The baggage he took with him included a great deal of valuable knowledge. He quickly established himself as the leading instrument-maker in the country, and his output enabled Denmark to become one of the leading European nations in surveying and cartography. His production skills were technically sophisticated and innovative, but they were also based to a considerable extent on innovations made by his mentor, Daniel Ekström, in the 1750. Ahl’s flight had serious diplomatic repercussions, which were only resolved after four years’ negotiation between the two countries. Ahl’s work was also closely related to that of the Danish astronomer and geodesist Thomas Bugge.

Collaboration between technician and scientist was very close here and Thomas Bugge’s journeys to England and Paris provided Ahl with valuable information on the designing of instruments, which Ahl was later able to use when equipping the astronomical observatory Rundetårn in Copenhagen.

Samuel Charles Tisley and the making of instruments for science

Mr Julian Holland

The firm of Tisley and Spiller (later S.C. Tisley and Co.) manufactured scientific instruments in London in the 1870s and 1880s. Today the firm is almost unknown and receives few mentions in the modern secondary literature. There is reason to believe, however, that the firm was prominent in its day. Located in Brompton Road close to the South Kensington Museum (forerunner of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Science Museum) and the Department of Science and Art, Tisley and Spiller sought to capitalize on the expansion of science education in England after 1871. The paper will present an outline of Samuel Charles Tisley’s life and the history of the firm, survey the range of instruments produced, and analyze the role of the firm in the transformation of scientific instrument making in the later nineteenth century.

Instrument making to instrument manufacturing: R.W. Paul’s ‘Unipivot’ galvanometer as a case study

Mr Neil Brown

Robert William Paul trained as a scientific instrument maker at City and Guilds College in London and set up in business in Hatton garden in 1891, producing a range of instruments, mostly electrical. To judge from his early catalogues it was in the traditional style of such enterprises. It became a substantial undertaking, but there is nothing to suggest the use of anything more than familiar craft-based production methods.

In 1903 Paul introduced a new design of galvanometer, the ‘Unipivot’ galvanometer. It was a robust, easy-to-use, pivoted moving-coil instrument, more sensitive than previous instruments of this type and superior to the widely used moving-magnet instruments. At the same time --Paul moved the business to a new factory in the New Southgate area of London. By 1914 the ‘Unipivot’ galvanometer had evolved into a large number of variants and accessories covering the whole range of electrical measurement and apparently selling in large numbers. They were assembled from a range of common parts, with instruments often differing only in one or two components. In this respect Paul seems to have gone further than other scientific instrument makers at this time. To achieve this Paul must have moved from making instruments individually, or at most in small batches, to the large-scale manufacture of identical and interchangeable parts that could be assembled economically into the wide range of different instruments.