Article
ID: CBB001251487

Measurement in French Experimental Physics from Regnault to Lippmann. Rhetoric and Theoretical Practice (2012)

unapi
Measurement Experiments and experimentation 19th century France Regnault, Henri-Victor Lippmann, Gabriel

This paper explores the legacy of the great French experimental physicist Victor Regnault through the example of Gabriel Lippmann, whose engagement with electrical standardization during the early 1880s was guided by Regnault's methodological precept to measure `directly'. Lippmann's education reveals that the theoretical practice of `direct' measurement entailed eliminating extraneous physical effects through the experimental design, rather than, like physicists in Britain and Germany, making numerical `corrections' to measured values. It also provides, paradoxically, exemplars of the qualitative theoretical practices that sustained Regnault's misguided ambition to avoid theory. By considering the largely negative reactions to Lippmann's proposals for selecting suitable electrical units and methods of measuring the ohm, this paper associates these theoretical practices with the ineffectual rhetorical strategies employed by Lippmann to promote his work, and thereby indicates that the practice of direct measurement was limited to French experimental physics. Whilst this result aligns readily with the existence of divergent nineteenth century British and German cultures of precision, it emerges from a very different disciplinary context in which the practice of precision electrical measurement developed independently of submarine telegraphy. This is because, as this paper illustrates, telegraphic engineering and experimental physics remained separate professions in France.

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Authors & Contributors
Schmidgen, Henning
Dörries, Matthias
Raghav Seth
Mitchell, D J
Weiss, Kim Morrison
Smith, George E.
Journals
Physics in Perspective
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Revue de la Maison Française d'Oxford
Perspectives on Science
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza
Publishers
University of Oxford (United Kingdom)
University of California, Irvine
Routledge
Princeton University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University
Concepts
Experiments and experimentation
Measurement
Physics
Photography
Theoretical physics
Light
People
Regnault, Henri-Victor
Lippmann, Gabriel
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Young, James
Vieille, Paul
Smyth, Charles Piazzi
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
Places
France
Lyon (France)
United States
Institutions
Royal Society of London
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