Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-27T23:25:24.091Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Material doubts: Hooke, artisan culture and the exchange of information in 1670s London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Rob Iliffe
Affiliation:
History of Science and Technology, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ.

Extract

In this paper I analyse some resources for the history of manipulative skill and the acquisition of knowledge. I focus on a decade in the life of the ‘ingenious’ Robert Hooke, whose social identity epitomized the mechanically minded individual existing on the interface between gentleman natural philosophers, instrument makers and skilled craftsmen in late seventeenth-century London. The argument here is not concerned with the notion that Hooke had a unique talent for working with material objects, and indeed my purpose is to rethink the ways in which we account for such virtuosity. In this vein, I do not adopt solely a realist or constructivist attitude to skill but seek to show how, in a purposeful way, Hooke drew from the resources of techniques and information made available to him by his social interaction with labourers, servants, craftsmen, gentlemen and noblemen. In Hooke's local culture, intelligence flowed between the sites where these individuals worked and socialized. I examine the practical, social and situational links between the worlds of the coffee house, the workshop and the rooms of the Royal Society at Arundel House (between 1667 and 1674) and Gresham College. From this perspective, there were no rigid boundaries between the domains of natural philosophy, banausic culture and construction work on which Hooke was engaged, and I argue that we should examine his world in term of a series of networks of capital exchange comprised of finance, social power and mechanical expertise.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 ‘News from the coffeehouse’ (1677), cited in Timbs, J., Clubs and Club Life in London, London, 1899, 288.Google Scholar

2 Since I stress the significance of information gleaned from face-to-face interactions, I do not pay much attention to the importance of the printed text as a source of Hooke's knowledge. For remarks on Hooke's reading in the 1670s, see Rostenberg, L., The Library of Robert Hooke: The Scientific Book Trade of Restoration England, Santa Monica, CA, 1989Google Scholar. For historical accounts of skill see More, C., Skill and the Working Class, 1870–1914, London, 1980Google Scholar; Rule, J., ‘The property of skill in the period of manufacture’, in The Historical Meanings of Work (ed. Joyce, P.), Cambridge, 1989, 99118Google Scholar, and the papers published by Wood, S. (ed.), in The Degradation of Work? Skill, Deskilling and the Labour Process, London, 1982.Google Scholar

3 For recent studies of Hooke's scientific work, see Gouk, P., ‘The role of acoustics and music theory in the scientific work of Robert Hooke’, Annals of Science (1980), 37, 573605CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kassler, J. and Oldroyd, D., ‘Hooke's Trinity College “Musick Scripts”: his music theory and the role of music in his cosmology’, Annals of Science (1983), 40, 559–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bennett, J., ‘Robert Hooke as mechanic and natural philosopher’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society (1980), 35, 3348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Other helpful studies are included in Hunter, M. and Schaffer, S. (eds.), Robert Hooke: New Studies, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1989.Google Scholar See particularly Bennett, J., ‘Hooke's instruments for astronomy and navigation’Google Scholar, ibid., 21–32; Simpson, A. D. C., ‘Robert Hooke and practical optics: technical support at a scientific frontier’Google Scholar, ibid., 33–61; Wright, M., ‘Hooke's longitude timekeeper’Google Scholar, ibid., 63–118; Henry, John, ‘Robert Hooke, the incongruous mechanist’Google Scholar, ibid., 149–81 and Shapin, S., ‘Who was Robert Hooke?’Google Scholar, ibid., 253–86. See also Pugliese, P., ‘The Scientific Achievement of Robert Hooke’, (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1981)Google Scholar and Pumfrey, S., ‘Ideas above his station: a social study of Hooke's curatorship of experiments’, History of Science (1991), 29, 144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (ed. A. R. and Hall, M. B.), 13 vols., Madison, WI, 19651986, ii, 605–7 and 610.Google Scholar The only account which does justice to the breadth of Hooke's interests is Espinasse, M., Robert Hooke, London, 1956.Google Scholar There are often problems with determining Hooke's sense, either because of the punctuation or because the name even if correctly deciphered could refer to two or more different people. Moreover, a number of family dynasties worked as master craftsmen and contractors for these craftsmen. Hooke frequently wrote up his notes from memory on the following weekend, sometimes as much as a fortnight later.

5 For artisanal culture in early modern London, see Archer, I., Politics and Stability in Sixteenth Century London, Cambridge, 1991Google Scholar; Wallace, A. F. C., The Social Contexts of Innovation: Bureaucrats, Families and Heroes in the Early Industrial Revolution, as Foreseen in Bacon's New Atlantis, Princeton, 1982, 361 and 151–3Google Scholar; Earle, P., The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London 1660–1730, London, 1989, ch. 2Google Scholar; George, M. Dorothy, London Life in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1985, 116212Google Scholar; and Unwin, G., Industrial Organization in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford, 1904.Google Scholar

6 Stewart, Larry, The Rise of Public Science, Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750, Cambridge, 1992.Google Scholar A rare example of a diary reference to an apprentice is by Thomas Tompion, who told Hooke on 9 February 1679 of one of his apprentice's ‘tryals’ involving tin and silver. See Robinson, H. W. and Adams, W. (eds.), The Diary of Robert Hooke M.A., M.D., F.R.S., 1672–1680, London, 1935, 438 (hereafter Diary).Google Scholar

7 Waller, R. (ed.), The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, London, 1705, 1.Google Scholar For Wilkins' own recognition of the possibility of flight based on springs, see Wilkins, John, Mathematicall Magick, or the Wonders that may be Performed by Mechanicall Geometry, London, 1648, 195–6.Google Scholar

8 Shapin, S. and Schaffer, S., Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life, Princeton, 1985, 231–2, 262Google Scholar; Birch, T. (ed.), The History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge, 4 vols., London, 17561757, i, 124Google Scholar; Bennett, , ‘Hooke as mechanic’, op. cit. (3), 33Google Scholar; Oldenburg, to Beckman, , 30 03 1668Google Scholar, in Hall, and Hall, , op. cit. (4), iv, 280Google Scholar (and cf. ibid., iv, 137 and xiii, 151 n2). Greatorex was trained by Elias Allen and was made Free of the Clockmakers' Company in 1653 on Allen's death. He returned to England after a spell in France on 7 May 1666; see Brown, J., ‘Guild organizations and the instrumentmaking trade, 1550–1830; the “Grocers” and Clockmakers' Companies’, Annals of Science (1979), 36, 134CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on 13. For an account of Hooke's tribulations with Cutler and what he thought his duties were, see Hunter, M., ‘Science, technology and patronage: Robert Hooke and the Cutlerian Lectureship’, in his Establishing the New Science. The Experience of the Early Royal Society, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1989, 279338, on 299.Google Scholar

9 Birch, T. (ed.), The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, 6 vols., London, 1772, vi, 501–5Google Scholar; Frank, R., Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: Scientific Knowledge and Social Interaction, London, 1980Google Scholar; Lysaght, D. J., ‘Hooke's theory of combustion’, Ambix (1937), 1, 93108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bennett, , ‘Hooke as mechanic’, op. cit. (3), 42–3.Google Scholar

10 Simpson, , op. cit. (3), 35–7Google Scholar remarks that Wren's De corpore Saturni referred to Neile ‘having hired the best workmen and order[ing] the making of [telescopes] in his own house, he himself supervising the work (by virtue of the remarkable strength of his judgement in mathematics’, while Goddard ‘instructed and employed [the optical instrument maker Richard Reeve] in the manual operation’. For Hooke and compound lenses, see Turnbull, H. W. (ed.), James Gregory: Tercentenary Volume Containing his Correspondence, London, 1939, 223.Google Scholar The reason given to Hevelius for the Society's inability to provide him with a new kind of telescope micrometer in 1669 was that Hooke was so ‘busy (besides other things) in rebuilding the houses of the restored city of London that as yet he has not had leisure to teach workmen how to make them, as he should do’; cf. Hall, and Hall, , op. cit. (4), vi. 170.Google Scholar See also Van Helden, A., ‘The development of compound eye-pieces, 1640–1670’, Journal of the History of Astronomy (1977), 8, 2637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Birch, , op. cit. (8), iii, 3, 8, 1619.Google Scholar See also Pumfrey, S., ‘Who did the work? Experimental philosophers and public demonstrators in Augustan England’, BJHS (1995), 28, 131–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Birch, , op. cit. (8), iii, 43, 49, 61, 63, 68, 76, 77, 89, 90Google Scholar; Diary, 29, 31, 32, 43, 45.Google Scholar

13 Hooke, R., Animadversions on the First Part of the Machina Coelestis of the Honourable, Learned, and Deservedly Famous Astronomer Johannes Hevelius Consul of Dantzick; together with an Explication of some Instruments made by Robert Hooke; Professor of Astronomy in Gresham College, and Fellow of the Royal Society, London, 1674Google Scholar; Hall, and Hall, , op. cit. (4), xi, 142.Google Scholar For the developments of lens application to instruments in this period, see in particular, Bennett, , ‘Hooke's instruments’, op. cit. (3)Google Scholar, and Olmstead, R. J., ‘The “application” of telescopes to astronomical instruments, 1667–69’, Isis (1949), 40, 213–25.Google Scholar

14 Birch, , op. cit. (8), iii, 120–1Google Scholar (my italics); Diary, 82.Google Scholar

15 Hooke, R., Lampas; or Descriptions of some Mechanical Improvements of Lamps and Waterpoyses. Together with some other Physical and Mechanical Discoveries, London, 1677, 26–7.Google Scholar

16 Diary, 276 (27 02 1676/1677)Google Scholar. For an example of his description of a craftsmen as ‘ingenious’, see the entry for 20 October 1677, Diary, 322.Google Scholar

17 For Hooke's career as a surveyor and architect see the fine account in Espinasse, , op. cit. (4), 83105Google Scholar and Colvin, H. M., A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects, 1660–1840, London, 1954, 295–7Google Scholar; Robinson, H. W., ‘Hooke as surveyor and architect’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London (1949), 6, 4855CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Batten, M. I., ‘The architecture of Robert Hooke, F.R.S.’, Walpole Society (19361937), 25, 83113Google Scholar; Pierce, S. Rowland, ‘A drawing for the Thames Embankment after the Great Fire 1666, by Robert Hooke’, Antiquaries' Journal (1964), 44, 233–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Pratt's work is surveyed in Gunther, R. T. (ed.), The Architecture of Sir Roger Pratt, Charles II's Commissioner for the Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, Oxford, 1928.Google Scholar For the co-opting of a number of mathematical practitioners such as Shortgrave to survey the ruins, see Reddaway, T. F., The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, London, 1951, 62–6.Google Scholar

18 See Knoop, D. and Jones, G. P., The London Masons in the Seventeenth Century, Manchester, 1935, 57Google Scholar; Colvin, , op. cit. (17), 206Google Scholar, and Reddaway, , op. cit. (17)Google Scholar. Evelyn's plan for a post-Fire London can be found in De Beer, E. S. (ed.), London Revived: Consideration for its Rebuilding in 1666. Oxford, 1938.Google Scholar

19 Cf. Espinasse, , op. cit. (4), 86Google Scholar; Pierce, , op. cit. (17), 235–7Google Scholar; Batten, , op. cit. (17), 86.Google Scholar For a general account of the waterways of London, see Perks, S., The Water Line of the City of London, London, 1935Google Scholar and idem, ‘The scheme for the Thames embankment for the Great Fire of London’, RIBA Journal (1924), 3rd series, 31, 445–61.Google Scholar

20 See Colvin, , op. cit. (17), 296–7Google Scholar; Batten, , op. cit. (17), 85–6.Google Scholar For the building of Bethlem see O'Donoghue, E. G., A History of Bethlem, London, 1914Google Scholar and Andrews, J., ‘A History of Bethlem Hospital c 1600–1750’, (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1990)Google Scholar. For the Monument, see Welch, C., The History of the Monument, London, 1893Google Scholar (although Hooke's role in its construction was not appreciated until the publication of his Diary in 1935).

21 Hunter, and Scharfer, , op. cit. (3), 292–3Google Scholar; Diary, 66, 87, 107, 116, 120, 160, 163, 179, 208.Google Scholar For the significance of Wren's models and draughts, see the texts edited by A. T. Bolton and H. D. Henry and published in twenty volumes by the Wren Society from 1923–24 to 1943, but especially vols. 1–3, 5, 13 and 16 (which contains an account of the models) and Downes, K., Christopher Wren, London, 1971, 159–68, especially 160–1Google Scholar, and Bennett, J., The Mathematical Science of Christopher Wren, Cambridge, 1982, 87124.Google Scholar For the reconstruction of St Paul's, see Lang, J., Rebuilding St. Paul's after the Great Fire of London, Oxford 1956.Google Scholar

22 Diary, 39, 40, 42, 92–3Google Scholar; Espinasse, , op. cit. (4), 93–4 and 95Google Scholar. For the work on the Navy Office which has been attributed to Wren, see Reddaway, T. F., ‘The temporary Navy Office, 1673–84’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society (1957), 19, 90–4Google Scholar and idem, ‘Sir Christopher Wren's Navy Office’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research (1957), 30, 175–88.Google Scholar

23 Diary, 96, 107, 108, 116, 120, 123, 130, 150, 158, 164, 167, 173, 182, 225, 228Google Scholar; and Espinasse, , op. cit. (4), 104–5Google Scholar (for Wren's ‘modules’). On 29 September 1674, Hooke noted that ‘Sir W. Petty was desird to draw up a new module of Royal Society’, Diary, 124.Google Scholar The carpenters Bates and Audley received £90 for the three turrets, while John Hayward received £440 for the roof, lantern and bracketting, ibid., 225, 228 (the entry for 26 April records ‘At Bedlam committee, turret lanthorn put up concluded’).

24 Diary, 128, 119, 121, 126, 127, 139.Google Scholar The ‘module’ that his servant Harry began on 26 November was probably the machine with sails which Hooke was intending to show to the Royal Society, on which he had worked with Shortgrave on the 19th (ibid., 131, 132), and which interested him throughout the 1670s.

25 Diary, 139, 144, 145, 149, 153, 160, 168, 193.Google Scholar On 23 October 1666 Oldenburg told Boyle that parliament had not yet decided how to raise money for reconstruction, ‘nor is the modell as yet agreed upon by weh ye Citty is to be rebuilded’, suggesting that ‘model’ could sometimes be used in the sense of a general plan. Cf. Hall, and Hall, , op. cit. (4), iii, 274.Google Scholar Hooke's principle of arches was that of the utility of the inverted catenary which he put into cipher in an appendix to his Helioscopes, London, 1676.

26 Batten, , op. cit. (17), 100.Google Scholar See also, Diary, 415, 416, 446–7.Google Scholar

27 Batten, , op. cit. (17), 102.Google Scholar See also, Diary, 447, 449.Google Scholar

28 Batten, , op. cit. (17), 102–3.Google Scholar

29 Birch, , op. cit. (8), iii, 364–5Google Scholar; Diary, 329Google Scholar (‘Shewd experiment of weighing solids to the 1000000th [sic] part of their weight’), 333, 334. In fact Hooke noted triumphantly on 19 December: ‘Grew to take notes also but I to draw them up’, ibid., 335.

30 Birch, , op. cit. (8), iii, 378, 386Google Scholar (my italics); Diary, 337, 341.Google Scholar

31 Diary, 340.Google Scholar

32 Espinasse, , op. cit. (4), 8990Google Scholar; Diary, 171, 66Google Scholar; Bolton, and Henry, , op. cit. (21), v, 4551.Google Scholar

33 Diary, 172, 173, 177, 179, 182, 183Google Scholar; Bolton, and Henry, , op. cit. (21), v, 47–8.Google Scholar Bird was entitled ‘Coppersmith’ in accounts records, ibid., 50. Hooke was also supposed to be arranging for workmen to complete the iron balcony railing around the top.

34 Diary, 184, 186, 187, 189, 192Google Scholar; Bolton, and Henry, , op. cit. (21), v, 48.Google Scholar

35 Diary, 195, 200, 214, 215, 223Google Scholar; Bolton, and Henry, , op. cit. (21), v, 48.Google Scholar Bird was paid £128 6s for his work, Western received £100 for French's work on the balcony, and Hodgkins was finally given the same amount.

36 Diary, 224, 225, 235Google Scholar; Bolton, and Henry, , op. cit. (21), v, 49.Google Scholar On 13 May 1676 Hooke had seen ‘Woodroofs prints, Richeleu and Sorbon’ at Garaways; cf. Diary, 232.Google Scholar

37 Bolton, and Henry, , op. cit. (21), v, 49Google Scholar; Diary, 242, 243, 245.Google Scholar

38 Diary, 226, 239, 240.Google Scholar See also Espinasse, , op cit. (4), 89.Google Scholar

39 Diary, 186, 224.Google Scholar For Hooke's dealings with instrument makers and work on the air-kettle, see the entries for 26 April, 6 May, 5 July (‘Bird brought home kettle finished’), 6 July, 14 July, 1676, Diary, 228, 230, 240, 242.Google Scholar The reputation of Bird's work was patchy. Wren recorded that ‘In the Place of the Brass-Urn on the top (which is not artfully perform'd, and was set up contrary to [Wren's] Opinion) was originally intended a Coloss Statue in Bras Gilt, of King Charles the Second, as Founder of the new City; in the manner of the Roman Pillars, which terminated with the Statues of their Caesars; or else, a Figure erect of a Woman crown'd with Turrets’, Wren, S. (ed.), Parentalia, London, 1750, 321.Google Scholar On the other hand, in Garth's poem ‘Dispensary’ of 1726, he referred to the ball on top of the lantern of the Physicians' College theatre as ‘A Golden Globe plac'd high with artful Skill [which] seems to the distant sight, a Gilded Pill’; cited in Diary, 253.Google Scholar For the Monument urn, see Welch, , op. cit. (20), 50–1.Google Scholar

40 Diary, 231, 237, 244, 251, 253, 259, 268, 380–1, 401.Google Scholar For Hooke's problems with Cutler, see Hunter, , op. cit. (8).Google Scholar For the most part, it is clear that many of these master craftsmen did not work with their hands for any extended period of time, and are better seen as contractors. This was particularly so in the case of the masons: see Knoop, and Jones, , op. cit. (18)Google Scholar. The projects recorded in the Diary are clearly exceptional in prestige.

41 Diary, 172.Google Scholar

42 Diary, 8, 22, 67, 64, 80, 263.Google Scholar There is an increasing interest in the related phenomena of lay healing and selfmedication in the early modern period, and in this regard Hooke's Diary is one of the most informative documents we now possess for England in the period between 1500 and 1750. For auto-medication and the sources of information on healing, see Slack, P., ‘Mirrors of health and treasures of poor men: the uses of the vernacular medical literature of Tudor England’, in Medicine and Mortality (ed. Webster, C.), Cambridge, 1979, 237–73Google Scholar; Porter, R., ‘The patient in England, c. 1660–c. 1800’, in Medicine in Society: Historical Essays (ed. Wear, A.), Cambridge, 1992, 91118, especially 96114CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, V., ‘Prescribing the rules of health: self-help and advice in the late eighteenth century’ in Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-lndustrial Society (ed. Porter, R.), Cambridge, 1985.Google Scholar For an introduction to Hooke's quotidien health regimes, see Beier, L., ‘Experience and experiement: Robert Hooke, illness and medicine’Google Scholar, in Hunter, and Schaffer, , op. cit. (3), 235–52.Google Scholar

43 Diary, 28, 29, 52, 90, 122–3, 124.Google Scholar

44 Diary, 174, 218, 280Google Scholar (and cf. entry for 3 January where Hooke remarks that Hewk is ‘studying Philosphers Stone and mercury heating with silver’, ibid., 208). See also Boyle, R., ‘Of the incalescence of quicksilver with gold, generously imparted by B.R.’, Philosophical Transactions (1675/1676), 10, 515–33.Google Scholar Boyle's lack of judgement in publishing something of such importance incurred the wrath of the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, who nevertheless commended him for holding back some information; see Newton, to Oldenburg, , 26 04 1676Google Scholar, in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton (ed. Hall, A. R. et al. ), 7 vols., Cambridge, 19591981, ii, 12.Google Scholar For Hooke's continuing interest in medicinal cures which relied on a knowledge of the property of metals, see Diary, 311–12 and 334.Google Scholar In the former case (in September 1677) a Mr Melancholy told him that a friend had recovered his memory and ‘severall other distempers by carrying a small box of very fine filings of the best refined silver and now and then licking of it with his finger and swallowing it’. Hooke glossed this in terms of the fact that it was probably a ‘very efficacious medicine’ like ‘steel and the other medicines and mineralls, of this query further’.

45 Diary, 24, 90, 95.Google Scholar

46 Diary, 113Google Scholar (cf. entry for 3 August on 115), 146, 150, 212, 215, 306. Hooke noted that he had ‘copied Faithornes book of Limning’ on 14 July 1674 (ibid., 170). His list of ‘Experiments, Inventions and Instruments’ (Royal Society of London Library, Classified Papers xx, 54) contains items about ‘Printing and Staining hangings’ and ‘new ways of Dying flowered Stuffes’. For detailed notes on staining techniques, see Diary, 221–2Google Scholar (23 March 1675/6), and 241 (10 July 1676).

47 Diary, 53, 91, 314–15, 390, 391, 400, 440.Google Scholar On 20 May 1679 Hooke was ‘At Mr Romers with Pappin, saw his pendulum of brasse ball, Silkgrasse string, steel measure sliding, spring beam compasses, Scale, Measure of foot in steel compasses’ (ibid., 412). For an excellent account of Ravenscroft's researches, see MacLeod, C., ‘Accident or design? George Ravenscroft's patent and the invention of lead-crystal glass’, Technology and Culture (1987), 776803, especially 787800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Plot, R., The Natural History of Oxfordshire, Oxford, 1677, 86.Google Scholar For an account of Dwight's career and the state of surviving records see Haselgrove, D. and Murray, J. (eds.), ‘John Dwight's Fulham pottery, 1672–1978: a collection of documentary sources’, Journal of Ceramic History (1979), 11, 1284, especially 340.Google Scholar

49 Diary, 61, 87.Google Scholar

50 Diary, , 103, 337.Google Scholar

51 Diary, , 205, 194.Google Scholar

52 Diary, , 53–5, 57, 64, 65.Google Scholar

53 Diary, 83, 84, 90, 100, 109, 222, 372, 378.Google Scholar For some comments on this relationship, see Iliffe, R., ‘“In the warehouse”: privacy, property and priority in the early Royal Society’, History of Science (1992), 30, 2968.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Wynne see Bryden, D. J., ‘Magnetic inclinatory needles: approved by the Royal Society?’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society (1993), 47, 1731, especially 20–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Diary, 329Google Scholar (he ‘shewd Animalls in pepper water and 12 other waters’), 327, 330 (cf. entries for 10 and 27 November 1677), 334–5, 101, 105, 112, 125, 205–6, 208, 209, 211, 214. For flying see in particular the entry for 11 February 1674/5 on 146. Oldenburg told Martin Lister on 10 June 1676 that Prince Rupert had sent a specimen of marble with pictures of boys and trees on it, painted in such a way that ‘all ye outlines of those pictures were perfectly defined wthout any spreading or flowing of ye colors, and ye colors so fixed by ye fire, and afterwards so polish't, ye they will be permanent, as long as the marble lasts’ (Hall, and Hall, , op. cit. (4), xii, 334).Google Scholar

55 Diary, 370, 373, 378.Google Scholar

56 Diary, 107, 140.Google Scholar For the significance of Moore's patronage, see Willmoth, F., Sir Jonas Moore, Practical Mathematics and Restoration Science, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1993.Google Scholar

57 Diary, 212, 307, 372–3.Google Scholar Note also the exchange of techniques and information between Wren, and Hooke, on 17 12 1677Google Scholar, when they were apparently alone in a coffee house, on 334.

58 Diary, 240, 356, 402Google Scholar; Halley, to Newton, , 29 06 1686Google Scholar, in Hall, et al. , op. cit. (44), ii, 442–3.Google Scholar

59 For instrument makers and the guild system in early modern London, see Crawforth, M., ‘Instrument makers in the London guilds’, Annals of Science (1987), 44, 319–77CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Bryden, D. J., ‘Evidence from advertising for mathematical instrument making in London, 1556–1714’, Annals of Science (1992), 49, 301–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robischon, M. M., ‘Instrument Makers in London during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, (Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan, 1983)Google Scholar; and Brown, , op. cit. (8)Google Scholar. For the irrelevance of the guild system to natural philosophers in London by the end of the seventeenth century see Bryden, D. J. and Simms, D., ‘Spectacles improved to perfection and approved of by the Royal Society’, Annals of Science (1993), 50, 132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

60 For coffee houses see Stewart, , op. cit. (6), especially 115–17, 143–6 and 172–4Google Scholar; Earle, , op. cit. (5), 53–4, 263–4Google Scholar; Allen, D. F., ‘Political clubs in Restoration London’, Historical Journal (1976), 19, 570CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunter, M., Science and Society in Restoration England, London, 1981, 33–4Google Scholar; Robinson, E. Forbes, The Early History of Coffee Houses in England, London, 1893Google Scholar; Ellis, A., The Penny Universities. A History of the Coffee-Houses, London, 1956, 3085Google Scholar; Habermas, J., The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into the Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge, 1991, 5766Google Scholar, and an unpublished typescript by Reiser, Stanley J., ‘The Coffeehouse of Mid-Seventeenth Century London: Its Reflection of the English Political Crisis’, Imperial College, 1966.Google Scholar For the theatre see Botica, A., ‘The Theatres of Late Seventeenth Century London’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar, and Agnew, J.-C., Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theatre in Anglo-American Thought, 1550–1750, Cambridge, 1988.Google Scholar

61 Cited in Ellis, , op. cit. (60), 46 and 69.Google Scholar

62 Hall, and Hall, , op cit. (4), xi, 467–72Google Scholar and (for Oldenburg's and Huygens' views) xii, 17, 20–1, 23–4.

63 Cambridge University Library, Royal Greenwich Observatory MS 1.50. (K), folios 2–3, a paper entitled ‘An Opticall Essay proveing ye truth & accuracy of Coelestiall observations made with longe telescopes occasioned by some discourse wth Mr Robert Hook Professor of Geometry’. It was brought to my attention by Adrian Johns and Simon Schaffer. The topic of the essay is related to Flamsteed's known interests of 1681; see, for example, Flamsteed to Richard Towneley (30 July 1681), summarizing his Gresham Astronomy lecture of 8 June, Royal Society of London Library, MSS LIX.c.10, letter F.1.53. For the content of the lecture, see Forbes, E. (ed.), The Gresham Lectures of John Flamsteed, London, 1975, 120–33.Google Scholar

64 See Shelley, H. C., Inns and Taverns of Old London, Boston, 1909, 167–9Google Scholar; Reiser, , op. cit. (60), 25–6.Google Scholar For Hobbes' views of the openness of the Royal Society see Shapin, and Schaffer, , op. cit. (8), 350.Google Scholar

65 Diary, 327.Google Scholar For another view of the nature of the Diary, see Mulligan, Lotte, ‘Robert Hooke's “Memoranda”: memory and natural history’, Annals of Science (1992), 49, 4761.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The best account of daily life of late Stuart and Augustan London is to be found in Earle, , op. cit. (5)Google Scholar. For an end of year (of 1664) account of Pepys’ fortunes which intertwines both his financial and medical health, see Latham, R. and Matthews, W. (eds.), The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols., London, 19701983, vi. 177.Google Scholar