Feb 13

2014 H.G. Wells Lecture announced

This year’s H. G. Wells Lecture in Science & Society will be given by Dr Thomas Dixon, Senior Lecturer in History of Science at Queen Mary, University of London. It will take place on Wednesday 5 March at 17:15 in Marlow Lecture Theatre 1 at the Canterbury Campus.

The title is BELIEVING WITHOUT SEEING: Faith and Doubt from Galileo to Dawkins.

File:Caravaggio - The Incredulity of Saint Thomas.jpg

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, by Caravaggio, 1601-2

Doubting Thomas has been admired as a model of scepticism and empiricism by scientific luminaries from Thomas Huxley to Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins. His doubtful demand for evidence is favourably contrasted with the ‘blind faith’ of the other disciples. However, aside from misreading the original story, this interpretation misunderstands the nature of both science and faith. In this year’s H. G. Wells Science and Society lecture, Dr Thomas Dixon of Queen Mary, University of London, will trace the histories of science, faith, and doubt from seventeenth-century Rome to the present, with particular reference to Galileo’s telescopic observations, Caravaggio’s masterpiece ‘The Incredulity of St Thomas’, the agnosticism of Thomas Henry Huxley, and the writings of one of his most famous pupils, H. G. Wells. The lecture will suggest that science and religion use evidence to produce knowledge in similar ways and will ask whether the other disciples might have made better scientists than St Thomas.

Dr Dixon’s main publications relating to science and religion are Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction (2008), and Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives (2010). His two current projects are a book entitled Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears, and a BBC Radio series on “Five Hundred Years of Friendship”, to be broadcast in March and April this year.

Jan 23

Defiant Modernism and the NHS: The Newton Victor Gyromax Rotating Anode 120 X-ray tube (1953)

Newton Victor Gyromax Rotating Anode 120 X-ray tube

Newton Victor Gyromax Rotating Anode 120 X-ray tube

The Newton Victor Gyromax Rotating Anode 120 X-ray tube is a good example of how Britain’s post World War II ideals were reflected in the rapidly developing field of health and medicine in the 1950s. During the 1950s, science was celebrated as an essential tool for national development which could be used to the benefit of all citizens. This national sentiment was epitomised in the 1951 Festival of Britain. The beginning of the Welfare State under Attlee’s Labour government and, in particular, the creation of the National Health Service in 1948 were defining moments in the history modern Britain; representing a cultural and political shift in British ideals and a change in the lives and values of the post-war citizen. As Andrew Marr puts it in A History of Modern Britain, the Second World War provided a catalyst for change which led to a revaluation of government practices. The preference for a largely laissez faire government, which had existed since the Eighteenth Century, was replaced by a mood ‘for big government, digging deep into people’s lives to improve them.’

Newton Victor Ltd. were specialists in industrial and medical X-ray equipment and supplies. The company was formed in 1949 as a merger of the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company, Newton and Wright Ltd, and the Victor X-ray Corporation. The foundation of the NHS heralded a new era of centrally administered health care for all. The control of over one thousand hospitals previously run by voluntary bodies or local authorities was now merged under the central authority of the NHS. Similarly, General Practitioner care – previously only enjoyed by those who had national insurance – was extended to include all citizens. By looking at the dates of the foundation of the NHS and the establishment of Newton Victor Ltd., one could hazard a guess that the company might have been founded to fill a gap in the market created by the NHS for the rapid production and distribution of increasingly complex diagnostic equipment for hospitals and general surgeries. Radiography is an essential diagnostic tool which allows potential injuries and conditions in many areas of the body (not only broken bones) to be identified quickly; thus allowing more efficient treatment. As such, Newton Victor and their products such as the Gyromax represent the important link which emerged in the immediate post-war period between science, industry, and the new social developments which occurred as a result of large scale planning under the Labour government, typified by the NHS.

Although X-rays had been used for diagnostic purposes since the late nineteenth century, the anode (the part of an X-ray tube which receives an electron beam from the cathode and emits it as an X-ray) had always been fixed. The first commercial X-ray tube to use a rotating anode was Philips’ Rotalix, released in 1929. This development made X-ray production more efficient and up to ten times more powerful than X-ray machines which used a fixed anode. As a result, the required exposure times were shorter; allowing clearer images of moving organs such as the heart to be produced. Although Victor Newton’s use of a rotating anode was not new in itself, the Gyromax model is an example of Britain’s pride in producing British scientific equipment, and of the zeitgeist of post-war Britain. Victor-Newton Ltd. proudly displayed the Gyromax and some of their other X-ray equipment at the 7th International Congress of Radiology, held in Copenhagen in 1953. This could be said to be an extension of the prevailing post-war attitude that Britain could be rebuilt and the country’s status enhanced through British technological and scientific development, as epitomised in the 1946 exhibition ‘Britain Can Make It!’

As well as its practical uses, the aesthetics of Newton Victor’s X-ray tube set it apart as an example of post-war technology. Made from aluminium, ceramic, plastic, steel and glass, with a high gloss black paint finish, it is futuristic yet simplistic in appearance. A world away in terms of design from the first X-ray tubes, it is an example of modern mass production. The product is an advertisement in itself both for Newton Victor Ltd., and the new realm of applied science in the post-war period. For example, its aesthetics are reminiscent of the displays at the Festival of Britain which had an overarching theme of modernity. Moreover, in some ways, its appearance can also be linked to the work of the Festival Pattern Group, which through a mixture of art and design and scientific knowledge made science more appealing and accessible to a greater number of people. Even the name of the product, ‘Gyromax’, is indicative of Britain’s post-war scientific ideals and the emerging use of brand power. A combination of ‘gyro’ – a prefix meaning to spin – and ‘max’ – suggesting maximum power – elicited a level of trust in the notion that Britain was producing some of the most advanced and professional equipment and thus living up to the ideals of the post-war citizen.

 Erica Read

Final Year Undergraduate

Member of the Science, Power and Politics in Twentieth Century Britain module

Suggested further reading:

Balbus, (Julian Huxley), Reconstruction and Peace: Needs and Opportunities, (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., 1941)

Andrew Marr, A History of Modern Britain, (London: Macmillan, 2007), (Part One: Hunger and Pride)

NHS Choices, Health A-Z: X-ray: http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/X-ray/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Jan 22

The Ferranti Pegasus Computer

On the Wings of White-Heat

A photograph of The Ferranti Pegasus no.25 computer.

The Ferranti Pegasus no.25 (1956) by Marcin Wichary
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence.

It may appear an unsightly cross between a Mark I Mini and a set of metallic wardrobes, but within its architecture the Ferranti Pegasus heralds the birth of something which continues to alter the lives of millions – this writer at this moment included – in the 21st century: desktop computing. Though the Pegasus, requiring an organised cooling system, dedicated power supply and a large room to operate, is some distance away from what would eventually come to ply such desktops, it is something – possessing both the first general purpose CPU and digital Draughts-playing programme – of a cultural and technological precursor in regard to its use of science for more casual ends.

To explore this further, we can first look towards what the Ferranti Pegasus was not. Primarily, it was not Alan Turing’s seminal ACE, with its eventual use – to extract accurate aircraft trajectory readings for the benefit of developing anti-aircraft measures – ensuring it, in its varying guises, remained firmly in the grasp of the Radar Research and Development Establishment. Nor was it Manchester University’s ATLAS; a direct, state-fuelled response to IBM’s offerings to both the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and NSA in the mid-1950s. It was also not, much unlike the code breaking and aptly-named Colossus Mark 1, something intended solely to extend the reach of the British military.

Yet the Pegasus – a medium-sized automatic digital computer – was born out of this context; a collective, underlying market emphasis upon mathematics, military capabilities and scientific research. Co-creator Christopher Strachey had a differing vision for the Pegasus; it was to be a logic-problem solving computer. From this point forth, challenges of a more practical nature – such as that posed by hosting the Royal Insurance Company’s expansive database, calculating the SR.53’s tail plane strength and playing Draughts – took precedence above the prospect of facilitating effective radar reconnaissance in its development. Instead, the Pegasus – with its accompanying programming manual drawing specific attention to the computer’s capacity to be used for ‘business and commercial data-processing, in technical [and] in educational work’ – saw the significance of the scientist following production fade. This, in line with Strachey’s commitment to logic-problem solving, was replaced by a new commitment to end-user-friendly design naturally suited to wider public use. The notion of the consuming, working citizen – served by an emphasis upon what Pegasus developer Ian Merry termed ‘reliability, economy and performance’ in a 1992 seminar – now acting as a genuine force of production upon the output of science.

But if the post-war citizen was now to alter, if only in part,  science’s product here, science – with some state assistance – would come to ensure this relationship became one firmly entrenched in reciprocation.

The commercial uses envisaged in the Pegasus programming manual proved eminently compatible with the prevailing aims of the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC): the government body charged with remedying the stark disparity between superior public sector technology and that found in private industry. Whilst their interest in the Pegasus would not go untested (see Anthony Gandy’s The Early Computer Industry) their determination proved not to be misplaced, being fuelled by a growing, pressing realisation. This epiphany was – as Simon Lavington paraphrases then Elliot Brothers MD Leon Bagrit in his book Alan Turing and His Contemporaries – that digital computing possessed the capacity ‘to be widely used [for] all sorts of manufacturing processes, making decisions and adjustments that had previously been carried out by human operators’. G.E. Felton’s reference to a ‘technological explosion’ in the preface to the programming manual amounted to a direct nod towards this potential; a disseminating of science’s new, digitised capability into the wider public domain. As per the NRDC’s mission statement, by the time the last of the 38 Pegasus units were sold in 1964, only 6 had found their way into government research departments. With the financial strength of the NRDC in mind, the specific fate of the remaining 32 Pegasus units from 1956-1964 – to operate within the realms of academia, banking, insurance and civilian aviation – thus came to be so not out of Ferranti’s sole desire, but also that of a willing state fuelling their endeavour. Alas, the old, dominant forces of production continued to hold some sway.

But this story – of the Ferranti Pegasus, science and the post-war citizen – is not one of failure. When Bellerophon fell from his steed’s back, Pegasus was transformed by Zeus to exist forever as an omnipresent constellation, a looming, deified past. A similar, if marginally subdued fate was to befall our thermionic-valve computer as it swapped the offices of the Skandia Insurance Company for the retirement care of the Science Museum.

The Pegasus and its offspring – the Ferranti Perseus, Sirius and Orion – galloped into the white-hot embrace of a Labour government now committed to ‘full planning and mobilisation of scientific resources’ supported by the new Ministry of Technology established the year of Ferranti’s final Pegasus sale. If this NRDC-esque mobilisation was to – as further asserted in Harold Wilson’s party conference speech of 1963 – ‘produce the new instruments and tools of economic advance’ as part of a ‘scientific revolution’, computing innovations á la that achieved by Strachey, Ferranti and the NRDC would come to see the symbiotic relationship between science and the post-war citizen strengthened ever further.

Though this was a fledgling relationship – between man, machine and automation – that would require some future cultivation, its roots were laid with the Ferranti Pegasus; science forging, with a government push, a commercial, digital identity which would eventually come to be merged with that of the post-war citizen over the remainder of the 20th Century.  IBM – with their faster, smaller, sleeker machines – would soon emerge from across the Atlantic for the first time. By way of a high-profile entrance into a now warmly receptive (if not white-hot) British market they would quickly, as Lavington asserts, ‘change things forever’. But the influence of the Ferranti Pegasus remained; the underlying warmth of this climate was something for which IBM would have – as much as they did for their units’ now familiar general purpose CPUs – our trailblazing, Draughts-playing, flying horse to thank.

Luke Shoveller

Second Year Undergraduate.

Member of the Science, Power and Politics in Twentieth Century Britain module.

Further Information:

Flamm, Kenneth, Creating the Computer: Government, Industry and High Technology, (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1988)

Gandy, Anthony, The Early Computer Industry: Limitations of Scale and Scope, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

The Labour Party, Science and the Future of Britain, (London: The Labour Party, 1964)

Lavington, Simon and The Chartered Institute for IT BCS, Alan Turing and His Contemporaries: Building the World’s First Computers, (Swindon: British Informatics Society Ltd, 2012)

Spinardi, Graham, ‘Civic Spinoff From Defence Research Establishments’, in Bud, Robert & Gummett, Phillip, and Science Museum (Great Britain), Cold War, Hot Science: Applied Research in Britain’s Defence Laboratories, 1945-1990, (London: Science Museum, 2002), pp.371-390

Photo link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2290052630/

 

Sep 18

P R I M E R – a foretaste of Chain Reaction!

P R I M E R 2

(c) 2013 Katy Price. All rights reserved.

The Centre for the History of the Sciences and the School of Biosciences are getting very excited about their forthcoming exhibition Chain Reaction! at the Sidney Cooper Gallery (22 November – 21 December).

Here’s a taster of work by Katy Price that will be on show …

P R I M E R

Cork boards, pins, primer, Nature, books, paper, type, glue.

Primers are vital to the PCR process: they are custom designed to pinpoint segments of DNA for replication, and they aid the copying process by starting off the chains of letters in copied material. P R I M E R brings the PCR meaning of ‘primer’ into contact with the old fashioned meaning of the word – a book to teach us from the beginning.

(c) 2013 Katy Price. All rights reserved.

(c) 2013 Katy Price. All rights reserved.

Words and pictures from Mother Goose Primer are used to mark out sections from Nature reports of a confusing story about the first known AIDS patient. These reports do not give us any clarity about whether David Carr was HIV positive or whether the samples analysed even came from his body. Fragments from the science journal are combined with cutouts from Mother Goose Primer published in the year of his birth, to create visual poems exploring the unknown story of David. The process of PCR with its ingredients, selections, copying and false moves has a lot in common with the processes of writing and publication, something that David Carr was physically involved with in his trade as a printer.

Visitors are invited to select words and place them in the small tubes which are used to assemble ingredients when performing a PCR experiment. Words from the tubes will be gathered and used to write new poems especially for the Chain Reaction! exhibition.

P R I M E R 3

(c) 2013 Katy Price. All rights reserved.

Katy Price is a poet and performer working with twentieth-century technology. Previous works include ‘Kippered (Edison) Herring’, a poem in two voices recorded on wax cylinder by Aleksander Kolkowski for Phonographies (2010), and Bookmachine (2010), a performance with voice, mutilated books and computer speech.

 

Sep 06

If you go down in the woods today: TED and venture capital

teddy-bear

What’s not to like?

TED is a genius brand.  It’s creative, radical, iconoclastic, open to all.  Plus, it sounds like a furry bear, and who – except those who routinely steal candy from children – could dislike one of those?

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and it was begun as a conference at which developers in those fields could showcase their ideas to fellow practitioners and, crucially, investors.  Since it was bought by the self-made publisher Chris Anderson in 2001 through his Sapling Foundation (f. 1996), TED has grown and grown, to a $30m turnover in 2010.  It has also changed.  Under Anderson’s direction, topics covered by TED speakers have broadened dramatically from their original remit to encompass the sciences and arts.  On top of this, TED has developed a bold brand of visionary insight for world change.

Perhaps TED’s greatest triumph is the way that it manages to combine extraordinary exclusivity with a mythos of openness.  Attendance at the main conference this year will set you back a minimum of $7,500; becoming a TED patron costs $125,000 over five years.  However, in 2006 TED began webcasting its talks free of charge, announcing – astoundingly – its billionth view in November 2012.

Everyone seems to buy into TED’s brand.  The UK media – in particular the Guardian group – have extolled it for the past five years.  Media sources are beginning to cite it as an authority in their articles: if something is said at TED then it must be true and also valuable.  Academics are also swept up in TED’s appeal.  A colleague joked to me over lunch the other day that our students would do better to watch TED talks on the Internet rather than attending some of our lectures; there was a grain of sincerity in what she said.  TED’s creation of a non-peer reviewed platform of expertise, though by no means historically unique, is certainly worthy of note.

When you add to this admiration TED’s collective and missional belief that institutional funding is not necessary for R&D, you have a state of affairs that is, to say the least, challenging to institutionalised research.  ‘An idea can be created out of nothing except an inspired imagination’, its website claims – try telling that to a lab director scrabbling for grants.  ‘[An idea] can be transferred across the world at the speed of light for virtually zero cost’ – I wonder how that would go down in the Department for International Development?

So who are these TED speakers, attendees and donors, and why do they hold to this model of knowledge?  And should we be worried by them?

TED’s donors, according to its publicly-accessible tax-exemption documentation, are overwhelmingly venture capitalists and hedge fund managers (some operating from tax havens such as Bermuda or the British Virgin Islands).  When you look up their public profiles, their preferred self-description is typically ‘entrepreneur’. Many of their careers were interwoven at some point with internet or other tech development, and having ridden this wave they now have mega-funds to invest.

As a historian of science, I find myself thinking back to previous centuries of science patronage, not least Galileo working in the insanely wealthy court of the Medici.  Like the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II, TED’s donors bask in the reflected glory of their protégés – the speakers at TED conferences.  Make no mistake about it, TED speakers are smart people, and slick with it.  So there’s great kudos and chic for donors in hearing clever talks that flatter their intellectual propensities.  The public online accessibility of TED’s talks only enhances the warm glow of these patrons, basking in the knowledge that several million people have clicked to watch the speaker that they have met in person.  The public, viewing online, can tag (or watch) TED talks according one of a number of pre-determined labels – ‘persuasive, courageous, ingenious, fascinating, inspiring, beautiful, funny, informative’ – that necessarily affirm the brilliance of speakers and the taste of their patron-listeners.  (Would that these were the only options for course evaluation available in the universities’ National Student Survey.)

Plus, of course, participating in TED is a serious boost to your moral self-image.  Hanging out with TEDsters Bono and Clinton and the global super-elite of do-gooders makes you an A-list philanthropist.

One should not forget that TED’s patrons continue to be active investors.  There is no evidence of impropriety, but at the very least we can say that TED conferences are a gold-plated opportunity to network.  As active investors, TED’s patrons have an on-going concern to see, identify and invest in enterprises that they judge likely to succeed financially.  Likewise its speakers (who can be nominated by the $125K TED patrons) get an unparalleled opportunity to leverage their ideas and products.

There is in particular a queasy connection between the school-bashing strand of many TED talks and its new TED-Ed strand dedicated to online teaching.  ‘With this feature, educators can use … any video lesson featured on TED-Ed or … based on a TEDTalk.  Just plug the video in and start writing questions, comments, even quizzes’, says TED.  I’m no technophobe but this doesn’t sound like creative human engagement to me, or at least not a replacement for it.

Some of TED’s highest-giving donors are invested in internet education platforms.  For instance lynda.com, an online teaching facility, gave $156,000 to TED under two separate identities during the 2010 tax year.  If the Internet trend has been for the ruthless monetisation of phenomena that began for fun, then it would be a fair bet that the brave new world of online education provision will not be an exception.

Despite their preference for the moniker ‘entrepreneur’, many of TED’s donors are actually from already wealthy or super-wealthy families (Disney, Estée Lauder), and are Ivy-league educated.  Many are serial philanthropists; between them they have a network of tax-incentivised non-profit foundations of varying activity – some highly active; others with no publicly visible mission statement or recently-filed tax exemption returns.

Chris Anderson’s wife, Jacqueline Novogratz, runs one such foundation, the Acumen Fund, and the majority of its income derives from Anderson’s Sapling Foundation.  In 2010 Acumen’s salaries and related costs amounted to $4.25M (including $287K to Novogratz); their disbursal of grants amounted to just $580K.  The vast majority of their disbursed funds – just under $8M – took the form of loans, to for-profit entities investing in such commodities as health, water, housing, and energy in the developing world.  What proportion of these loans is direct, and what proportion goes via another tier of for-profit portfolio management, is difficult to tell.

Some of Sapling’s donors are murkier than others, but the vast majority appear to be sincere in their philanthropy.  An examination of their public statements reveals that they collectively share two key beliefs about it.  First, they feel beholden to ‘give something back’ to the world in which they have financially succeeded.  Secondly, they have an evangelistic faith that the way they made their money is the way that success can and should work for everyone, especially in the developing world.  Some of them, speculating their cash on such schemes, deem themselves ‘angel investors’.

TED’s funding model for research, and very definition of research, is venture capitalism.  Its donors believe in venture capitalism as a funding method because this is how many of them made their own money, through the IT booms.  They believe in a marketplace of ideas – the essence of the well-networked TED conferences – and in the ability of the good ideas to attract investors.  They also – and here’s the fatal circularity – believe that IT is both the vehicle for this circulation of ideas and the source of its best products.

TED’s rhetoric goes that IT is good because it enables people to bypass traditional and stultifying forces of culture and economics (such as curriculum-based learning, or organised/centrally-funded research).  Internet based technologies, in their vision, inherently respond to the requirements of the people in just the same way that market forces do.  It’s a remarkable coincidence, given that these people are in the business of selling IT.

After submersing myself for hours and hours in TED talks and rhetoric I began to feel like an Alice who, having spent too long in Wonderland, began to lose her bearings on reality.  What indeed was wrong with these mega-wealthy patrons using their money to support the technological development of poorer nations?  Wasn’t the promotion of useful research in the validating presence of celebrities better than no promotion at all?  And whatever had given me the notion that there was something problematic about venture capitalism as a funding model for the making of knowledge?

One thing we should note is that TED is parasitic upon conventional research funding whilst propagating an emergent message that such funding is unnecessary.  Its presentation of arts and sciences in the presence of IT investors smacks of decorative learning, reminding me of the British Museum’s original role as the cultivated face of ruthless imperialism.  Inasmuch as it presents academics’ research in the arts and sciences, TED piggybacks off publicly-based conventional funding, whilst presenting it within its overall context about the free-ness of ideas and the effectiveness of venture capitalism.  God help us if governments responsible for allocating funds to research councils buys TED’s message that a good idea costs nothing.  It is certainly not without its appeal.  And watch out for an Amazon-style monopoly of TEDsters in the Internet-based delivery of education for the poor in the near future.

Of course TED does not do anything so crass as to publicly articulate or recommend any model for funding and its research.  Indeed, there is not even a single ‘voice of TED’; it revels in its networked nature.  But it would be naïve in the extreme to think that the collected wealth of its patrons, whose achievement is valorised through the chic of its conferences and propagated globally through the muscle of their investment strategies, has no effect.  The message is no less powerful – perhaps is more so – for being emergent rather than explicit.

If you doubt that venture capitalism and hedge funds have been successful in a widespread and equitable enhancement of global public good then you might well question whether this is a good way of choosing what knowledge to value and develop.  And you might legitimately point out that IT firms have not always reached their financially dizzy heights of success without a certain creativity in fulfilling their civic tax responsibilities.

Many good things come out of TED.  Its speakers present ideas that are interesting and curious in themselves.  It offers a chance to increase the profile of research, and to connect it with the people who can facilitate its positive impact on the world.  But it should also give us considerable pause for thought, lest we buy into its economically infected notion of what knowledge is.

Jul 18

Kent students create an international presence for local treasures

Powell-Cotton Museum 1The Powell Cotton family were explorers, soldiers, women, anthropologists, naturalists, film-makers and more.  Their astonishing archives and collection form the core of the Powell Cotton Museum (PCM) in its country park, and include the world’s largest elephant specimen and the first room-sized habitat-display diorama (a form of exhibit best known through the examples at the Chicago Field Museum and American Museum of Natural History).  Its Victorian and Edwardian collections are still actively used by scientists today but are comparatively little known for their historic significance.

Masters students on the programme Science, Communication and Society at the nearby University of Kent visited the museum on the invitation of museum staff to explore possibilities of increasing museum internet presence and communicating its contents in both historical and contemporary modes.

Powell-Cotton Museum 2An initial meeting quickly confirmed that there was no Wikipedia presence for the museum – only for Quex Park as leisure venue.  A number of themes were identified to feature as subsections in the revamped ‘spine’ page: Percy Powell Cotton (1866-1940); Antoinette (1913-1997) and Diane Cotton (1908-1986); dioramas; original species type specimens; and filmic archives (including an extensive collection of ethnographic films).  Each student took responsibility for one area.  The next challenge was to find other pages related to these themes and edit and link them as appropriate.  The existing diorama page, for example, required considerable work as its discussion was restricted to theatrical examples; a brief history of the major American museums’ examples had to be researched and inserted.

One student experienced early difficulties when his first draft on the PCM’s founder was flamed by Wiki editors for ‘blatant promotion’ of the Museum.  Powell-Cotton Museum 3This highlighted an interesting circular challenge of how to establish the historical importance of previously little-known, yet genuinely significant figures.  Using primary sources does not help, as the Wikipedia community actively prefers its references to be secondary.

The students learned many things along the way, from technical HTML skills to archival research.  Their work resulted in at least merit level marks all round, and gained the desired profile for the museum.

Jul 18

Officer! I moustache you a question: The Science of Selecting Soldiers in WWII

Which type of fine- follicled fellow would you pick to be an officer: trimmed, divided, clipped, line or bushy?

Wartime researcher G.R. Perberdy gave the matter considerable thought, compiling data on the facial hair of hundreds of participants – whom he helpfully notes were male –  that went through the War Office Selection Boards (WOSBs) set up to choose officers for the British Army in World War II. Perberdy figured that moustaches probably reflected their wearer’s personality, and that some personalities were more suitable to be officers than others, so perhaps this was reflected in what sort of moustaches passed Officer Selection Boards.

This doesn’t sound terribly scientific, and as you may have noticed, this blog post is connected with a History of Science conference… so what does science have to do with choosing army officers?

Well, whilst Perberdy notes that his moustache investigation, “was an outcome of a personal curiosity… never in any way connected with the sternly practical task” of officer selection, the decision was made that a scientific procedure for selecting officers was required, and social scientists were brought in to help the Army. Beginning with the first experimental WOSB in January 1942, a huge project was undertaken to choose officers: despite a late start, approximately 140,000 men passed through the new scientific WOSBs during World War II.

Raven's Progressive Matrices: An example of the sort of visual intelligence test administered to officer candidates. Are you officer quality? Can you spot the correct missing piece? Source Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Raven’s Progressive Matrices: An example of the sort of visual intelligence test administered to officer candidates. Are you officer quality? Can you spot the correct missing piece?
Source: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

So why was this enormous application of a scientific approach used when it was? And how do you scientifically select an officer? Factors that influenced this decision to use scientific methods included:

  • A serious lack of officers. Britain had fewer people to choose officers from than other nations, many of the most able recruits joined the RAF and Navy instead of the Army and there was a crisis in officer numbers after the Dunkirk evacuation. Also, the largely “static” war meant that there was little chance to see possible officers in action. Scientific methods promised a reliable way of testing potential officers without experience, and making the Army and officer rank more attractive to talented men.
  • A need to appear more democratic: as it was noted in the House of Commons, fighting fascism in the name of democracy looked a little hypocritical when the officers were all chosen based on what schools they went to. Also, because of the perception of the influence of the “old school tie”, some promising candidates were unwilling to undergo selection. Using science to select appeared fairer.
  • Officer Cadet Training Units (OCTUs) had a very high failure rate – some men even found their way into the system who were still receiving disability pensions for neurosis from World War I; scientific filtration of men promised to improve candidates.
  • Keeping up with the Joneses, but on a national scale. Other nations were using the human sciences to help them with military problems. British social scientists often said “look at the USA!” when making the case for the value of their expertise, but the most cited example by politicians was that of Germany. In the aftermath of Blitzkreig, including the swift rise of the Luftwaffe, and the Dunkirk evacuation, arguments that the Germans had superior leadership from using scientific selection methods were widespread.

So, since moustaches were out, what sorts of methods were introduced by social scientists? The core scientific techniques which were considered successful in selecting candidates and used at the three day residential selection boards included:

  • Intelligence tests (officers had to be above average intelligence): these used visual patterns to judge a person’s basic ability to reason, and thus measure intelligence independent of what sort of education they had. This suggested a more unbiased, scientific method better at finding potential than the “old school tie”.
  • Projection tests, including word association – “beer” could show if you’re officer material! – and telling a story about an image. These tests were seen as providing a scientific indicator of personality traits such as “war mindedness” and attitude to authority.
  • Leaderless Groups. Candidates were set tasks as a group, including assault courses and giving a lecture, but not told whether they were to be assessed as a group or as individuals. Recommendations for setting these up cover even such details as where to position ashtrays and where to sit/stand, indicating how seriously this was taken as an experimental practice.

Although the British social scientists modelled their techniques on German methods, they decided not to include techniques whereby candidates were subjected to electric shocks and watched for their reactions. Rorschach tests were also experimented with before being dismissed.

The social scientists didn’t just have to figure out scientific ways to select officers, though; they also had to negotiate resistance from military leadership, politicians (including Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself), and the soldiers to whom they applied their science: the psychiatric interview was particularly contentious, for instance. Each of the different forces worked with different social scientists, and after the war there was much discussion of which approaches were truly scientific and which could be useful in peacetime, adapted for businesses to use. At ICHSTM, I will discuss conflicts over the science of measuring men, and how the solutions briefly mentioned above that the human scientists devised were constructed to achieve consensus and acceptance of their expertise: I hope to see you there!

For more information:

  • Watch this film by the Ministry of Information on the selection methods used for all army recruits, hosted on the Imperial War Museum website
  • See this account of the WOSBs from the psychiatrists’ point of view (click “Volume I: the Socio-Psychological Perspective”, and then “Hugh Murray: The Transformation of Selection Procedures: The War Office Selection Boards”)
  • Or check out Jeremy A. Crang’s excellent book, The British Army and the People’s War, 1939-1945.
  • And if you’re desperate to read all about moustaches and officers, you’ll have to pay to access it, but the article information is as follows:
    G.R. Perberdy, ‘Moustaches’, British Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 107 (1961), pp. 40-47

by Alice White

PhD Student and Assistant Lecturer

This article was originally posted on the excellent ICHSTM Blog, the blog of the 24th International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine.

Jul 18

Aldous Huxley – Antic Hay (London, 1923)

First edition cover of Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay (London, Chatto & Windus, 1923)

First edition cover of Aldous Huxley’s Antic Hay (London, Chatto & Windus, 1923)

Why does Gumbril feel he needs to wear a fake beard to be ‘The Complete Man’?

In Antic Hay, Gumbril feels inadequate in his own body. He feels restricted and unconfident, unable to express his true thoughts. When he sports a fake beard, however, he becomes what he calls “The Complete Man”. With the beard, he feels “serenely strong and safe”: without it, he feels not just less confident, but emasculated, an incomplete man (p. 143). But why does Gumbril choose fake facial hair to disguise himself with? Why not just a hat, or scarf?

Facial hair was important to men in the early twentieth century because events such as the First World War caused a crisis of masculinity in society. In his article ‘Mustaches and Masculine Codes in Early Twentieth-Century America’, Christopher Oldstone Moore explains that at this time, to have facial hair was to be a strong-minded, independent man. To be clean-shaven, on the other hand, was merely to be reliable and trustworthy, rather than assertive – a passive character compared to the moustached-man. In this way Gumbril’s beard holds a “performative function”, to disguise his insecurities and allow him to exude confidence. He can put on and remove the beard just as easily as a hat, but the beard acts as a uniquely masculine disguise for Gumbril’s lack of confidence.

The loss of men after the First World War was enormous. Not only was society as a whole emasculated by the loss of so many men, but also many of those who did come back felt emasculated by their injuries. The facially disfigured particularly suffered from this, as many could no longer grow facial hair, leaving them to feel somewhat feminine. Suicide rates of the facially disfigured were high; apparently some could not live knowing they would never regain their masculinity.

Additionally, as technology developed, surgical reconstructions became more than just recreating necessary features to enable the body to function again. Surgeons also attempted to recreate the soldier’s face as it had been before the war, highlighting the importance of appearance at this time. If they regained their appearance, perhaps they could regain their masculinity as well. This reinforces the idea that masculinity is a social construct; at this time a man had to have a masculine exterior to function as a man in society.

If you read the novel in this context, you can see why Gumbril felt so secure beneath his fake beard, and so insecure without it. Naturally gentle, courteous and patient, Gumbril’s personality could be considered rather feminine. He is so intimidated by confrontation that he cannot even leave the house without his beard. For example, he avoids visiting Mr Boldero in person until he can wear the beard and become “The Complete Man”. With his beard, he feels invincible: without it he feels invisible.

Though it is only a small alteration of his body, the beard affects his state of mind most of all. Wearing the beard Gumbril is physically more forceful, he speaks assertively and bangs his fists on the table. Mr Boldero even considers him a “dangerous-looking fellow” (p 142-143). Apparently men could only act masculine if they felt masculine, but they only felt masculine if they looked masculine, and for Gumbril, a fake beard did the trick.

Emily Richards

2nd Year Undergraduate

Member of the ‘Twentieth Century Literature and Science: Remaking the Body’ module

May 08

Chain Reaction! Workshop 2

The second workshop of the Chain Reaction! project took place on 18 April 2013. We spent the day in the nice new Colyer-Fergusson Music building at the University of Kent, a fittingly creative space in which to have artists discussing their practice. The workshop was thoughtfully planned and run by Caterina Albano of Artakt and Central St Martins College.

The main objective of the workshop was to enable artists to present their projects and move their work forward through exchanging with other participants in the project and with scientists. Overall, this objective seems to have been met. Several artists declared at the end of the day that they felt much clearer about their project in particular and Chain Reaction! in general. So, what went on in the room?

Whitstable-based artist Annie Halliday displaying some of the work created as part of the Chain Reaction! project.

Whitstable-based artist Annie Halliday displaying some of the work created as part of the Chain Reaction! project.

The first session of the day was devoted to having each one of the six artists presenting their project for Chain Reaction! in relation to their artistic approach. These short talks all brought evidence that each artist had engaged in a reflective process in order to come to grip with the body of knowledge associated with the PCR machine – genetics, and molecular biology in general – so as to be able to translate it into a work of art. Words such as copying, repetition, mutation, enzymes, all relating to the specialised knowledge the machine is used to produce, often came up in this session. By contrast such notions as pipetting, designing experiments, interacting with the machine, troubleshooting, the idiom of practical, material laboratory life remained largely unspoken.

This contrast points towards one essential feature of such scientific tools as the PCR machine: they are good at constraining people’s actions and thoughts. These tools are kernels around which congregate scientists sharing common beliefs about how the natural world works and appropriate and desirable ways of producing knowledge about it. One such belief, for instance, is that in order to produce objective knowledge, the human subject has to be erased from accounts of the way knowledge was obtained. Laboratory tools are disciplinary devices. Engaging with them implies sharing into these beliefs, adopting for oneself the disciplinary identity that goes with them. People are disciplined by laboratory tools.

Escaping their disciplinary power, engaging with them without adopting the beliefs associated with them, is difficult. Yet, it is necessary if one is to maintain the distance that will allow one to pay attention to the myriad of practices surrounding these instruments which participants in the discipline take for granted, and forget about, making them disappear from their final accounts of the way they produce knowledge.

Yet, and at the same time, it is difficult to make sense of a PCR machine, to understand how it works, what it is used to do, without at least a passing understanding of the theoretical knowledge it relates to (genetics, DNA…). But this may be the tree that hides the forest. In this case, though, would such “objective” knowledge not be a camouflage for the subjects who produced it?

However, aside from emphasising the challenges posed by engaging with laboratory tools, this first session showed the extent to which artists work in ways that are quite similar to that of scientists. In both cases, it is a search process, a journey of discovery, that primarily involves solutions to practical, material problems. Crucial questions in this quest being “can I do it?”, “How can I do it?”, “What should I use to do it?”, and so forth. This proximity between artists and scientists suggests that with Chain Reaction! we are on fertile ground, for artists are well placed to enter into a dialogue with the latter about activities where things, through their resistance to human intervention and the challenges they pose, exert a constraint on human actors, making it necessary to find new ways of obtaining answers to their questions.

Group discussion at the second Chain Reaction workshop, University of Kent, Canterbury, April 2013.

Group discussion at the second Chain Reaction workshop, University of Kent, Canterbury, April 2013.

This was essentially the topic of discussion of one of the small groups during the second session. Their discussion centred on the constraints that tools and equipment impose on the research process, and in turn how the concept one wants to explore will determine the materials that will be used in the process. This brought up the notion that paying attention to materials allows to revisiting the processes and understanding them. Another group, working with the notion of assemblage remained focused on genes and molecular biology and came up with the idea that genes having been shaped both by individual factors and environmental pressure are a sort of assemblage of their own. Finally, the third table discussed the theme of rituals and did so in relation to the theme of serendipity. Rituals were defined as ways to keep serendipity in check, ensuring that “creative accidents” would only occur in predictable parts of the experiment, thus allowing the experimenter to make sense of variability, and control the various parameters of the experiment.

These themes were taken up again in the closing plenary session. Then, evoking the similarities and differences between the scientific endeavour and the artistic one that came up during the discussion, the workshop facilitator suggested that both could serve as basis for initiating a productive dialogue between artists and scientist. The question is then how to convey the richness of this dialogue, hence of the Chain Reaction! project? This would be precisely the role of the exhibition that will take place at the end of the year. And it will be the curator’s job to convey it.

Bringing the exhibition to the fore as a key component of the project is one of the main outcome of the workshop. Another one is the demonstration it provided that artists and scientists share common ground. Their practices, in both cases, are materially based and sustained. Their creativity originates from having to physically engage with tools, and matter, and from finding ways around the constraints and obstacles posed by things.

Dr Jean-Baptiste Gouyon, project manager Feb-Apr 2013.

Workshop supported by AHRC cultural engagement fund.

Apr 30

H. G. Wells – Ann Veronica (London, 1909)

First edition cover of H. G. Wells' Ann Veronica (London, Virago, 1909)

First edition cover of H. G. Wells’ Ann Veronica (London, Virago, 1909)

How does studying biology impact on Ann Veronica’s view of the body?

Ann Veronica, a young girl searching to find independence as a woman in early 20th century London, joins the Central Imperial College to study biology, with hopes of expanding her view of the world. After some exploration, she finds it comforting that science can provide definitive answers about life, whereas feminist groups made only “incoherent cries” (p. 130). She is frustrated that such groups frequently pose controversial questions about life, but fail to answer them (pp. 118-9). The study of biology, on the other hand, “dealt from floor to ceiling with the theory of the forms of life”, and explained the body in a scientific context, providing answers to many of the questions she had about life (p. 130).

At this time, women were discouraged from learning about their bodies. Education was the domain of men; it was feared that if women were educated, they would become male. In Ann Veronica, the concept of an educated woman is clearly threatening to Vee’s father, who tells her that there are “some things I hope you may never know”. This restriction held many women back from achieving their academic potential; even when they were allowed to attend university, often they could not actually receive a degree at the end of it. Physical education in particular was sparse; women were barely taught to understand their own bodies, leaving many to be ignorant of their sexuality. Not only this, but society denied the reality of female sexuality, deeming it a taboo subject.

If Vee hadn’t left home, she would never have been taught about her own body. To even acknowledge the topic of sex is a struggle for her father, who only alludes to it as a “danger”. Female sexual desire was assigned exclusively to prostitutes; healthy middle-class women, apparently, had no libido.

Ann Veronica, however, is able to see through the social stigma attached to female sexuality once she learns that humans are just glorified mammals, or “etherealized monkeys” as she calls it (p. 148). The study of biology helps her to make sense of her own bodily desires as she falls in love with Cape. Sexuality, she discovers, is a natural part of being human; it is not limited to just men and morally corrupt women. She feels confident, therefore, to expose sexual desire as something that everyone feels, but no one talks about.

Vee not only rejects her father’s view that the female body is too pure to be sexual, but also the other extreme offered by the feminists she encounters. Miss Miniver, for example, suggests that sex was something “animal”, a male invention that women are strictly oppressed by. Vee, on the other hand, acknowledges that sex is a part of life, and there is no shame in thinking about it (p. 144). This is influenced by her study of biology, which “makes plainer and plainer the significance of the animal and vegetable structure”. Miss Miniver insists that bodies are “horrible things!” and as human beings, “we are souls” that should deny the body. Vee, however, highlights that there is no reason for the human body to be considered as something above biology, yet people still “pretend bodies are ugly” (pp. 144-5). Essentially, through the study of biology, Vee is able to view the body in a mode that Wells clearly considered to be objective, rather than through the eyes of society.

Emily Richards

2nd Year Undergraduate

Member of the ‘Twentieth Century Literature and Science: Remaking the Body’ module