the first public circulating library in London. Samuel Johnson put
together the first dictionary in 1755. It standardized spelling
and pronunciation. Then came dictionaries for the arts, sciences,
and commerce. There were histories with political biases such as
the Earl of Clarendon's "History of the Great Rebellion".
Alexander Pope wrote witty satire on human faults of the period
such as "Rape of the Lock". Daniel Defoe wrote "Robinson Crusoe",
"Moll Flanders", and "The Poor Man's Plea" protesting disparity of
judicial treatment of rich and poor, for instance for drunkenness.
Henry Fielding wrote one of the first novels: "Tom Jones". Joseph
Addison wrote essays on social behavior. Jonathan Swift wrote the
satire on the times, "Gulliver's Travels". Samuel Richardson wrote
some of the first novels, such as "Clarissa"; he wrote on values
such as religious faith, moral virtue, and family closeness.
Catherine Macaulay started writing her weighty and impressive
"History of England". Many schoolmistresses wrote textbooks on a
variety of subjects. Poet and essayist Hester Chapone wrote
"Letters on the Improvement of the Mind". Elizabeth Carter wrote
poetry and translated Greek works; her work was published in "The
Gentleman's Magazine". Hannah More wrote the play "The Inflexible
Captive". The diaries of Caroline Girle Powys Daniel told of her
extensive travels in the nation, and the various life styles of
polite society she visited. Defoe's newspaper was the first great
political journal. He claimed that the people have a right to
control the proceedings of Parliament. Essayists like Richard
Steele, who introduced the periodical essay in his newspaper, and
Joseph Addison, in his newspaper, wrote in a conversational style
about the social life around them and the thoughts and behavior of
common men and women in a light and good-humored way. They
separated humor from the old-style farce and gave it taste and
gentility. And with this came a moderation, reserve, and urbanity
in matters of religion, politics, and society. Religious issues
even became a matter of indifference. Fairies, witches, astrology,
and alchemy were no longer taken seriously by educated men. Tales
of fairies, witches, ghosts, and miracles were deemed appropriate
for children. Childrens' stories were becoming a distinct literary
form. Nursery rhymes included "Hush-a-bye baby on the tree top"
and the five little piggies. "Mother Goose's Melody" was published
in 1765. There were picture books for children such as Cinderella,
Red Riding Hood, and Sleeping Beauty. Craftsmen made small models
of their wares, such as dolls' china, dolls' furniture, silver,
and flat lead soldiers. Babies had rattles and teething rings.
In 1710 copyrights for books was given for 14 years, renewable for
another 14 years. Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad and
Odyssey made him financially independent. He collected advance
payments from subscribers who would be listed in the book. A new
book industry emerged in London with booksellers as master
manufacturers who employed writers, authors, copyers, and
subwriters. Booksellers sold books of sermons, histories,
political and literary satires, literary criticism, and
dictionaries. There was a growing popularity of novels. Books were
expensive to buy. Regular magazines on the new and strange were
published. There were three daily, six weekly, and ten thrice
yearly newspapers. Newspapers increased in number from 8 founded
in 1700 to a total of 25 in 1727. By 1753, there were over a
million throughout the country. Workmen usually began their day by
reading a newspaper at a coffee house.
Authors of books which have been registered at the Stationers Hall
shall have the sole liberty of printing and reprinting such book
for 14 years. Others who print or sell or publish such shall
forfeit the books and pay one penny for each sheet found in their
custody, 1/2 to the Queen and 1/2 to the suer. The printer shall
give a copy of each book printed to the Company of Stationers, the
Royal Library, the libraries of the Oxford and Cambridge
universities, and certain other libraries.
In 1775, the two universities in England, the four universities in
Scotland, and the several colleges of Eton, Westminster, and
Winchester were given in perpetuity a copyright in books given or
bequeathed to them.
The British Museum was incorporated to hold the collections of
Robert Cotton of manuscripts, books, records, coins, and medals
and of Hans Sloane, which contained rare books, coins, precious
stones, pictures, plants, and mathematical instruments and had
been left to the public.
Italian opera was introduced in 1706 by Georg Handel on his visit
to England. His music became the standard music of Georgian
England. The Academy of Ancient Music was founded in 1710. It set
the standard of selection and performance. In existence were the
violin (including ones made by Stadivari), viola, cello, double
bass, oboe, trumpet, clarinet, bassoon, trombone, horn, flute,
harp, organ, harpsichord, in which the strings were plucked, and
piano, in which the strings are struck by little hammers.
Orchestras had at least thirty members. Many hymns were written.
Painting by artists developed. Gentlemen had portraits painted of
their horses and dogs as well as of family. Joshua Reynolds
painted the wealth and beauty of England. Painters such as
Gainsborough did landscapes and dramatic history paintings too,
but neither of these sold as well as portraits. Scenery was
painted for the theater. Places of business had signs painted
which portrayed animals. Coaches were painted with mythological
creatures and such. Gentlemen collected antique statuary and
painting, such as by Rembrandt and Rubens. In 1711 an academy of
painting was founded, which included women painters. The first
public exhibition of paintings was in 1760. The Society of Artists
was formed in 1761 and incorporated by royal charter in 1765. This
differentiated them from the Painter-Stainers Company of face
painters, coach painters, and house painters. The Royal Academy of
London was founded in 1768 to merge all private academies and
societies into one official body and to recognize the best
artistic work. Joshua Reynolds was its first president. It was at
first financed by the king. Under George I, sculptors became
distinct from masons. They did monuments and portrait busts of the
royal family, nobles, and great men. From Italian influence,
Palladian architecture came into vogue. It was typified externally
by a panoramic look achieved by horizontal lines, balanced
alternatives of plain wall and openings, and portico with a heavy
pediment like the front of a Roman temple. Stucco was often used
to plaster housefronts, flute columns, and ornament pediments.
Architects took students. Designers of engraved, etched, and
historical prints were given the sole right to print them for 14
years. Copiers had to forfeit 5s. per print.
Foreigners were now interested in learning about English life,
philosophy, and opinion. They learned English to read English
literature such as Shakespeare. No longer were France and Italy
the only centers of culture and influence on other nations. By
1713, England was the leading sea power by far.
The Royal Society was still the principal focus of scientific
activity. Issac Newton was its President for several years and
drew in more foreigners. Its members were mathematicians,
chemists, botanists, physicians, engineers, authors, poets, and
theologians. Papers given there generated much discussion at its
meetings. Newton opined that particles attract each other by some
force in a similar way that large bodies attracted each other.
This force in immediate contact was exceedingly strong, at small
distances performed chemical interactions, and at greater
distances had no effect. Also there were local associations and
societies. There were learned journals such as "Philosophical
Transactions".
In 1714, the mercury thermometer was invented by Gabriel
Fahrenheit of Germany; this was much more accurate than the
alcohol and water thermometers. Sweden's Anders Celcius invented
the Celsius scale. The hydrometer, which measures air humidity,
was also invented. These made possible weather forecasting. In
1718, the French chemist Etienne Geoffroy published a table of
affinities among chemical substances, a precursor to the periodic
table of elements. Carolus Linneaus, a Swedish naturalist and
botanist, established the scientific method of naming plants and
animals by genus and species. When he showed that there was a
sexual system in plants, church authorities were so shocked that
they suppressed this knowledge as they did other scientific
knowledge. Rev. Stephen Hales made ventilators for ships, prisons,
and granaries, using the method of injecting air with bellows.
This saved many lives in the prisons. In 1727, he discovered that
water that plants lost by evaporation was restored by the roots up
the stems. He found that gas could be obtained from plants by dry
distillation and invented a way to collect gases by heating certain
substances.
Hans Sloane, the son of a receiver-general of taxes, who became a
physician, had collected hundreds of species of plants in Jamacia
while physician to its governor. He became physician to George II
and was a benefactor to many hospitals and devised a botanic
garden in London for the Society of Apothecaries.
Italian Luigi Marsigli started the science of oceanography with a
treatise discussing topography, circulation, ocean plants and
animals, along with many measurements. Frenchman Jean-Etienne
Guettard prepared the first true geological maps, showing rocks
and minerals. He identified heat as the causative factor of change
in the earth's landforms. John Mitchell studied earthquakes.
In 1735, George Hadley, a London lawyer and philosopher,
determined that the cause of the prevailing westerly winds was the
rotation of the earth to the east. Benjamin Franklin in 1743
observed that a particularly violent storm occurred in Boston a
day after a particularly violent occurred in Philadelphia, and
realized that they were the same storm, even though the storm's
surface winds were from the northeast. He determined that Atlantic
coastal storms traveled from the southwest to the northeast. In
1770, he prepared the first scientific chart of the Gulf Stream.
Daniel Bernoulli, a Swiss university lecturer in physics,
mechanics, medicine, and anatomy, proved his theorem that any
degree of statistical accuracy can be obtained by sufficiently
increasing the observations, thereby also representing the first
application of calculus to probability theory. In 1738, he showed
that as the velocity of horizontal fluid flow increases, its
pressure decreases. This followed from his theorem that the total
mechanical energy of a flowing liquid, comprising the energy
associated with fluid pressure, the gravitational potential energy
of elevation, and kinetic energy of fluid motion remains constant;
that is, the mechanical energy is conserved. This was the first
mathematical study of fluid flow. He demonstrated that the impact
of molecules on a surface would explain pressure, and that
assuming the constant random motion of molecules, pressure and
motion will increase with temperature. He explained the behavior
of gases with changing pressure and temperature, establishing the
kinetic theory of gases. Jean Nollet from France discovered
osmosis, the passage of a solution through a semi-permeable
membrane separating two solutions with different concentrations.
In 1754, Scotsman physician Joseph Black identified carbon
dioxide, the first gas recognized as distinct from everyday
breathing air. He did this by using a balance to weigh alkalies
before and after exposure to heat. They lost weight by losing
carbon dioxide. His development of the concept of latent heat, the
quantity of heat absorbed or released when a substance changes its
physical phase at constant temperature, was the first application
of quantitative analysis to chemical reactions. He ascertained the
effects of carbon dioxide on animals and its production by
respiration, fermentation, and burning of charcoal. At this time,
all flammable materials were thought to contain "phlogiston",
which was given off as they burned and was associated with the
transfer of heat. Plants were thought to remove phlogiston from
the air and therefore burned when they were dry.
In 1773, Joseph Priestly, a nonconformist minister, schoolmaster,
and tutor, discovered oxygen by heating red oxide of mercury. He
became interested in the study of gases by watching the process of
fermentation in a brewery next to his house. His gas collection
techniques enabled him to work with gases soluble in water. He
showed that the processes of combustion, respiration, and
putrefaction caused one-fifth of air exposed over water to
disappear, and that plants restored air vitiated by these
processes. When he isolated oxygen, he noted that it was better
than air in supporting respiration and combustion produced by
heating certain metallic nitrates. It was called "respirable air".
Hydrogen (inflammable air) and nitrogen were discovered. The
differences between acids, bases, and salts and their relationship
to one another became understood. There was some theoretical as
well as empirical knowledge about metals, e.g. in boiling points,
intermetallic compounds, and changes in properties.
In 1742, Benjamin Frankin invented the Franklin stove, which
greatly improved heating efficiency. As a freestanding cast-iron
fireplace, it supplied heat in all directions instead of only from
the one direction of the usual wall fireplace. Also, the heat
absorbed by its cast-iron sides provided warmth even after the
fire went out.
Static electricity was being discerned. It had been noticed that
shaking a mercury barometer produced a strange glow in its
"vacuum". Experiments showed that a glass rubbed in vacuo would
shine brightly and that an exhausted glass globe rapidly whirled
on a spindle and rubbing against the hand produced a brilliant
glow. And further, as Newton wrote: "if at the same time a piece
of white paper or white cloth, or the end of ones finger be held
at the distance of about a quarter of an inch or half an inch from
that part of the glass where it is most in motion, the electric
vapor which is excited by the friction of the glass against the
hand, will by dashing against the white paper, cloth, or finger,
be put into such an agitation as to emit light, and make the white
paper, cloth, or finger, appear lucid like a glowworm". In the
study of electricity, conductors and insulators were recognized.
There were demonstrations of electrical phenomena such as seeing
the ignition of brandy by a spark shooting from a man's finger and
the feeling the transfer of an electrical impulse created from a
rubbed glass globe among a circle of people by their holding
hands. In 1733, Frenchman Charles DuFay discovered that there are
two types of static electric charges, and that like charges repel
each other while unlike charges attract, linking electricity to
magnetism.
In 1750, Benjamin Franklin "caught" lightning with a sharp pointed
wire attached to the top of a kite which led down to a key at the
other end. When a thunder cloud electrified the kite, a charge
could be seen coming from the key to an approaching finger. This
charge was then stored in an early type of capacitor (1745 Leyden
jar) and then reproduced to create the same feeling of transfer of
electrical impulse among a circle of hand-holders, thereby
illustrating that it was the same phenomenon as electricity. This
countered the theological belief that thunder and lightning were
signs of divine displeasure or the work of the devil. He invented
the lightening rod, which was then used to protect houses. About
ten years later, the first lightening rod on an English church was
erected, which showed the church's acceptance of his theory.
Franklin theorized that there were electric charges everywhere and
designated them as positive or negative. He observed that opposite
charges attracted each other, but that like charges repelled each
other. In 1766, Joseph Priestly did an experiment suggested by
Franklin and showed that electrical force follows the same law as
gravitational force; that is, that the attraction or repulsion
between two electrical charges varies inversely in proportion to
the square of the distance between them.
Joseph-Louis LaGrange from France developed differential
equations. Natural history museums were established. A group split
off from the Royal Society to show collections of curiosities.
In 1754, a self-educated mechanic founded the Society for the
Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. It had sections
on agriculture, manufactures, mechanics, chemistry, liberal arts,
and trade and colonies. It sponsored contests at which prizes were
given, such as that in 1761 for the best invention of a machine
that would spin six threads of wool, flax, cotton, or silk at
onetime with only one person attending it.
Machines still mostly relied on human, animal, and water power.
Abraham Darby was a Quaker and millwright who made large cooking
pots of iron, which cost less than bronze. Around 1709, he
experimented with various substances to take the place of wood
charcoal in iron smelting. Coal was a remote possibility. In
forging or working metals coal had more or less the same qualities
as wood charcoal, but this was not the case in smelting ores,
especially iron ore. Coal contained sulphur compounds which caused
the iron ore to deteriorate. So he controlled the burning of coal
to burn out these impurities, which produced coke. His son took
over after his death and improved the methods of coking,
strengthened the bellows, and added ore limestone and other
reagents to the mixture. By 1756, his large blast furnace using
both pit coal and wood charcoal was very productive. He made iron
goods of such quality as those previously imported.
In 1767, Richard Reynolds replaced the wooden rails connecting a
blast furnace to mines with cast iron rails. He had apprenticed as
a grocer and then became a partner in a large ironworks of Darby
with a man whose daughter he married. After Darby died and before
Darby's sons became of age, Reynolds was in charge of the
ironworks. He cast cylinders of the early steam engines.
In 1749 John Roebuck, a physician and son of a prosperous
manufacturer of Sheffield goods, found a cheaper way to
manufacture sulphuric acid. He did this by using leaden chambers
instead of glass globes to collect the vapor from burning nitre
and sulphur over water. This reduced the cost of sulfuric acid to
one-fourth of its previous cost, so that sulfuric acid came to be
used to bleach linen instead of sour milk. He also made cast iron
into malleable iron by smelting iron using coke from pit-coal
instead of charcoal. But flooding in his mines and further
ventures resulted in his ruin and bankruptcy.
Thomas Newcomen, a Baptist ironmonger, blacksmith, and locksmith,
supplied iron tools to mine workers. He was aware of the problem
of flooding of mines and the awkward system of pumps which were
used one above the other and were powered by teams of horses. He
made a very valuable contribution to power generation by inventing
the atmospheric pressure steam engine with piston around 1712. He
did this by connecting theory with experiment, through the use of
scientific knowledge, especially the Royal Society's investigation
into atmospheric pressure. First cold water was poured on a
cylinder in which a piston could move up and down. This caused
steam inside the cylinder to cool and condense into water. The
vacuum created inside the cylinder under the piston caused
atmospheric pressure on top of the piston to push the piston down.
The piston was attached by a rod to the end of a beam which end
then swung down from a point on a vertical stand to which it was
attached. When the beam swung, its other end, which was attached
to a rod connected to a pump, rose, thus working the pump. Then
steam from water heated in a boiler under and communicating with
the cylinder was allowed into the cylinder under the piston. This
overcame the atmospheric pressure on the piston from above and
allowed the piston to rise by a counterweight on the rod over and
connecting to the pump. Boys opened and closed the steam valve,
which let steam into the cylinder from below, and the water valve,
which let cold water pour on the cylinder from above. Then the
boys were replaced by the valves being connected to the swinging
beam which caused them to open and close at perfectly regular
intervals. A story gives the credit for this improvement to an
inventive valve boy who wanted to play with his friends. In 1712,
the mining industry used this steam engine to pump water out of
mine-shafts which had flooded. These engines were also used to
supply water to reservoirs locks at canals, and drinking water
facilities in towns. One such engine developed power equivalent to
fifty horses working at one sixth the cost. It was the first
automatic machine since the clock.
Then James Watt invented the steam engine which used steam as a
force acting on the piston. Watt made his living making scientific
instruments for Glasgow University. Around 1764, he was fixing one
of Newcomen's engines belonging to the university, when he saw its
inefficiencies, such as the loss of heat when the cylinder was
cooled. He saved this heat energy by having the steam condensed in
another vessel distinct but connected to the cylinder. This
condenser was kept constantly cool by cold water. So the condensed
steam was pumped back into the boiler and it circulated
continuously, thus obviating the need for constant resupply of
water. In order to avoid the necessity of using water to keep the
piston air-tight, and also to prevent the air from cooling the
cylinder during the descent of the piston, he used the expansion
of the steam to push the piston instead of atmospheric pressure.
Then, in order to expand the use of the steam engine beyond that
of a pump, he converted the oscillating motion of the beam into
rotary motion. He formed a partnership with John Roebuck, who had
a two-thirds interest. But when Roebuck needed money, he sold his
interest to Matthew Boulton. Boulton wanted better power that that
of his watermill for his workshops that made metal buttons, watch
chains, shoebuckles of engraved steel, ornamental bronzes, vases,
chandeliers, tripods, silver and plated wares, and imitation gold
and tortoiseshell work. In dry weather, about eight horses were
needed to aid in driving the machinery. A steam pump could pump
water from the bottom of the watermill to the top to be used
again. He had built up this factory of five buildings and six
hundred workers, with 9,000 pounds derived from his marriage to an
heiress. By 1774, the partnership had built a model steam engine
with rotary power whose design could be sold. The price of the
engine was set as the amount of money saved on fuel costs in the
first three years of its operation. This machine was a relatively
economical user of energy, capable of performing almost any kind
of work.
About 1750, John Wilkinson, the son of a farmer who also oversaw
an iron furnace, substituted mineral coal for wood charcoal in the
smelting and puddling of iron ore. In 1766, he made it possible to
transport coal out of mines on rail wagons drawn by horses. As
father of the iron industry, he made iron chairs, vats for
breweries and distilleries, and iron pipes of all sizes. With his
invention of the first precision boring machine, he provided Watt
with metal cylinders of perfectly accurate shape, which were
necessary for the smooth working of Watt's steam engine. In 1775
he bought a pumping steam engine from Boulton and Watt's company
for his ironworks. It pumped three times as fast as Newcomen's
engine.