Article ID: CBB360564650

Mechanics and mathematicians: George Biddell Airy and the social tensions in constructing time at Parliament, 1845–1860 (2020)

unapi

In mid-Victorian Britain, reconciling elite mathematical expertise with practical mechanical experience presented both engineering and social challenges. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the construction of the Westminster Clock at Britain’s Houses of Parliament. Realizing this scheme engendered the collaboration between Cambridge mathematicians George Biddell Airy and Edmund Beckett Denison, and the clockmaker Edward John Dent. Transforming theoretical mathematical drawings into physical apparatus challenged existing relations between conveyors of privileged scientific knowledge and those with practical experience of what was, and what was not, mechanically possible. My article demonstrates how, within this project, physical models and devices provided material solutions to ambiguities over authority and social disorder in Victorian Britain.

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Authors & Contributors
Ishibashi, Yuto
Kenichi Natsume
Sampson, Paul E.
Tuscano, Maria Luisa
Belteki, Daniel
Bulstrode, Jenny
Concepts
Mechanics
Science and society
Astronomy
Mathematics
Physics
Clocks
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
18th century
Early modern
Modern
Ancient
Places
Great Britain
Italy
United States
Milan (Italy)
London (England)
Europe
Institutions
Royal Observatory Greenwich
Antiquarian Horological Society
British Museum
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