Purity vs Property?

The Patenting context of constructing “pure” and “applied”

electricity 1880-1920”.

Graeme Gooday & Stathis Arapostathis

Tensions in electrical techno-science Overlap of physics & early electrical engineering Cases of Henry Rowland (US), Oliver Lodge (UK) Both take out patents & appeal for ‘pure’ science A paradox? Historians of physics discomfort! Kline: not a matter of physicists doing ‘pure

science’ & electrical engineers doing ‘applied’. How did they manage their inventive research? How did they represent it? Who had access to it? What did ‘pure’ science and patenting represent? Not necessarily mutually opposed: institution

building, family obligation, anti-monopolism But considerable ambivalence about prerogatives

Patents held in early electro-technologyUSA Thomas Edison c.1093 (& 1239 non-US) Henry Rowland 26+ UK William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) 70+ Silvanus P.Thompson 62 Oliver Lodge 31 William Preece 12 Arthur Heaviside 6 Oliver Heaviside 1 James Clerk Maxwell 0

Patenting – protecting knowledge? Patents: a historical-legal claim to temporal priority

in applying technical principles to artefact Temporary monopoly on use/manufacture (license) Potential source of income if protection not costly Corporate litigation for patent infringement –

lucrative means of enforcing knowledge monopoly! But patents not necessarily at odds with

‘intellectual commons’ of scientific research Many only patent defensively to avoid monopoly by

others; physicists rarely bother to license or litigate Problem of openness: until 1907 prior revelation in

a scientific paper would render a UK patent invalid.

19thC ‘pure’ science: sponsored autonomy? Appeal for ‘pure science’ from 1870s (Herzig) Category naturalized in 20thC, untenable in 21stC? ‘Purity’ of motivation? Inapplicability?

Contested… Contrast ‘abstract science’ and ‘basic science’ Non-recognition by Lord Kelvin, Lord Moulton etc Request for financial sponsorship with autonomy:

right to free research & duty of others to pay! Division of labour: pure researchers and appliers Justificatory appeal to historical-causal claim:

‘pure science’ yields practical benefits Rewriting of history of science-industry nexus

Historicizing the pure-applied nexus

Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science Applied & pure sciences mutually independent Mid 19thC ‘applied science’ = ‘practical’ knowledge “Applied science” ≠ applied ‘pure’ science Bud: Tory KCL institutionalizes industrial practice as

‘applied science’ – a form of academic domestication Gooday: Late 19thC physicists/chemists invent causal

myth of ‘pure science’ to claim moral priority in H.E. Replacement for older Anglo-American term ‘abstract

science’, and attack on dominance of ‘applied science’ Aspirational propaganda for autonomous physical

science: Lodge & Rowland argue for pure science to transcend commercial culture of industry/patents.

Kelvin: contrasting posthumous views

Times obituary of Lord Kelvin December 1907: There cannot, he once remarked, be a greater

mistake than that of looking superciliously upon the practical applications which are the life and soul of science… his scientific enquiries were accordingly pursued with a keen eye for practical application.

Balfour, unveiling Kelvin statue, Oct 1913: That a professor of pure science should have been also the leading spirit in submarine telegraphy and that he should have done so much for navigation was surely one of those felicitous coincidences which had never occurred before and probably was never likely to occur again.

Oliver Heaviside – unworldly patentee? Left Post Office telegraph service to

lived with parents in London, 1874 Oliver’s sole patent: 1880 #1407

‘Preventing induction between adjacent telegraph & telephone lines

1887-93 published on applying Maxwell to theory of inductive loading: minimize distortion on phone lines

Reward: UK government pension 1896 1899-1900: Michael Pupin seeks US

patent for application of Heaviside Initially rejected due to Heaviside’s

prior publication, but later succeeds Pupin wealthy - Heaviside outraged!

Trained as a civil engineer, early work in electromagnetism, thermodynamics and optics

‘A Plea for Pure Science’ AAAS 1883 – controversial.

26+ patents (1882-1903) e.g.

•Diffraction gratings

•Electrical power engineering

•Multiplex telegraphy

Henry Rowland (1848-1901)First Professor of Physics, Johns Hopkins 1875

Ruling engine c.1883

Patented process: universal product – Rowland grating

Reconciling Rowland’s patents & purity

Standard account: diabetes diagnosed in 1890; patent income needed to support family

BUT does not fit the broader pattern of career In 1868 Rowland sought patent for multiplex

telegraph – denied support by his mother. 1882 patented screw thread technique for his

diffraction gratings (& kept machine design secret) Rebuffs Edison’s approaches to co-patent 1880-

83… but becomes electrical engineering consultant Blood sugar diagnosis in 1890 not serious – gets

health insurance anyway prior to marriage Does not patent again until 1893-4 – opportunistic

encounter with Cataract Construction Co (Niagara) No debilitating illness till 1900 - cause of death

unclear. Diary c.1900 retrospective claims…

Rowland’s knowledge management Lab funded by Johns Hopkins but Rowland seeks

financial independence to avoid university politics Screw patent income pays for lab assistant

Schneider: issues diffraction gratings free to many Electrical consultancy and patents an opportunity

to apply Maxwellian theories to new technologies Birth of children Henry 1892 and Davidge 1897 are

what prompt by intensive patenting. Multiplex telegraphy 1897 brings little new profit Posthumously patents bring little income to widow

“University of Birmingham, Vanity Fair, 1904

Oliver Lodge, (1851 -1940)

First Professor of Physics, University College Liverpool, 1881

Principal, University of Birmingham 1900-1919

Ether theorist & Maxwellian populariser

31 patents (with others)

Syntony (radio tuning)

Spark plugs

Lightning conductors

Smoke deposits

12 children (1878-1906)

Lodge and hi-tech Maxwellian physics

‘Whirling machine’ at Liverpool, 1893. Mather and Platt dynamos not visible in this picture

1880s Theorises mechanical ether – tests ether characteristics by mechanical means

Did mechanical motion carry ether?

Lodge more successful in wireless – coherer for detecting waves

Syntony system for tuning –widely adopted in early wireless.

Not monopolistic: only sued for infringement against Marconi 1907 when latter made large profits

Lodge on the researcher’s dilemma The instinct of the scientific worker is to publish

everything, to hope that any useful aspect of it may be as quickly as possible utilized, and to trust to the instinct of fair play that he shall not be the loser when the things becomes commercially profitable. To grant him a monopoly is to grant him a move than doubtful boon; to grant him the privilege of fighting for his monopoly is to grant him a pernicious privilege, which will sap his energy, was his time, and destroy his power of future production.

Oliver Lodge, Signalling Without Wires (1901), pp.50-1

Principal Lodge on ‘Pure Science’ Times Feb 28 1901

The first Principal of new University of Birmingham tells local IEE branch electrical engineers they must respect ‘pure science’.

Demarcating a division of labour between University and IEE: former can teach pure science, defying the ‘unregenerate man’

Conclusion: Managing conflicting obligations Rowland and Lodge caught between conflicting

obligations to research, fellow professionals, laboratory co-workers, students and family.

Resolution: generate income from commercial work esp. from patents

Moral high ground: avoid patent litigation against infringers unless naked exploitation apparent.

Promote funded pure science for future practitioners to be spared such conflicts

But ‘Pure science’ long remains controversial as category of knowledge making…

‘WW1: Fletcher Moulton dissents

… I do not share the fear that so-called Pure Science is in danger of being neglected in the revival of industrial effort to which we all look forward. The distinction between Pure Science and Applied science is vague and artificial and, so far as my observation goes, it does not exists as a guiding principle in the minds of those classes to whom we must look for the force which will place Science in its right position in England. It is a distinction which is more actively present to the minds of those who are engaged in abstruse research than to the mind of the general public.

Introduction to Science and the Nation, 1917