The John Thompson collection of instruments
Mr Dana A. Freiburger
In 1932, a set of surveying instruments and several manuscript notebooks became the newest part of the Lewis Evans Collection at Oxford. Today, this large collection is known as the Museum of the History of Science and, with the re-opening of the Museum after its recent construction work, this symposium is a reasonable moment to highlight this small contribution of items from 68 years ago which has been named the John Thompson Collection of instruments after its original owner, John Thompson (1720-1783) of Witherley Bridge, England.
The Thompson Collection, primarily comprised of eighteenth-century land surveying instruments, offers the museum visitor an opportunity to view instruments made by several well-known makers such as George Adams Sr., Thomas Wright, and Benjamin Cole. This collection also provides a basis for exploring the life history of its former owner, which, as a result, brings to light a sharp contrast between the mathematical nature of these instruments and Thompson’s mathematical abilities.
My talk will explore this contrast by evaluating the man and his instruments. I want to argue that a highly skilled eighteenth-century mathematician can be quite at ease with an instrument like the plane table, an instrument for ‘the ignorant and unlearned’ as Thomas Digges wrote in 1591, and, with such an instrument, an able mathematician can succeed in executing accurate land surveys as well as creating a challenging mathematical problem for the recreation of others.
The Philosophical Society Diligentia (1793) and its instrument collection
Dr Peter Wisse
The Society for experimental Diligentia in The Hague was founded in 1793 and has an interesting history. The society is still very much alive today. Already a few years after the foundation a beginning was made with the building up of a collection of instruments, primarily to be used for demonstrations during the lectures. At the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Society, research was done into the history, the series of lectures through the ages, and of the history of the use and the partial loss of the instrument collection, of which about 60 items are still extant.
Instruments for physics teaching at a 19th-century Spanish university
Leonor González
This paper deals with the book Instrumentos para la enseñanza de la Física (‘Instruments for Physics Teaching’) that is going to be published by the Spanish Department of Culture and Education. The book is a study, from a historic point of view, about the scientific instruments used in the Physics Faculty of the Complutense University (Madrid, Spain) from 1837 to 1939 for teaching and research.
A general picture of the origin and characteristics of the collection will be given through the paper, making reference to the moment in which the first group of instruments were received, the difficulties which arose on acquiring the instruments needed, the kind of instruments present in the collection, and the countries and retailers resorted to in order to have the best instruments at the minimum price.
The case studied is very representative of the Spanish situation in the 19th century, and can contribute to an understanding of other institutions with similar features in this country.
Science teaching in a Dutch provincial town
Mr Anne C. van Helden
The Museum Boerhaave keeps a collection of nineteenth-century and early eighteenth-century teaching instruments. This collection originates from a secondary school in the Dutch provincial town of Deventer, but it was contributed to by various institutions ranging from the local learned society to a closed-down university. Thus the collection consists of a number of sub-collections which can be recognized reasonably well. All of these sub-collections were created for teaching or popularizing science, each within a similar social setting but with slightly different emphasis. An analysis of these sub-collections might therefore be informative on the changing goals of science teaching in a Dutch provincial town, as indeed it turns out to be. Early in the nineteenth century the character of science teaching was typically eighteenth century and Dutch, with an emphasis on qualitative understanding. Towards the end of the century it was modelled on the German example, and aimed at a more quantitative understanding. The aim of this paper is to pinpoint the reflection of these changes in the instruments, as well as to provide a context.