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24 results

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  • Tremoring transits: railways, the Royal Observatory and the capitalist challenge to Victorian astronomical science
  • EDWARD J. GILLIN
  • Journal: The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 53 / Issue 1 / March 2020
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2019, pp. 1-24
  • Print publication: March 2020
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    Britain's nineteenth-century railway companies traditionally play a central role in histories of the spread of standard Greenwich time. This relationship at once seems to embody a productive relationship between science and capitalism, with regulated time essential to the formation of a disciplined industrial economy. In this narrative, it is not the state, but capitalistic private commerce which fashioned a national time system. However, as this article demonstrates, the collaboration between railway companies and the Royal Greenwich Observatory was far from harmonious. While railways did employ the accurate time the observatory provided, they were also more than happy to compromise the astronomical institution's ability to take the accurate celestial observations that such time depended on. Observing astronomical transits required the use of troughs of mercury to reflect images of stars, but the construction of a railway too near to the observatory threatened to cause vibrations which would make such readings impossible. Through debates over proposed railway lines near the observatory, it becomes clear how important government protection from private interests was to preserving astronomical standards. This article revises our understanding of the role of railway companies in the dissemination of standard time and argues that state intervention was essential to preserving Victorian British astronomical science.

  • 1 - A Radical Building: The Science of Politics and the New Palace of Westminster
  • Edward J. Gillin, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Victorian Palace of Science
  • Published online: 30 October 2017
  • Print publication: 09 November 2017, pp 19-53
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The Victorian Palace of Science
  • The Victorian Palace of Science
  • Scientific Knowledge and the Building of the Houses of Parliament
  • Edward J. Gillin
  • Published online: 30 October 2017
  • Print publication: 09 November 2017
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    The Palace of Westminster, home to Britain's Houses of Parliament, is one of the most studied buildings in the world. What is less well known is that while Parliament was primarily a political building, when built between 1834 and 1860, it was also a place of scientific activity. The construction of Britain's legislature presents an extraordinary story in which politicians and officials laboured to make their new Parliament the most radical, modern building of its time by using the very latest scientific knowledge. Experimentalists employed the House of Commons as a chemistry laboratory, geologists argued over the Palace's stone, natural philosophers hung meat around the building to measure air purity, and mathematicians schemed to make Parliament the first public space where every room would have electrically-controlled time. Through such dramatic projects, Edward J. Gillin redefines our understanding of the Palace of Westminster and explores the politically troublesome character of Victorian science.

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