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Metropolitan Science: Scientific Instrument Makers

Metropolitan Science: Scientific Instrument Makers and Institutional Sites of Knowledge and Practice in 18th-Century London Speakers: Rebekah Higgitt (National Museum of Scotland) and Alex Butterworth (University of Sussex) The Metropolitan Science project (Leverhulme: Kent, Science Museum) and recently published book (Bloomsbury, 2024) explore the creation, assessment and use of knowledge in the collective settings of London corporations, including guilds, trading companies and departments of state. It demonstrates that their institutional sites, within a city that was a growing centre of industry and empire, brought together a wide and productive range of people, projects and materials. These created unique knowledge communities that drew on and contributed to the natural and experimental philosophy more often associated with learned societies. A key group of individuals who moved between these and other institutional sites were scientific instrument makers, who served and benefitted from both a growing demand for precision and reliability and the increasing status afforded learned and curious activity. The research thus benefitted from access to the SIMON database on scientific instrument makers, held by Royal Museums Greenwich, and its remodelling and augmentation by the overlapping Tools of Knowledge project (AHRC: Cambridge, Sussex, National Museums Scotland). Together, these projects show that London corporations were clients, patrons and collaborators of instrument makers and that their sites acted as centres of gravity, attracting into their orbit businesses that made, sold and taught the use of instruments.