81 M.B. Schiffer, The Archaeology of Science, Manuals in Archaeological Method,
Theory and Technique 9, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-00077-0_7,
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013
A handful of historians and others have in recent decades engaged apparatus of early modern and modern science (e.g., Baird 2004 ; Galison 1997 ; Gooding 1989 , 1990a , 1990b ; Gooding, Pinch, and Schaffer 1989 ; Hankins and Silverman 1995 ; Rothbart 2007 ; Shapin and Schaffer 1985 ). Their questions often have an anthropo-logical or socioanthropo-logical fl avor. Galison ( 1997 :2), for one, argued “that laboratory machines can command our attention if they are understood as dense with meaning, not only laden with their direct functions, but also embodying strategies of demon-stration, work relationships in the laboratory, and material and symbolic connec-tions to the outside cultures in which these machines have roots.” By privileging such phenomena, Galison suggests that he can “get at the material culture of a dis-cipline” (p. 2).
Although archaeologists seldom study the artifacts of modern and early modern science, in these domains we can ask behavioral questions and exploit our concep-tual and analytical toolkit to answer them. We could learn, for example, how inves-tigators created scientifi c knowledge through interacting with apparatus in experiments. To underscore this potential, I present case studies on early electrical technologies that treat the interpretation of singular artifacts and expose the poten-tial offered by research on (1) a project’s artifact assemblage and (2) the members of an artifact class.
at the time did vacua exist save in barometers and in the vessels evacuated by air pumps. Guericke ( 1994 [1672]) reported the air pump experiments in a book that contained his theoretical system of the world, a world fi lled with occult “virtues”
inhering in all matter that exert forces on other physical bodies heavenly and earthly.
This treatise also held a thin chapter describing experiments with a small sulfur globe, which he had formed in a glass mold (pp. 227–231). The experiments aimed to reveal the variety of virtues that the globe contained.
After liberating the globe from the mold, Guericke passed a rod through its center and affi xed a handle to one end. In this confi guration he could place the globe on a wooden stand and perform experiments (Fig. 1 ). Close to the globe’s underside he sprinkled small particles of various materials including leaves, paper, and silver. When Guericke rubbed the bottom of the globe with a dry hand, the sulfur attracted the small particles. After he rotated the globe 180°, the particles still adhered to the globe exhibiting, according to Guericke, the “conserving” vir-tue he equated with gravity. He also removed the globe from its stand, parading it about by the handle. While rubbing the globe, Guericke heard sounds and, in the dark, observed fl ickers of light; these effects were caused by the “sound-” and
“light-producing” virtues. A feather fl oating above the rubbed globe illustrated the
“expulsive” virtue.
Modern researchers agree that the many effects that Guericke created with his apparatus were electrical (electrostatic), but there the agreement ends. Some
Fig. 1 Otto von Guericke’s supposed “Electrical Machine,” 1672 (adapted from Guericke ( 1672 ) in the Dibner Library, Smithsonian Institution)
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contend that his sulfur globe in its wooden stand was the fi rst electrical machine (e.g., Dibner 1984 ), but others deny it that status (e.g., Hackmann 1979 ; Heathcote 1950 ). Some would allow that it was the fi rst electrical machine only if Guericke had understood he was creating electrical phenomena, but the evidence on this point is ambiguous. I suggest that this criterion is too stringent because it requires the investigator to have had an (anachronistic) understanding of what the apparatus was doing. By this criterion many investigators would be denied inventor status. Lee DeForest is properly regarded as the inventor of the triode vacuum tube, the founda-tion of electronics, but he did not know how it worked.
Another move, perhaps one more congenial to the archaeologist, is to defi ne electrical machines on the basis of formal properties and/or performance character-istics. Then one assesses Guericke’s apparatus to see if it conforms to the defi nition.
Generalizing from pre-1760 apparatus that were indisputably electrical machines, we could offer the following defi nition: an electrical machine has a glass globe or cylinder, mounted on an axle, which an investigator can rotate continuously by means of a mechanical linkage. When rubbed, the rotating vessel acquires a charge that may be drawn off and stored on a prime conductor (a long metal tube) or Leyden jar (a glass or ceramic jar with conductive material on the inside and outside).
Guericke’s apparatus does not meet this defi nition because it could not be easily rotated while being rubbed—i.e., the rod has a handle, not a crank. As a skilled mechanic, he would have employed a crank had he intended to spin the ball. We could also fashion a more inclusive defi nition: an electrical machine produces a charge that the investigator can exploit in experiments. By this defi nition Guericke did build an electrical machine. I note, however, that the former defi nition is abstracted from later electrical machines, and is thus anachronistic; the latter defi ni-tion excluded no means for producing charge, and so is too general, almost vacuous.
Other defi nitions are possible, but the lesson here is that the defi nitional approach is not defi nitive because defi nitions vary among researchers.
There is another way to proceed. I suggest that we ask a series of behavioral questions about the apparatus’ life history and, if possible, fashion a narrative from the answers. Some illustrative questions are:
1. Why did the investigator undertake the project and develop the apparatus?
2. What resources were needed for making the apparatus?
3. What does the apparatus’ design reveal about its anticipated performance characteristics?
4. What were the apparatus’ actual performance characteristics?
5. What kinds of interactions took place during the apparatus’ use?
6. In employing the apparatus, what effects did the investigator produce, observe, and record?
7. How did the investigator interpret the effects?
8. Did later investigators take the apparatus as a starting point for developing their own apparatus?
9. Did later apparatus embody similar operating principles?
Life History Narratives and Otto von Guericke’s “Electrical Machine”
I now return to Guericke’s experiments and present a skeletal narrative inspired by these questions. As noted above—and Heathcote ( 1950 ) has emphasized—
Guericke conducted these experiments in order to illustrate a series of “virtues” that he believed were present in all physical bodies. Although Guericke could have begun this project with no knowledge of prior experiments, he may have been famil-iar with William Gilbert’s ( 1958 [1600]) work, which showed that a variety of mate-rials when rubbed become “electrics”—i.e., capable of attracting small, lightweight particles. Perhaps Gilbert’s generalizations led Guericke to use an electric—sul-fur—to illustrate the virtues. Someone in Guericke’s social position could have eas-ily obtained the materials for the apparatus, and constructing it placed little demand on his ingenuity and crafting skills.
The apparatus’ design—a rod passing through the sulfur ball that rested on a wooden stand—indicates that a critical performance characteristic was the abil-ity to turn the ball on its axis. That the rod was fi tted with a handle not a crank shows that Guericke did not expect to rotate the ball rapidly. The handle and design of the stand also allowed the ball to be removed easily, carried around, and returned to the stand. Guericke’s description of the experiments indicates that the apparatus’ “designed- in” performance characteristics were realized in practice: he was able to turn the ball 180°, remove it, and walk around. Together, sulfur ball, stand, small particles, and Guericke made up the core apparatus whose interactions created various effects, including attraction and repulsion, heat and light, and sound. These effects, judged Guericke, were consistent with the tenets of his theory of virtues.
Francis Hauksbee developed an early electrical machine in the fi rst decade of the eighteenth century, but whether he drew inspiration directly from Guericke’s prior apparatus is unknown. Urged by Newton to seek an understanding of the light pro-duced at the top of a barometer by the sloshing of mercury (the “mercurial phospho-rus”), Hauksbee made several machines. His starting point was Boyle’s air pump, the latter a modifi cation of Guericke’s invention (Guericke’s book was available to men of the Royal Society of London, where both Boyle and Hauksbee worked).
Hauksbee’s simplest machine consisted of a glass globe in a wooden frame that could be spun rapidly by a mechanism consisting of a crank attached to a large pul-ley and driving belt (Fig. 2 ). The Hauksbee machine differed from Guericke’s appa-ratus in materials, parts, and confi guration and, by enabling continuous rotation, worked on a different principle. Nonetheless, Guericke’s apparatus could have served as one among many resources on which Hauksbee drew in designing his machine.
Narratives prompted by the behavioral questions posed above may have gaps that have to be bridged by inference. Even so, the questions help to orient research and expose gaps and may provoke a search for new evidence. By establishing the basis for a contextualized narrative, this approach obviates the need to debate defi nitions in the sometimes fruitless quest to learn if an apparatus was the fi rst of a kind.
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