Scientific Credibility and Technical Standards in 19th and early 20th century Germany and Britain

190 Pages·1997·23.991 MB·English

by  Jed Z. Buchwald (ed.)

.9Lrchimedes
1996
YLrcfiimedes
NEW STUDIES IN THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
VOLUME 1996
EDITOR
JED Z. BUCHWALD, Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science at MIT, and
Director of The Dibner Institutefor the History of Science and Technology,
Cambridge, MA, USA.
ADVISORY BOARD
HENK Bos, University of Utrecht
MORDECHAI FEINGOLD, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
ALLAN D. FRANKLIN, University of Colorado at Boulder
KOSTAS GAVROGLU, National Technical University of Athens
ANTHONY GRAFTON, Princeton University
FREDERIC L. HOLMES, Yale University
PAUL HOYNINGEN-HUENE, University of Konstanz
EVELYN Fox KELLER, MIT
TREVOR LEVERE, University of Toronto
JESPER LUTZEN, Copenhagen University
WILLIAM NEWMAN, Harvard University
JiiRGEN RENN, Max-Planck-Institutfur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
ALAN SHAPIRO, University of Minnesota
NANCY SIRAISI, Hunter College of the City University of New York
MERRITT ROE SMITH, MIT
NOEL SWERDLOW, University of Chicago
.9Lrcfiimeaes, which will initially appear once a year, has three fundamental
goals: to further the integration of the histories of science and technology with
one another; to investigate the technical, social and practical histories of
specific developments in science and technology; and finally, where possible
and desirable, to bring the histories of science and technology into closer
contact with the philosophy of science. To these ends, each volume will have
its own theme and title and will be planned by one or more members of the
Advisory Board in consultation with the editor. Although the volumes have
specific themes, the series itself will not be limited to one or even to a few
particular areas. Its subjects include any of the sciences, ranging from biology
through physics, all aspects of technology, broadly construed, as well as
historically-engaged philosophy of science or technology. Taken as a whole,
.9Lrcfiimeies will be of interest to historians, philosophers, and scientists, as
well as to those in business and industry who seek to understand how science
and industry have come to be so strongly linked.
.9Lrchimedes
1996
New Studies in the History and Philosophy of
Science and Technology
Scientific Credibility and Technical
Standards in 19th and early 20th
century Germany and Britain
edited by
JED Z. BUCHWALD
MITand The Dibner Institutefor the History of Science and Technology,
Cambridge, MA, USA
1IIiI...
"
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7923-4762-0 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-1784-2
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-1784-2
Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
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Printed on acid-free paper
Also published in 1996 in hardbound edition
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© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
JED Z. BUCHWALD / Introduction vii
MYLES W. JACKSON / Buying the dark lines of the solar
spectrum: Joseph von Fraunhofer's standard for the
manufacture of optical glass 1
STUART M. FEFFER / Ernst Abbe, Carl Zeiss, and the
transformation of microscopical optics 23
DAVID CAHAN / The Zeiss Werke and the ultramicroscope: the
creation of a scientific instrument in context 67
KATHRYN M. OLESKO / Precision, tolerance, and consensus: local
cultures in German and British resistance standards 117
SUNGOOK HONG / Syntony and credibility: John Ambrose
Fleming, Guglielmo Marconi, and the Maskelyne affair 157
Subject Index 177
Index of Names 181
JED Z. BUCHWALD
INTRODUCTION
ARCHIMEDES, which will initially appear once a year, has three fundamental
goals: to further the integration of the histories of science and technology with
one another; to investigate the technical, social and practical histories of
specific developments in science and technology; and finally, where possible
and desirable, to bring the histories of science and technology into closer
contact with the philosophy of science. To these ends, each volume will have
its own theme and title and will be planned by one or more members of the
Advisory Board in consultation with the editor.
This first volume exemplifies two of our three goals, for the articles in it
explicitly and intentionally cross boundaries between science and technology,
and they also illuminate one another. The first three contributions concern
optics and industry in 19th century Germany; the fourth concerns electric
standards in Germany during the same period; the last essay in the volume
examines a curious development in the early history of wireless signaling that
took place in England, and that has much to say about the establishment and
enforcement of standard methods in a rapidly-developing technology that
emerged out of a scientific effect.
German optical products reigned supreme at the end of the 19th century, by
which time the Zeiss name had become nearly synonymous with scientifically
designed and superbly crafted devices. The rise to preeminence of the Zeiss
Werke in the 1870s was itself preceded by the remarkable reputation of
German glass and lenses that were first produced at Joseph von Fraunhofer's
Optical Institute in the 1820s. These developments are connected to one
another by more than their having occurred in German-speaking lands, for in
both cases successful industrialists based assertions concerning the particular
superiority of their products on science. Towards the end of the century this
binding between science and industry had become exceptionally tight, as the
Zeiss Werke sought to capitalize on scientific effects and interests in order to
produce extraordinary and unusual instruments that displayed the power and
precision of the Werke's design and manufacturing capabilities.
Myles Jackson's Fraunhofer and Stuart Feffer's Ernst Abbe of the Zeiss
Werke, though very different from one another in many ways, nevertheless
share one particularly striking trait: both of them relied on scientific arcana to
make claims for the goodness or aptness of their wares. Few had done so before
them, but what makes the stories told here especially compelling is rather the
character of their claims than that they were made at all. In Jackson's account
we find Fraunhofer's line spectra, which Fraunhofer had first extracted with
great skill from sunlight, and about which he alone had, at first, special
knowledge, becoming effective tools for selling his lenses. Ernst Abbe, accord
ing to Feffer, turned a scientifically-problematic account of wave optics into an
advertisement for his microscopes. Where the one marshaled an observational
Vll
J.z. Buchwald (ed.), Scientific Credibility and Technical Standards in 19th and early 20th
Century Germany and Britain, vii-ix.
© 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
viii JED Z. BUCHWALD
and (for a brief moment) proprietary scientific novelty for manufacturing and
marketing ends, the other used difficult but impressive-sounding scientific
theory to transmute an industrial necessity into a virtue for creative advertis
ing. Neither Fraunhofer nor Abbe was being the least duplicitous in what each
of them did; both sought, admired and used scientific credibility where they
could, and in so doing turned it into a fungible commodity.
David Cahan provides a thoroughly contextual, highly detailed account of
the development early in the 20th century of the ultramicroscope at the Zeiss
Werke, a device that could image colloidal particles lying below the theoretical
limits of microscopical resolution that had previously been calculated (in quite
different ways) by both Abbe and Hermann von Helmholtz. Here we find the
Zeiss Werke taking advantage ofthe opportunity to, in Cahan's words, "explore
previously uninvestigated or incompletely investigated scientific and technical
ideas and fields that might contain sufficient potential for technological change
and industrial profit". As in the case of Feffer's Abbe, here too the concepts and
tools of wave optics entered directly into industrial practice. There is however a
signal difference between the two situations. In the case of Abbe's light
microscope, Feffer remarks, "optical theory as publicly employed by Abbe had
far more to do with selling microscopes than with building them". The
ultramicroscope, on the other hand, directly and explicitly deployed scattering
and diffraction effects to detect sub-visible particles. Whereas, one might say,
scientific strictures and effects were not themselves directly central to the
industrial practices embodied in the Zeiss microscopes produced under Abbe,
they had certainly become so a generation later for constructing the ultra
microscope.
Olesko's piece concerns the complicated scientific, cultural, and industrial
issues that arose in the setting of electric standards in Germany, and, in
particular, with the setting of a value for the ohm. Perhaps the most striking
of the many aspects of standards work that Olesko unveils is the arresting
difference between German and British sensibilities. In Britain, Olesko notes,
individual differences in measurements were easily smoothed over, and error
analysis of any kind was strongly downplayed. In Germany, by contrast,
individual differences were made a very great deal of indeed, and discussions
of error were common and contentious. In Olesko's words, German "precision
represented an agreement between individuals, not among them as a single
collective result".
The last paper in this volume, by Sungook Hong, is set entirely in England
and tells an extraordinary story which, despite the locus, connects strongly to
many of the themes set out in the other contributions. In the early 1900s, we
learn from Hong's account, an attempt by Marconi and his technical adviser,
John Ambrose Fleming, to demonstrate in public the efficacy of his wireless
system was nearly undone by Nevil Maskelyne. Reputations suffered, tempers
flared, credibility was angrily challenged, and the Marconi system, with its
basis in tuned transmission and reception, was called into question. Indeed,
Hong shows that much more than pure technical superiority was at issue in this
INTRODUCTION ix
affair. In order for the Marconi system to realize in full its technological
potential it had to colonize the entire technical terrain; it could not reign
successfully in a world of multiple devices. Maskelyne's tricks brought this
directly into the open (and questioned as well Marconi and Fleming's moral
character). Maskelyne felt he had used "the only possible means of ascertaining
fact which ought to be in the possession of the public". Fleming called the effort
an attempt to "wreck the exhibition". Both were correct, because each
envisioned a unique economic and technical world. Where Maskelyne de
manded an open universe of competing devices, Marconi and Fleming required
a closed one that would be utterly dominated by a single type of equipment.
Historical work over the last few decades has shown that technology cannot
be characterized simply, or even usually, as applied science. The beliefs, the
devices, and the natural objects that are created or discovered by scientists
often play altogether minor roles in the construction of technologies. Taking
this realization as a given, the essays in this first volume of ARCHIMEDES
effectively argue that we must now seek to go beyond it; we must begin also to
think carefully about the roles that science actually did play when it was
explicitly deployed by technologists. We need to ponder the implications of
these stories and others for the real, historically-grounded connections that
exist between scientific entities, the devices that make use of them, and the
technological world. It seems to me that we should look as well for a novel
philosophy of science, one that probes the nature of scientific work by
grappling forthrightly and deeply with how it comes about that this particular
form of human activity manages with such fecund regularity to produce novel
entities that are inevitably bound to novel artifacts. Perhaps we need rather a
philosophy of the "techno-scientific" than of either science or of technology
alone.
MYLES W. JACKSON
BUYING THE DARK LINES OF THE SOLAR SPECTRUM:
JOSEPH VON FRAUNHOFER'S STANDARD FOR THE
MANUFACTURE OF OPTICAL GLASS
Joseph von Fraunhofer is of interest to physicists and historians of science
because of his 'discovery' of the dark lines dissecting the solar spectrum, which
now bear his name, and his advances in the manufacture of optical lenses.
Previously, scholars discussing Fraunhofer's merits have erroneously placed
him at the forefront of a long tradition of spectroscopy, or have portrayed him
I
as the 'father of German optics' in attempting to argue for a Germanic
hegemony in both the physical sciences and optical industry. 2
In this paper I shall argue that Fraunhofer's work on the dark lines of the
spectrum was neither the culmination of any theoretical outlook on the nature
of light nor an early effort in spectroscopy. Rather, it represented the labor of a
self-educated artisan who wished to perfect the construction of achromatic
lenses for astronomical instruments such as telescopes and heliometers, as well
as ordnance surveying instruments such as theodolites. Fraunhofer's early
work - including an early and influential experiment (discussed below)
involving six lamps and solar light - was not an attempt to vindicate or debunk
either the wave or corpuscular theory of light, despite the fact that his
experiments most likely date from late 1813 to early 1815, precisely the period
when British and French physicists were embroiled in intense debates on the
nature of light. 3 Although Fraunhofer was to side with the wave theorists after
his work on diffraction gratings in the early 1820s, he was never able to explain
the dark lines. More than anything else, Fraunhofer's work was based on, and
bound to, his technical mastery of artisanal knowledge and skill.
Fraunhofer's knowledge of optics, reflected in both the experimental design
and in the calculation of the refractive indices for his glass prism samples, was
quite basic. Indeed, for such purposes one only requires knowledge of (and
practical skill in handling) Snell's Law for refraction, as well as basic
trigonometric relations.4 Fraunhofer deployed the law and its implications in
his everyday work with glass prisms.
Precisely because Fraunhofer's contribution to physical optics emerged out
of his manual dexterity and artisanal skill and was not based on any theory of
the nature of light, the British could not merely resort to optical theory in order
to reconstruct those skills. Indeed, the personal, uncommunicated character of
Fraunhofer's artisanal knowledge guaranteed his Optical Institute's hegemony.
The first portion of my essay analyzes Fraunhofer's extremely precise method
for calculating refractive and dispersive indices of achromatic glass. Before his
work, the determination of dispersive indices of glass prisms was restricted to a
rather imprecise procedure whereby the optician would take the mean of the
refraction of the extreme red and violet rays. This two-ray method had been
necessary since before Fraunhofer's glass manufacturing techniques, prisms
Jz. Buchwald (ed.), Scientific Credibility and Technical Standards in 19th and early 20th
Century Germany and Britain, 1-22.
© 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers.