Geography, Technology and Instruments of Exploration

Fraser MacDonald, Charles W.J. Withers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472434258
• eBook ISBN: 9781317128823
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

Focusing on aspects of the functioning of technology, and by looking at instruments and at instrumental performance, this book addresses the epistemological questions arising from examining the technological bases to geographical exploration and knowledge claims. Questions of geography and exploration and technology are addressed in historical and contemporary context and in different geographical locations and intellectual cultures. The collection brings together scholars in the history of geographical exploration, historians of science, historians of technology and, importantly, experts with curatorial responsibilities for, and museological expertise in, major instrument collections. Ranging in their focus from studies of astronomical practice to seismography, meteorological instruments and rockets, from radar to the hand-held barometer, the chapters of this book examine the ways in which instruments and questions of technology - too often overlooked hitherto - offer insight into the connections between geography and exploration.

Chapter 1
Equipping Expeditionary Astronomers: Nevil Maskelyne and the Development of ‘Precision Exploration’

Rebekah Higgitt

In examining the contribution of Nevil Maskelyne (1732–1811), Britain’s fifth Astronomer Royal, to voyages of scientific exploration in the second half of the eighteenth century, this chapter has three aims. First, it will explore how Maskelyne came to undertake an advisory role for expeditions on behalf of the Royal Society, the Board of Longitude, and the Admiralty. Partly as a result of his prior experience, he was more active in this area than his predecessors and helped to develop a standardised approach through selecting instruments and personnel, writing instructions, and defining objectives. This ensured that naval voyages of exploration and survey could make physical observations of the greatest possible precision and so become part of wider moves toward quantification and precision measurement in overcoming problems of geographical distance and individual difference.¹ Secondly, the chapter suggests that Maskelyne’s role in the development of the British tradition of scientific exploration has been under appreciated. Thirdly, the chapter raises the question of what should be understood by ‘instruments of exploration’ and the extent to which the lists of instruments that Maskelyne drew up can be seen as definitive. In considering this third aim, one of the pertinent issues is the expected level of precision. The expeditions with which Maskelyne was most closely involved were ones aiming at high levels of precision and generally relied upon ships to transport the required mass of instrumentation. While always vulnerable to loss or damage, numerous instruments and reference works of considerable size, weight and delicacy could nevertheless be carried overseas.²

The ‘precision exploration’ discussed here questions our definition of ‘exploration’ as well as of ‘scientific instrument’. The instruments used on expeditions within the British Isles could be identical to those taken to the South Seas, while the navigational tools essential to James Cook’s circumnavigations were also used to survey known locations. Different levels of precision might be required on different voyages, or for different purposes within one voyage. While fixing a position on land required repeated observation with the best instruments, coastal surveys built on these fixes might rely on chains, rods and observation from boats. Astronomy, survey, hydrography, navigation, and meteorology were all performed on such voyages, but each required a different approach, as did exploring the interior of a landmass. If, however, high levels of precision were desired, good instruments were required, their quality affirmed by the names of their makers, who were often identified early in the planning process. Precision instruments were expensive and so were put to repeated use. Some were extremely well travelled, being made available from the collections of the Royal Society and the Board of Longitude, as well as – increasingly – the Royal Navy.³ The use of particular makers and identical specifications were means by which the reliability of observations could be, if not guaranteed, at least a reasonable ambition, especially if supported by reliable observers, accurate tables, and good recording systems.

Instruments of precision observation form the core of this chapter. They, and their associated records of observations, were Maskelyne’s principal concern, unlike the jars, nets or cases of natural history and the logs, journals, and scrapbooks that also formed part of the material culture of expeditions and voyages.⁴ Whether the observers themselves might be considered ‘instruments of exploration’ is moot, but, as the chapter demonstrates, Maskelyne played a vital role in selecting and training as well as equipping and instructing such individuals. Their reliability was as important – and as hard to maintain – as that of the instruments. These men were, nevertheless, the means by which the practices valued by Maskelyne were embedded in Royal Naval survey voyages. His alignments of instruments, projects, observers and the interests of the Royal Society and Navy helped shape the nineteenth-century role of the scientific serviceman.⁵

The collection of physical data had always had a basic purpose in navigation. It added to knowledge about the world’s navigable routes and potentially exploitable lands. With the introduction of new instruments and techniques (from the 1760s especially, marine timekeepers, sextants and astronomical tables), recording data was also necessary to test them and make recommendations about their use.⁶ Making and recording observations of land and the skies served the purpose of fixing positions and creating improved charts. The investigation of geomagnetism, in order to understand the behaviour of compasses, likewise aided navigation. Hydrographic investigation included the essential business of sounding, to check or map the depth of the sea floor, and the observation of tides, weather and currents. Other matters such as air pressure, temperature, saltiness and the specific gravity of water were also recorded. Different instruments were required for these observations, although some – portable telescopes, octants, compasses and watches, for example – had a range of uses.

Collecting this information also served more obviously scientific projects. The rhetoric of science improving navigation and of exploration aiding science worked both ways. Rather than precision being demanded by the state, justifications and appeals for support presented science and exploration as interlinked and inevitably improving trade and national prestige. This allowed ‘the rhetoric of precision’, as Norton Wise put it, to ‘acquire the power to carry conviction’.⁷ Measurement of variations in magnetism and gravity fed into theories about the Earth as well as into mapping its features. Gravimetric investigations undertaken to investigate the question of the shape of the Earth had practical implications for charting and for calibrating one of the instruments – the pendulum clock – used to define the most accurately known locations. Geodetic survey had, simultaneously, clear political and economic rationale: measuring and comparing degrees of latitude helped to establish the figure of the Earth. Pierre Louis Maupertuis justified this project in the 1730s both as a matter of ‘Curiosity’ and ‘Speculation’ among philosophers and in typically down-to-earth fashion: ‘if the distances of Places are not very well known, to what dangers must the Ships be exposed that are bound for them!’⁸ Similarly, observations of the transits of Venus might be seen as of purely astronomical interest but the utility of an accurate scale for the solar system in improving astronomical tables meant that this project too was linked to navigation. The interlinked nature of these projects, and the means by which they could be pursued, was exploited fully by Maskelyne and was key to their inclusion within the remit of the Board of Longitude by the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

Maskelyne and Expeditionary Observation

Maskelyne was Astronomer Royal between 1765 and 1811, a period coincident with the first flourishing of British voyages of scientific exploration and survey.⁹ We may think in this context, inter alia, of Cook’s circumnavigations (1768–71, 1772–75, 1776–79); the attempt on the North Pole by Constantine Phipps (1773); George Vancouver’s expedition to the north-west Pacific (1791–95); and Matthew Flinders’ circumnavigation of Australia (1801–1803). Maskelyne’s position connected him with the key institutions involved in these projects. The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, (ROG) was linked, financially, to the Board of Ordnance and, in terms of its purpose of improving celestial navigation, to the Admiralty. As Astronomer Royal, Maskelyne was ex officio a Commissioner of Longitude, and he was to become the most significant figure on the Admiralty-financed Board of Longitude. He was also a key individual within the Royal Society, often on its Council and its chief correspondent on astronomical matters. His education, career, and family also underscored connections within the astronomical, instrument-making, and maritime communities.

Derek Howse’s biography is clear about Maskelyne’s involvement in the expeditions named above and others, including the British transit of Venus expeditions of 1761 and 1769 and the surveying of the Mason-Dixon Line (1763–67), in addition to his expeditions to St Helena (for the 1761 transit of Venus) and to measure the effects of gravity at Schiehallion in Perthshire (1774). However, more remains to be said about how Maskelyne developed his role, moving between these different institutional settings, and how the scientific arrangements for which he was responsible were made and standardised. Perhaps surprisingly, in books on scientific voyaging, Maskelyne is often left out of the picture. Joseph Banks usually gets the credit of being the link between the worlds of science and government-funded exploration.¹⁰ While much of the attention regarding the exploration of new lands focused on botany, zoology and ethnography, Maskelyne was involved with the allied but, in terms of equipment and personnel, separate projects of collecting physical data. His role is usually revealed in only piecemeal fashion, cropping up only then to slip away.¹¹ He was described as a ‘small invisible man’, and it is possible that, even in his own day, his contribution was less widely recognised than it might have been if he had the kind of dominant character Banks enjoyed.¹²

The emphasis on collecting physical data on voyages and Maskelyne’s involvement as Astronomer Royal may look inevitable; yet such seeming inevitability was the result of individuals’ actions. The position of Astronomer Royal and the institution of the ROG could have developed otherwise than they did: Maskelyne’s interests and actions were crucial in creating a lasting tradition for the use of precision instruments on board naval vessels. Of his predecessors, only Edmond Halley had taken a similar practical interest in voyaging. John Flamsteed, James Bradley, and Nathaniel Bliss (and his successor John Pond), while attending to the ROG’s foundational purpose of helping solve the problem of finding longitude at sea, each concentrated on basic positional astronomy. They had focused neither on making their data widely available nor on close involvement with maritime exploration, beyond an advisory role in relation to trials of instruments associated with the Board of Longitude.¹³

Bradley was certainly involved in this work for the Board and the Royal Society, although in one crucial case – the planning of expeditions by the Royal Society for the first eighteenth-century transit of Venus – he largely delegated the work. He and the Society were only prompted to action after learning that the French planned expeditions, and the British expeditions were somewhat hastily assembled in response. Thus on 5 June 1760 the Royal Society heard read a printed memoir, dated 27 April, by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle regarding the June 1761 transit. Action was urged by a motion of 19 June and Bradley was asked to suggest people who could undertake an expedition and to provide advice and instructions.¹⁴ There and then Bradley gave a provisional list of instruments that would be required: ‘Reflecting Telescope of Two Foot with Dolland’s [sic] Micrometer, Mr. Dolland’s Refracting Telescope of Ten Feet; a Quadrant of the radius of Eight Inches; and a Clock or time piece’. Harry Woolf rightly noted that ‘to some extent Bradley’s list can be regarded as the minimum requirements for ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Geography, Technology and Instruments of Exploration
• Chapter 1 Equipping Expeditionary Astronomers: Nevil Maskelyne and the Development of ‘Precision Exploration’
• Chapter 2 Instrumenting Order: Longitude, Seamen and Astronomers, 1770–1805
• Chapter 3 North by Northwest? Experimental Instruments and Instruments of Experiment
• Chapter 4 Weather Instruments all at Sea: Meteorology and the Royal Navy in the Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 5 Objects of Exploration: Expanding the Horizons of Maritime History
• Chapter 6 Instruments of Exploration in National Museums Scotland
• Chapter 7 ‘Instruments in the Hands of Others’: The Life and Liveliness of Instruments of British Geographical Exploration, c.1860–c.1930
• Chapter 8 Seismic Instruments, Geographical Perspectives
• Chapter 9 Aerial Photography in Geography and Exploration
• Chapter 10 Uncovering Camouflage: The Technology of Location and the Craft of Erasure
• Chapter 11 Instruments of Science and War: Frank Malina and the Object of Rocketry
• Chapter 12 UK Radar (Dis)Integration in the 1960s: Linesman/Mediator Radar Development and the Calculus of Nuclear Deterrence
• Index