Villain of Steam: Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859) Presentation at British Society for the History of Mathematics, Birmingham, 05/12/2015 1 Anna Martin, Project Manager Villain of Steam Project [email protected]
Villain of Steam: Dionysius Lardner
(1793-1859)
Presentation at British Society for the History of Mathematics, Birmingham,
05/12/2015
1
Anna Martin, Project ManagerVillain of Steam [email protected]
Dionysius Lardner overview
World famous in his day
His books and lectures inspired many including Darwin and Jevons to take up science as a career
Involved in a very famous scandal and his name became a taboo
Forgotten today except for half remembered quotes:
“A successful steam boat passage across the Atlantic was about as likely as a man walking on the moon”, Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 1999
“If a train travelled as sixty miles an hour all the passengers would be asphyxiated” (i.e. suffocate).
Marlborough Street, Dublin
Born Dublin c.1793
Son of a Marlborough Street Whig lawyer
Decided age 19 to seek a career as a TCD professor
Educated at Trinity College Dublin
Influences
TCD students - The Royal Dunsink Observatory
Frances Bacon
William Petty
The importance of science to a successful society
The importance of scientific education
The importance of scientific publication
The importance of systematic experiment
Woodhouse Babbage
John BrinkleyBartholomew Lloyd
The value of Analytical calculus
Analytical Calculus: the paradigm shift
Babbage, Hershel, Whewell andCambridge AnalyticalsLardner and Dublin Analyticals
NewtonFluxions (Dot Notation)
(Arthur) Brown (St Johns, Cambridge)(Philip ?)Hudson Supported the
value of Newton’s Fluxions
Leibnitz
d’Alembert, Euler
Lagrange and Laplace Taught the
value of Analytical calculus(Algebreic notation)
Rowan HamiltonDarwin
Rowan Hamilton Mallet, Jevons
Re-wrote the textbooks and syllabus (Dublin 1813, Cambridge 1817)Re-wrote science
Lardner’s textbooks System of Algebraic Geometry (1823) An Elementary Treatise on the Differential and Integral Calculus
(1826) The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid (1826) etc. etc.
Sprang from understanding of students’ needs from time as a grinder Used real life examples Included sample exam questions Used simple language (and wherever possible rounded numbers up in
popular lectures)
Analytical Calculus: the paradigm shift
Babbage, Hershel, Whewell andCambridge AnalyticalsLardner and Dublin Analyticals
NewtonFluxions (Dot Notation)
(Arthur) Brown (St Johns, Cambridge)(Philip?)Hudson
Supported the value of Newton’s Fluxions
Leibnitz
d’Alembert, Euler
Lagrange and Laplace Taught the
value of Analytical calculus(Algebreic notation)
Rowan HamiltonDarwin
Rowan Hamilton Mallet, Jevons
Re-wrote the textbooks and syllabus (Dublin 1813, Cambridge 1817)Re-wrote science
Dionysius Lardner by Daniel Maclise
William Rowan Hamilton trained using textbooks
Goes on to apply Analytical calculus to invent Quaternions
Highly regarded by economists for his late masterwork Railway Economy mentioned in Das Kapital
First use of a graph in an economics book
Jevons “” To Lardner's Railway Economy I was probably most indebted”” “He treats certain questions of Political Economy in a highly scientific and
mathematical spirit. Thus the relation of the rate of fares to the gross receipts and net profits of a railway company are beautifully demonstrated ... by means of a diagram. It is proven that the maximum profit occurs at the point where the curve of gross receipts becomes parallel to the curve of expenses of conveyance.”
Cited in D. Hooks p. 106-7 (footnote 4. citing Hicks ‘Leon Walras’ pp240-42)
Lardner suggests using mathematics in economics
“…I have of late been devoting a small portion of time to a science as new … to me as it is interesting. I mean Political Economy. I am quite fascinated with it and cannot persuade myself that it is not susceptible of all the rigor of mathematical reasoning. Nay I see no positive reason why the language and operations of analysis should not be applied to it.”
Lardner to Babbage, TCD, April 8, 1826 Babbage Correspondence British Library MsADd37183, f.274 Babbage’s On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers, was published in 1835 .
Analytical Calculus: the paradigm shift
Cambridge AnalyticalsBabbage, Hershel, Whewell and (?)Lardner
Cournot
Ellet and Dupuit
Idea of using complicated mathematics in economics
Marginal Untilitarians
Marx
Lardner’s Railway Economy
Re-wrote economics Jevons
Idea of price differentiation
Idea of changing figures into a graph
Idea of allowing for maintenance
Whewell Group
Henry Brougham promotes education
Brougham+Fear of revolution=Educational reforms
Politicians and ‘scientists’ become partners
Brougham’s 1825 pamphlet starts a nationwide craze for mechanics’ institutes and the diffusion of useful knowledge
The funding of the London University and the SDUK
Foundation of the University of London
The rise of cheap literature
Steam Printing invented
Economies of scale
Mass production
A rise in demand and literacy
Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia
Financed with Longman and John Taylor
Edited by Lardner
The six shillings sciences
Monthly collectible volumes built into libraries
Publihsed by authoritative writers
Authors of Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia
Augstus De Morgan
Sir Walter Scott
Mary Shelly
John Hershel
Sir Thomas MooreRobert Southey
Promotion of Babbage’s engines
Passion for new inventions
Futurologist
Lecture tour in Northern England Scientific and Literary societies
Climax at the Royal Institution, where Ada Lovelace attended and was inspired
Article in the Edinburgh Review inspires real life Scheutz calculating Engine
Involvement in railway research and controversy
Lectures and book on the steam engine
Interested in experiments with speed and wind resistance
Expert witness in the Atmospheric railway, Box Hill and Broad Gauge controversies
Tried to guess the effects of air in tunnels
Tried to guess whether steam ships could cross the Atlantic
The Walking Engine
The first railway passenger service
Brunel’s Box Tunnel
Atlantic steam passage controversy
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Successful crossing of the Atlantic turns Lardner into a laughing stock
Animal magnetism
Much in demand showing the aristocracy the scientific sights
Irish playwrite Dion Bouicicault
Lardner’s wife left him when he was a grinder
He had an affair with his friend George Darley’s sister Mary Bourciquot and fathered Dion Boucicault (Dionysius Lardner Boucicault)
Lady Blessington’s salon (Lardner in foreground)
Can you spot: Lardner (centre stage)Lady Blessington, Dickens,Bulwer Lytton,Disraeli
Gets divorced,
Seeks new wife/life?
Ellen Terry, whom Mary Heavisides resembled
Runs away with the Mary, the wife of Captain Heavisides and daughter of Colonel Spicer.
Dear John letter
Punch up in a Calais hotel
Sued for £13,000 damages
Frontispiece to Lardner’s ‘Lectures of Science and Art’
Travel incognito to America
Unmasked
Rejection by the international scientific community
Travels around America studying transport
Lectures in theatres and opera houses to a quarter of the population of America
Makes $40,000
Involved in a fire
The staff of the New York Tribune
It has nice pictures It is Cheap
It is written by himself.
The book goes global and inspires readers to take up science
Horace Greeley loves the lectures
The New York Tribune writes up all his articles and turns them into a book, later reworked as “Dr Lardner’s Museum of Science and Art’.
Colophon from ‘Handbook of Philosophy’
An early steam engine
Lardner in Thackeray’s cartoon (1)
Lardner and Bulwer Lyttton in Thackeray’s cartoon
Lardner and Thomas Norton Longman in Thackeray’s cartoon (4)
AL Martin, Villain of Steam (Dublin, Tyndall Scientific, 2015) ISBN 9780993242007
Full list of references, sources and picture credits are given in Villain of Steam.
Presentation produced by Marlinspike Publishing for Tyndall Scientific
©2015