In December of 1675, in a desperate race with Christiaan Huygens over a patent for a spring-regulated watch, Robert Hooke, FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society of London) characterized the clock maker Thomas Tompion as a ‘Slug’, a ‘Clownish Churlish Dog’ and a ‘Rascall’, because Tompion was making a watch of Hooke's design too slowly for the latter's taste. It was Hooke's watch, not Tompion's; Hooke was the patron and Tompion the client. Fifty years later Tompion's apprentice, George Graham, made watches and clocks and quadrants for other Fellows of the Royal Society, yet these instruments were known as Graham's clocks and Graham's quadrants. Language such as Hooke had used towards Tompion was inconceivable towards Graham; he was a member of the Royal Society's governing body, the Council, and had published several significant papers in the Society's journal, the Philosophical Transactions, in which his testimony on and experiments in astronomy, magnetism, horology and metrology were unquestioned. Yet in the early decades of the eighteenth century one could still go to his shop in London's Strand and buy a watch or a clock from him. Like Tompion, George Graham, FRS was a shopkeeper. Nor was he alone in the eighteenth century, at that supposed bastion of gentlemen, the Royal Society. Nearly two-thirds of the membership had to work for a living in one way or another, some rather grandly as high government officials, senior army officers, clerics with ample livings and physicians and lawyers with large and successful London practices ; others more modestly as sailors, surgeons, apothecaries, schoolteachers, engineers, attorneys and instrument-makers. The latter group included some of the most scientifically eminent members of the Royal Society in the eighteenth century: the sailor James Cook (geography), the printer Benjamin Franklin (electricity), the teacher and preacher Joseph Priestley (chemistry), the instrument-maker and engineer James Watt (chemistry), the musician William Herschel (astronomy), and the silk weaver and optician John Dollond (optics). None of these men were gentlemen (though many of their sons or grandsons became so) yet they made science and were acknowledged to have done so; their papers were published and their best work awarded medals.

When Michael Hunter first publicized the idea of ‘Psychoanalysing Robert Boyle’ I understood that his main aim was to test three competing psychoanalytical theories against the historical evidence provided by the life and work of Robert Boyle. Although this would have been a valuable exercise, and one that the British Society for the History of Science meeting partly engaged, the papers by Brett Kahr, John Clay and Karl Figlio published here raise some far more compelling issues which I shall explore in the ensuing discussion. Before turning to this discussion I offer a few introductory remarks.

Refrigeration has become so well established over the last 125 years that today a crude ice maker becomes a boon for primitive people in the jungle or desert. Only a total dislocation in energy sources will quickly loosen the connections between people and cooling. A few centuries ago, Hippocrates (460–377? B.C.) observed: ‘most men would rather run the hazards of their lives or health than be deprived of the pleasure of drinking out of ice’ … In the U.S.A. [today], 750 million frozen Eskimo Pies are sold annually and seven ice cream plants are said to be operating in Moscow … Like the men of Hippocrates, a lot of people will resist any curtailment in food and freezing operations. They have come to expect these for survival in our present social and industrial orders.

These remarks, asserting the extent to which the people of the United States of America regarded refrigeration not as an optional luxury but as a necessity for survival even at the height of the energy crisis of the late 1970s, formed part of a contribution to a massive 11-volume international compendium, Alternative Energy Sources, produced in 1978 in response to Western concerns about rising oil prices and falling reserves. An enthusiastic advocate for geothermal energy, the contributor's perception provides a vivid contextual starting point for our study of Paul Theroux's novel The Mosquito Coast (1981). In this novel the central narrative focuses upon a New England family's rejection of post-war American consumer society with its imperative to ‘build automobiles that would fail within five years and refrigerators that would fail in ten’. The novel indeed explores some of those very kinds of alternative energy sources which had been exciting scientists and inventors (often on or beyond the fringes of scientific orthodoxy) since the early 1970s when journals such as The Ecologist had begun to prophesy an end to energy-driven economic growth in the western world.

The Oral History Project of the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) ended on 10 July 1998, after almost nine months' duration. Twenty-nine interviews are now available on fifty-eight tapes and in transcript – not all, but nearly all of them on open access for scholars. With this oral history project, the BSHS commemorates its fiftieth anniversary. In particular it pays tribute to the field in the decades 1945–65, during which the historical, philosophical and sociological study of science and technology expanded in an unprecedented way, not least of all in higher education. Who were the individuals involved in this expansion, what factors contributed to its coming about, what purposes did the subject serve, what changes did it undergo, what audiences and functions had the BSHS, how was the process of expansion situated within the larger cultural and political context of the time and did it reflect that context? The project sought to explore these and similar questions.

The project's purpose was to gather material which would otherwise go unrecorded, and thus to create an archival resource for future research, consisting of the interviews (on tape and in transcript), returned questionnaires and any material (biographical or other) received in the course of this project.

It is with deep regret that we record the death of John Anthony Chaldecott on 2 May 1998 at the age of 82. He was a founder member of the BSHS and served as Honorary Secretary and as President.

After graduating in physics at London University, John took up teaching and lecturing, but this was interrupted by war service in the RAF Meteorological Branch. In the fighting in the Netherlands, he was mentioned in despatches. In 1949, he joined the Science Museum as Assistant Keeper in the Physics Department. There, he was in charge of the Optics Collection and also the Heat and the George III Collections, for which he produced catalogues. For some years, he acted as Secretary to the Museum's Advisory Council.

In 1961, John became Keeper of the Science Museum Library, a post he held until his retirement in 1976. His time there was active and eventful. First, the transfer of the Library's nation-wide loans service, together with many of its periodicals, to the National Lending Library of Science and Technology in 1962 entailed a redirection of the Library's resources and services. Then, he was closely involved in the planning of the present Library building on the Imperial College campus in South Kensington, opened in 1969. He made a thorough study of the latest library design and equipment, so as to incorporate as many modern features as possible within a very tight budget. The success of the building owed much to his untiring and meticulous attention to detail.

While building was in progress, his attention was assailed from a fresh quarter, this time from the National Libraries Committee. Their conclusions disconcerted the Science Museum and the fact that the Library remained under the Museum's wing, with a redefined role, owed much to John's skill and determination in negotiation. The Library was to specialize in the history of science and he did much to turn the Library towards the new direction. It was his decision to assemble the Library's scattered books and periodicals in this field and house them in a special history of science reading room. All this chimed in with his own interest in this subject. He had gained an M.Sc. in the history and philosophy of science at University College London in 1949, followed up later with a Ph.D. He was active in the BSHS from the beginning and he was Honorary Secretary during 1963–68. He was elected President for the year 1972–73; his presidential address was entitled ‘Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795), scientist’. He published a number of papers on historical subjects, but his abiding interest lay in scientific instrument makers; he formed a massive record of information about those active in London from 1750 to 1840, now deposited in the Science Museum Library Archives Collection. Soon after his retirement, he was responsible for a major exhibition at the Science Museum illustrating Wedgwood's life and work and he published an accompanying monograph.

Throughout his life, John preserved that calm and even-tempered manner which made him such a pleasant colleague and genial, good-humoured friend. He was always fair and even-handed in his dealings with others.

The three books reviewed in this essay all cross disciplinary boundaries. The first book illustrates, and argues for, the importance of history of technology and science for general history, for instance by looking at the linkages between technology transfer and agricultural reform in the late eighteenth century. The second book combines art history with history of technology: a painting is examined with a view to learning about networks among men of industry. The third book could be said to argue for the relevance of the private in the history of science by rendering theoretical innovation dependent upon resources gained outside public scientific life.

I have been careful not to mention the most important commonality of these books first, because I am aware of the general disinterest which reigns about most peripheral places. The three books are all about Denmark and written in Danish. But they should not be placed in the drawer labelled ‘ethnographic oddity’. Quite apart from their relevance under the rubric of centre and periphery, each one has a historiographical point rendering them more generally relevant. They probe historiographical boundaries and provide incentives for thinking about historical resources that have not been tapped. It should also be mentioned that all three books are beautifully illustrated. Danish academic books are cushioned from the stringencies of the market through the existence of a variety of funds. The market of Danish readers is too small to sustain a market of its own and so the infrastructure for the support of books which will inevitably make a loss is substantial. By tapping into these resources, the authors have managed to make all three books more appealing than an anglophone reader has come to expect.

BBC Education and The Wellcome Trust:Medicine Through Time. Videotape: incorporating five 25 min programmes. London: BBC Educational Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0 563 376953, £24.99.

Teachers' Resource Pack, with four theme booklets, over 40 picture sources, posters, time lines, pupils' worksheets etc. London: BBC Educational Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0 563 376392, £19.99.

BBC Education Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/medicine/.

It was in the late 1970s that the Schools History Project first launched its ‘developmental studies’ programme to help youngsters understand how changes in science and technology have impacted upon human life at different periods. Possible topics included Farming through the ages – surely one of the most important as we might see it today – and Warfare through the ages, but in the event it was Medicine Through Time and Energy Through Time which were developed most fully. By the 1990s the first of these had achieved a firm and regular place as a component of GCSE courses and about one third of all those taking history exams in the GCSE now study it. The involvement of the BBC and the Wellcome Trust in developing resources to support the work was therefore amply justified by its standing in the current curriculum.

In the article “Politics by other means: Justus von Liebig and the German translation of John Stuart Mill's Logic” by Pat Munday, published in our December 1998 number, an unfortunate proof reading error occurred on p. 403. The third sentence should have read “Chemical methods, popular and professional publications about chemistry, technological applications, promoting the careers of former students and even politics – all were central concerns stemming from Liebig's notion of chemistry as the central science.” We apologize to Professor Munday for this error.