This article examines natural philosophical advertisements for books, lectures and instruments found in two of London's most widely read political newspapers between 1695 and 1720.Footnote 1 During this quarter-century, public science came of age and political crises were seemingly daily occurrences, installing Whigs and Tories behind barriers of party sentiment. Issues such as the Standing Army Controversy, the Hanoverian Succession, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Peerage Bill and the South Sea Bubble, among many others, kept Tory and Whig at arm's length. Despite this opposition, advertisers believed that supporters of both parties shared an interest in public science. Newspaper advertisements confirm that the marketing of public science was directed at a bipartisan audience. This stands in sharp contrast to frequent historiographical suggestions of a partisan Whig-supported English natural philosophy.
With some notable exceptions, advertisements have been curiously overlooked in accounts of science and its popularization. Historians of medicine have incorporated advertisements into their work. D. J. Bryden, D. L. Simms and Shelley Costa have discussed adverts for mathematical instruments and mathematics in general.Footnote 2 Natural philosophical advertisements in England may be traced at least to the formation of the Royal Society and its journal the Philosophical Transactions, where adverts announced late issues and similar matters before becoming notices of books that might interest the Fellows.Footnote 3 Other early advertisements might be found near the preface or the conclusion of natural-philosophical books. The number of readers for these adverts, placed in natural-philosophical texts, was limited to those who already possessed an interest in natural philosophy. Advertisements in newspapers, which catered to a wider audience, were meant to encourage the general public to purchase items related to natural philosophy.Footnote 4 This wider public market sought within the popular press is examined here. In so doing, I follow the lead of Roger Cooter and Stephen Pumfrey who, in a now classic article, reflected on the process by which science finds a place in popular culture. They concluded that historians know much about
the diffusion and cultivation of science among certain elite groups … the intellectual impacts of Newtonianism and Darwin, in particular, have been prosecuted with vigour. But surprisingly little has been written on science generally in popular culture, past or present. Still shrouded in obscurity are the effects of even the most obvious mechanisms for transmission of scientific knowledge and culture.
Their recommendations for correction of this oversight included ‘scrutinizing popular prose and non-scientific texts’ such as newspapers.Footnote 5
After the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695 two politically topical newspapers emerged: the Post Boy, which adopted a Tory viewpoint, and its Whig counterpart the Post Man. The Post Boy premiered on 16 May 1695 and the Post Man followed on 22 October of the same year. The word ‘post’ in the titles refers to their frequency: three times a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, coinciding with the Penny Post's departure from London. The Post Boy was ‘the most widely read of the Tory prints’ during the period examined here, while the Post Man was the most circulated paper in all of London. In 1704, for example, circulation numbers were just over three thousand for the Post Boy and as high as 3,800 for the Post Man (four thousand on Saturdays). For sake of contrast, the Daily Courant, launched in 1702, attracted a circulation of only eight hundred for each of its six issues per week. Factoring in copies from coffeehouses, individual issues of the Post Man and Post Boy were read by as many as fifty thousand persons.Footnote 6 Thus these two publications are important tools in gauging the promotion of commodities such as public science items among Whigs and Tories.Footnote 7
The distinction ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ appears frequently in studies of the popularization of English natural philosophy or public science. In particular, Margaret C. Jacob has emphasized that interest in natural philosophy was a defining element of the Whig world view, especially after 1689. Similarly, Larry Stewart has argued that Whigs were more congenial to natural philosophy, especially Newton's, and that many public science practitioners were themselves Whigs. In a recent co-authored book, Jacob and Stewart link Newton's ascent within polite English circles to Whig party connections. Stewart has, however, urged caution in making any quick conclusions regarding politics and natural philosophy. Scholars such as Anita Guerrini and John Friesen offer a reassessment of this Whig hegemony thesis by demonstrating that Tories also endorsed natural philosophy and that one could be both a Tory and a Newtonian. Nonetheless, the view of Whig-supported natural philosophy in the face of Tory opposition or indifference remains a received view in the historiography of early modern English science.Footnote 8 Given this, we might expect that the bulk of public science adverts should have appeared in a newspaper with a strong Whig platform. They did not. A consideration of such adverts within the Post Man and the Post Boy reveals that both Whigs and Tories were equally targeted and that natural philosophy was sold to London's reading population in bipartisan fashion. This is not to suggest that the production of public science itself could not be deeply political, as the work of Stewart has aptly revealed, but the marketing of it to potential customers was not.
Throughout this article, each of the books, lecture series and instruments advertised in the two newspapers is categorized as something intended to be sold as a popular commodity. In other words, they are all taken to be items of public science. This is not meant to obscure the variety of items available for sale, which ranged from specialized surveying tools to guidebooks in astrology. Appearance within the same promotional media places them on an equal footing with respect to their being commodities. Thus I have chosen not to differentiate them. The same caveat applies to descriptions of consumers, where the goal is to reveal the vast number and different types of public science consumables advertised to Whigs and Tories rather than a detailed prosopographical analysis of these groups. To this end, the following paper presents expository descriptions of advertisements and a commentary on their equal placement in partisan newspapers.
The advertisers encountered in this article exemplify eighteenth-century England as a consumer society. Paul Langford has commented that the ‘acquisition of wealth’ and the consumer goods that reflected it ‘was the route to social acceptance and political power at all levels of society’. In a nation with great interest in natural philosophy, owning some of its trappings conveyed to others that one was a person concerned with the cutting-edge knowledge and the financial wherewithal to possess it. Emphasis in advertisements on the affordability of public science products reveals another truth. The desire to purchase commodities was not something characteristic of the very wealthy alone; persons of meagre income also sought items to display in their homes and ways to nourish their minds. As Mary Terrall has put it, the audience for public science ‘extended far beyond the Royal Society to include women, children and consumers of related products of all sorts, especially instruments’. It was also a bipartisan audience.Footnote 9
Public science books
In past eras authors had financed their books through the generosity of an individual wealthy patron.Footnote 10 With the decline of such opportunities, a new means of support was found in the growing number of readers in England generally, but especially in London, by selling many copies to cover production costs. In this milieu, advertisements for a wide assortment of public science books appeared in both newspapers.Footnote 11 We begin with the Tory Post Boy, where by 1700 some fifty-six per cent of all the adverts in that newspaper were for books of various types. In October 1695 a Tutor in Astrology: Or Astrology made easie, being a plain Introduction to the whole Art of Astrology became one of the first books advertised in this newspaper. Astrology was also the subject of an advert in 1701 that offered ‘The Astrological Mercury’, a twice-weekly publication that promised to answer ‘all lawful questions in that most noble and Ancient science’. Books addressing assaying and acids followed, as did further accounts of celestial motions. Advertisements in 1719 for Astronomical Dialogues between a Gentleman and a Lady promised ‘pleasant, easy, and familiar’ instruction in astronomy. For those new to theories of the Earth, a dictionary of terms could be bought in early 1696. Several accounts of natural history, such as ‘The History of Nature. In two Parts. Emblematically express'd near 100 Folio Copper Plates’, followed in November 1720. Works by John Ray, ranging from his famous Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (sixth edition) to his less-known Three Physico-Theological Discourses, were advertised in 1713. An edition of his letters was ready by 1718. Another encyclopedic approach to public science could be found in John Harris's two-volume Lexicon Technicum; or an Universal English Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences advertised in March 1718.
The Whig Post Man followed a similar but sparser patter. Fewer advertisements for books of public science appeared in this newspaper. Instruction manuals in astrology and accounts of acid and alkaline substances were among the first books advertised. Tracts of astronomical interest, such as an English translation of Huygens's book on celestial worlds ‘and their inhabitants’ soon followed. Systems of earth history and editions of John Ray's works continued the parallel advertising structure of both newspapers, as did an advert for the second volume of Harris's Lexicon Technicum. In May 1699 sixpence bought readers a copy of John Craig's Theologiae Christianea Principia Mathematica, a book that used Newtonian mathematics to predict the Second Coming. Another study in Newtonianism could be had without charge in late 1715. The curious advert states that it is
Just Published, and is Given Gratis to any one that will but ask for it. A Philosophical Essay upon Actions on distant Subjects, wherein are clearly explicated, according to the Principles of the New Philosophy, and Sir Isaac Newton's Laws of Motion … Dedicated to the Royal Society. This Book is given Gratis up one Pair of Stairs at the Sugar Loaf, a Confectioner's against Old Round Court near the New Exchange.
The use of Newton's name served to establish a kind of legitimacy for the brief twenty-four-page pamphlet. Those who ventured to the Sugar Loaf expecting to find the Principia abridged were no doubt disappointed. The actual contents had little to do with Newton or his mathematics but utilized terms like ‘Matters of Fact’ and ‘Three universal laws of nature’, based on a dubious reading of the Opticks, to argue for the efficacy of the author's necklace that promised to minimize the pain of teething infants.Footnote 12 Other advertised books included an assessment of Cartesian natural philosophy and a Latin catalogue of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's experiments with microscopes. By the end of 1720 Post Man readers could learn all the details of the plague devastating the city of Marseilles in one of two books of their choice, one of which was, like the Newtonian example, ‘Given Gratis’ for the ‘Benefit of all Persons’.Footnote 13
Adverts for the sale of libraries formerly belonging to eminent – such as ‘the Rev. and Learned Dr. John Harris, Fellow of the Royal Society’ – and not so eminent persons appeared frequently in early editions of the Post Boy. For example, an advert of 30 October 1695 advised would-be book buyers that an auction would take place at Widow Ball's Coffeehouse in the evening. Other advertisements described books to be sold as once belonging to ‘an Eminent Physician and Surgeon’ or as a ‘Large collection of Physicks Books’.Footnote 14 Often these were complemented by notices of booksellers requesting books of the recently deceased. Beginning in mid-December 1695 Roger Cavel repeatedly solicited
any Study of Books, or Library, consisting either of University, Law, History, Physick, &c., to dispose of. If they please send a Catalogue of them to bookshop owner Roger Cavel at the Peacock near St. Dunstans's Church in Fleet Street, shall have the full value for them, and the charge of the Carriage paid.Footnote 15
Cavel continued to request books in this way through the end of 1696, at which time he turned to selling books rather than accumulating them. Others adopted the same strategy for filling the shelves of their stores. In 1700 William Turner, bookseller, requested the purchase of Physicks books from Post Boy readers.Footnote 16 This indicates the strong market for printed accounts of the latest natural-philosophical discoveries.
Subscription was a method by which printers and booksellers could finance a particularly costly book. While recent studies have downplayed broad usage of subscription lists as being able to generate a certain picture of readers for particular books, such lists should not be dismissed as containing nothing useful for historians of science. Rather, any conclusions must be seen as suggestive, but not definitive, as W. A. Speck has claimed. P. J. Wallis, a pioneer in utilizing subscription lists, noted that publishing books of natural philosophy by subscription indicates widespread interest in the topic, because subscription to a book before it was produced meant that consumers had enough interest to pay for a publication sight unseen.Footnote 17 Between the two newspapers, subscribers for books of all sorts were sought chiefly in the Post Man between 1695 and 1720, but subscription requests for books in the public science genre were actually found in greater numbers in the Post Boy. This marketing indicates equal desires for audiences among Whigs and Tories.
In April 1701 the publisher of ‘Mr John Rays Third and last Volume of his General History of Plants in Latin, containing 250 sheets, of the same Paper and Character with the two former Tomes in Folio’ sought subscribers among Post Man readers.Footnote 18 A more elaborate undertaking appeared in June 1719 when bookseller William Mears and others offered ‘by Subscription, a Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature, endeavouring to set forth the several Gradations remarkable in the Parts of the Creation, tending to the Composition of a Scale of Life, divided into several Stages of Beings’. Written by Richard Bradley FRS, the book would be printed on ‘fine Royal Paper in 4to the Price 30 s. in Sheets, one half to be paid at the time of Subscribing, and the Remainder on the delivering of a perfect book in sheets’. Mears promised the book would be completed by Michaelmas Term 1720. As further enticement, names of subscribers would be recorded for posterity on the interior, those who ordered six books would receive a seventh copy free and no more books were to be printed than had subscribers. One could ill afford to wait. The advert ran from 16 to 20 June.Footnote 19 True to his word, Mears placed an advert on 3 September 1720 to ‘inform the Publick, that the Copy and Cuts being now entirely finished the book will be delivered to the Subscribers’. He then asked, ‘Gentlemen who have not yet subscribed to this work, are desired to send their Names and Subscription Money, being 15 s. … on or before the 15th Day of the next Month, or they will be excluded, for no more books will printed than are subscribed for’. In late October two adverts from Mears alerted subscribers that the book would ‘be deliver'd soon’ and finally gave notice in December that the book was ‘ready to be deliver'd to the Subscribers’. Among those who did subscribe were Isaac Newton and Hans Sloane. Mears's books attracted interest from readers with high-level political connections, including the Whig peer Lord Sunderland, who was a frequent customer.Footnote 20
For Post Boy readers with an interest in mathematics, 1712 offered the opportunity to learn something of the discipline from a continental instructor. In April of that year an advert offered a translation from the French of Jacques Ozanam's ‘Whole Course of the Mathematicks in 5 vols. 8vo with above 200 Copper Plates’.Footnote 21 The multi-volume book had been offered by subscription in a notice dated 28 March placed at the end of an earlier work by Ozanam, Recreations mathematical and physical; laying down, and solving many profitable and delightful problems (1708). The Post Boy advert of April 1712 alerted subscribers that the work was completed. Also available when customers came to receive their copies of Whole Course of the Mathematicks were remainders of Ozanam's A treatise of fortification, containing the ancient and modern method of the construction and defense of places first published in 1711. At the beginning of this book was another advertisement for interested persons that the Whole Course of the Mathematicks was presently in press.
In August 1720 instrument-maker John Senex offered ‘Proposals for Printing by subscription, the Construction and Principal Uses of Mathematical Instruments: by Mons. Bion, Engineer for Mathematical Instruments to the French King’ to readers of the Post Boy. Nicolas Bion, who worked in Paris producing globes, sundials and mathematical instruments, held the title of ‘King's engineer for mathematical instruments’. The proposed book would be expensive. When finished it would contain ‘a complete Treatise of all the curious useful Mathematical Instruments that have hitherto been invented: To be printed in Folio, with nearly Forty Plates of the Instruments curiously engrav'd upon Copper’. Those who wished to partake in the opportunity were requested to pay one guinea, or half of the total cost, in advance and the remaining guinea upon receipt of the book. A special discount applied to orders of six books, a seventh would be given without charge. Senex promised that the book would be delivered by Christmas 1721. For a while it appeared that Senex's plan had started brightly only to fade away, when the end of 1721 passed without publication. The construction and principal uses of mathematical instruments eventually appeared in 1723. However, the finished work seems not to have been produced by subscription, but to have benefited from the patronage of career soldier and politician John Campbell, Duke of Argyll and of Greenwich.Footnote 22
Readers of both the Post Man and the Post Boy were believed to hold interest in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions. The Post Boy carried its first Royal Society advert in August 1696 but the second did not appear until April of 1697. Two years later, two further adverts in February and December 1699 brought to the attention of readers the most recent issues of ‘Philosophical Transactions giving some Account of the present Undertaking, Studies and Labours of the Ingenious in many considerable parts of the World’.Footnote 23 By early December 1720 readers of the paper could purchase all the issues that they missed when an advert was placed for ‘The Philosophical Transactions from the Year 1700 to 1720. Abridg'd and Methodically digested, after the manner of Mr. Lowthorp, and approv'd by Dr. Halley, Secretary to the Royal Society’.Footnote 24 While something of a latecomer to advertising the Transactions, the Post Man certainly made up for lost time. The initial advert appeared in May 1697 and from the first was more detailed than those appearing in the Post Boy. Post Man adverts established a pedigree for the Transactions by explaining that they had been ‘begun by Mr. Oldenburg and carried on by Dr. Hooke, Dr. Grew, Dr. Tyson, Mr. Ashton, Dr. Mulgrave, Richard Waller Esq., Mr. Edm. Halley, &c. are now continued monthly by Dr. Hans Sloan Secretary to the Royal Society’. Readers were alerted to the fact not only that the issues for 1696 were complete, but that so too were those ‘for the months of January, February, March, and April, 1697, the next for this present month of May is now in the Press, and will be published the first Wednesday in June, the first Wednesday in every month being designed the day for publication of the Transactions’.Footnote 25 This was an advert for products that were immediately ready for sale and for future products, with the goal being much like book subscriptions: to create an eager market for commodities yet to be produced. From 9 September 1697 and in each month following (often more than one each month), through to the end of 1700, adverts appeared in the Post Man for the latest issue of the Transactions, with reminders to buy outstanding issues and promises that future issues would be released in timely fashion.Footnote 26
Adverts for books offering instruction in mathematical topics, often aimed specifically at business practices, ran in both newspapers. The December 1695 issues of the Post Boy provide excellent examples. An advertisement for Robert Chamberlain's A Manual of Arithmetick preceded by two days one for a new edition of Euclid. Knowledge of theory was fine, but an advert later that month offered a guidebook in writing mathematical figures and algebraic equations. A lengthy silence of four years then occurred regarding advertisements in the Post Boy for mathematical books, but was broken with the promotion of the practical application of Euclidian geometry, in the service of navigation, in November 1699 and again in February and June 1700.Footnote 27 During the years after 1710 commerce was the commonest subject of mathematical books. Examples during 1712 and 1713 included manuals detailing the calculation of interest (both simple and compound), while others offered ‘useful remarks upon Calculating Customs and Exchange’.Footnote 28 By 1720 advertisements invited readers of the Post Boy to purchase the ‘Fifth Edition of Cocker's Decimal Arithmetick. Wherein is Shewn the Nature and Use of Decimal Fractions in the Rules of Arithmetick … Together with Tables of Interest and Rebate for the value of Leases and Annuities’.Footnote 29 The frequency of the adverts that year suggests the calculations of commercial enterprises were not solely of interest to the Whigs.
The earliest Post Man adverts for books in the mathematical genre addressed more esoteric topics. In September and again in November 1696 readers could buy ‘Mathematical Magic: Or the Wonders that may be performed by Mechanical Geometry. In two Books. Concerning Mechanical Powers, Motions. Being one of the most easy, pleasant, useful, (and yet most neglected) part of Mathematics, not before treated of in this Language’.Footnote 30 The tendency to advertise books that presented mathematics as part of natural philosophy or as a science unto itself rather than as a tool of commerce continued for a longer period in the Post Man than it did in the Post Boy. In 1699 adverts sold a book ‘Teaching the Science [of mathematics] both in whole numbers and Fractions Theoretically and Practically Applied’. This was followed in 1704 by a treatise on trigonometry. And in 1705 one could purchase all fifteen books of Euclid translated by Isaac Barrow.Footnote 31 Business became the focus of mathematics books advertised in the Post Man during the summer of 1715 with an advert for William Webster's ‘neat Pocket Volume, dedicated to the Clerks and Accomptants of Great Britain, /Arithmetick in Epitome or a Compendium of all its Rules both Vulgar and Decimal, (with many useful Tables of Interest, Rebate, &c …’. Adverts for ‘Arithmetick in the plainest and most concise Method hitherto Extant’, which promised to be of great use for ‘the most eminent Accomptants in the several offices at the Revenue, viz. Custom-House, Excise, &c’ sought a similar market in 1719.Footnote 32
Public lectures
The first adverts for public lectures in the Post Man and the Post Boy offered readers anatomical and chymical subjects. Only later did lecturers in mathematics and experimental philosophy seek audiences among readers of the two newspapers. Adverts for anatomical lectures appeared very shortly after the founding of these publications. The physician Bernard Connor FRS began advertising in the Whig Post Man in January 1696. Commencing on 16 January and continuing three days a week (Monday, Tuesday and Friday) at 3 p.m. over the following two months, Connor promised to outline ‘his Chymical and Anatomical Method to understand the Oeconomia of Animals, being a Natural Account of the Fabrick, Springs, Humours, Functions, and Operations of the Human Body, grounded upon Experiments of Chymistry, and Dissection of live and Dead Animals’.Footnote 33 The lectures would take place at the Library of St Martins in the Fields. In addition to his public lecturing, the Irish-born Connor associated with Polish royalty and would eventually become physician to the Polish court. In February 1697 Connor sought an audience for his lecture series beginning on 18 January. He requested further that those who attended ‘think of New Experiments [in] relation to the Blood and Functions of the Body, and to direct them to him to be tried, with such as he has thought of himself’. With both papers advertising manuals of anatomy, Connor expected a knowledgeable audience.Footnote 34
By late 1696 Connor had competition. In the November issues of both newspapers John Gorman, who billed himself a ‘Doctor of Physick’, alerted readers that he planned a ‘Course of Anatomy, wherein shewing the Structures, Situation and Connexion of each bone … His explication of the Animal Oeconomy, is grounded upon experimental Philosophy, and Chymical Observations’. The course would be held on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 2 p.m., beginning on 2 December.Footnote 35 Gorman, who moved among the elite of natural philosophers and physicians in London, saw Whig and Tory alike as potential attendees because he placed adverts in both the Post Man and the Post Boy.
Another public lecturer solicited from readers of the Post Man a different audience in December 1696. Identified as ‘Ingeneer in ordinary to his Majesty’, one Mr Thomas advertised that he would begin offering, on 2 January 1697, ‘a course of Algebra, Analysis and Geometry, accommodated to the use of Ingeneers and to such who begin the study of Mathematicks’. Unlike the previous examples, Thomas expected ‘no manner of reward or Sallery’ for his efforts. This certainly means that he had sufficient income from his royal appointment and did not need recompense from his auditors. Cosmopolitan though seventeenth-century London might have been, Thomas's caveat that he planned to ‘teach in French till he is master of the English Language’ might have diminished the potential audience size. In spite of the somewhat technical subject matter and the foreign tongue in which it was presented, the initial location of the lectures was soon overflowing. By mid-January 1697 Thomas advertised a change of venue from ‘this house on Soho’, because ‘the Rooms being too little for the number of Gentlemen, who desire to improve this opportunity, he has obtained leave to teach in a larger Room in St. James's Palace’.Footnote 36
The best-known of these early lecturers was George Wilson, who, beginning in December 1696, advertised ‘A Course of Chymistry, consisting of above 140 Chymical Operations’, in the Post Boy. Before embarking on a public career, Wilson had established himself in London's medical circles and knew some of the era's most famous chymists. He associated with George Starkey when both men offered potential cures in 1665 during the Great Plague in London. While Starkey did not survive that which he tried to cure, Wilson did. His reputation for concocting medicines impressed the Earl of Yarmouth, Treasurer of the Royal Household. It was through this relationship that James II came to try one of Wilson's remedies for smooth skin. A royal connection did Wilson no favours after 1688 when the crown passed to William III. An anti-Stuart mob destroyed Wilson's laboratory because they mistook his chymical experiments as part of a plot to destroy Whitehall and restore James to the throne. After finding another home in London and constructing a new workspace, Wilson was probably lecturing on chymistry in 1691, based on the publication of a guidebook that same year. These early lectures were directed specifically at ‘Doctors of Physick, Apothecaries, Chirurgions, and others Studious of Physick or Curious in Chymical Operations’.Footnote 37 Jan Golinski has argued that because of the three-guinea cost, those in attendance, whom he identifies as mostly professionals, would have ‘expected to derive commercial or professional benefit from its contents’.Footnote 38
By 1696, however, Wilson advertised for a different audience, the same as that Connor and Gorman sought with newspaper adverts in the Post Boy and a few in the Post Man. That Wilson should have chosen the Tory newspaper for the bulk of his adverts in the late 1690s should not surprise, given his past experience with partisan Londoners. Nevertheless, he did not ignore the Whigs who read the Post Man. Money has no politics. The course, which consisted ‘of above 140 Chymical Operations’, would begin on 19 January 1697. Gentlemen who wished to attend were specifically invited to Wilson's home before the start of the course to see the catalogue of experiments. Adverts for the lectures ran from December 1696 to January 1697. A new series began on 19 April 1697 and the number of experiments was expanded to 150. Series three followed and the cost was three guineas. By February 1698 Wilson had dropped the price to two and a half guineas for most people but any gentleman who wished to attend could do so for the price of a single guinea.Footnote 39
In early 1699 Wilson also marketed a companion guidebook to his lectures, A Complete Course of Chymistry, in which more than three hundred experiments were detailed and explicated. For a ‘well bound’ edition the cost was five shillings. During the remainder of 1699 and into 1700 a book advertisement accompanied each new lecture notice.Footnote 40 In June 1700 an advert for Wilson's book first appeared in the Post Man. The next would not be placed until 1709, for ‘The 3d Edition carefully Corrected and very much enlarged’.Footnote 41 Within the preface Wilson claimed that were Robert Boyle alive, the famed natural philosopher ‘might with pleasure see himself out-done’ by Wilson's own efforts, surely a bold claim. The book contained illustrations of chymical instruments and furnaces, and a dictionary of chymical notation. This was an introductory textbook, the purpose of which was the creation of medicines and an explanation of the ones Wilson himself offered for sale.Footnote 42
By 1710 adverts for public lectures and related books in experimental philosophy, anatomical demonstrations, popularized accounts of Newtonian natural philosophy and other similar courses were increasingly placed in the new daily newspapers such as the Daily Courant, which became the first of this type in March 1702.Footnote 43 Nonetheless, adverts still appeared in the Post Boy and Post Man, although not with the same frequency as in those newspapers' earliest years. Given the continuing importance of these two papers in the political climate of the day, and considering that the concern here is to explore the bipartisan marketing of public science adverts, the expansion of the quantity of newspapers into varieties of daily does not diminish the focus on the Post Man and Post Boy during these years.
In the Post Man for June and November 1710, two separate lecturers promised instruction in mathematics. In the first, Samuel Cunn offered mathematical lectures ‘in Theory and Practice, after the best and newest Methods’, to be held ‘either at any Gentleman's Lodgings or at his own’. The November adverts promised that a ‘Mathematical Lecture will be Read every Wednesday at 6 of the Clock in the Evenings, to those who will be pleased to Subscribe to it’, in conjunction with those taught at ‘Mr Raynors Writing and Boarding School’.Footnote 44 Early that year in February a notice ran in the Post Man promoting Francis Hauksbee's Physico-Mechanical Experiments on Various Subjects. For a cost of six shillings bound, readers could learn a variety of natural philosophical subjects and study ‘the Explanations of all the Machins the figures of which are done from Copper, Curiously Engrav'd and other Apparatus us'd in making the Experiments’. Building on the work of Boyle and Newton, Hauksbee promised to stay clear of hypothetical reasoning when he demonstrated the discoveries of England's two greatest thinkers. Hauksbee directed the book to ‘be of some use to the Intelligent Philosophical Reader’. The advert appeared regularly until 20 April 1720. Competing with Cunn and Hauksbee in 1711 were the chymistry lectures offered for sale in the Post Boy, originally delivered at Oxford by another Newtonian devotee, the physician John Friend.Footnote 45
In the 8 and 15 January 1713 numbers of the Post Boy Edward Bright sold ‘A Complete Course of Chymistry containing near 200 Operations’, divided into twenty-eight parts to begin on 19 January. Doubtless, Bright hoped to capitalize on the market void left by the death of George Wilson in 1711 by advertising in the same newspaper and offering a similar course at similar times of the month. Note the nearly identical titles of the two lecture series. This is also seen in the advert, with Bright's claim that his lectures would ‘clear up the many Difficult and Obscure Phenomena, which so frequently occur in the Practise of that Noble Art. Account also will be given at the same time, of the Uses and Doses of every Preparation; to which be subjoin'd many Curious Observations, applicable to the Practise of Physick’. The fee was ‘Two guineas and a Half, one paid at Entrance, at the Place aforesaid, the rest at the beginning of the Course’.Footnote 46 Unlike Wilson, however, Bright did not branch out into the production of a guidebook. Also on 8 January 1713, John T. Desaguliers, one of the most prolific public lecturers in early eighteenth-century London, placed an advert in the Post Boy. That both Bright and Desaguliers had advertisements in the same issue of the Post Boy, but for differing lecture subjects, reveals the strongly competitive market for public lectures and the available choice facing interested readers. The advert attempted to increase the size of the audience for ‘A Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy, consisting of Four Parts, viz. Mechanicks, Hydrostatick, Pneumaticks, and Opticks, … at Mr Brown's Bookseller, at the Black Swan and Bible without Temple-Bar’, that began on the previous day, 7 January. Confident of his ability to hold their attention and open their wallets, Desaguliers allowed those in attendance to pay one guinea at the time of subscription and the remaining guinea on the ‘Third Night after the Course is begun’.Footnote 47 By May 1713 Desaguliers had also taken over the lecture series formerly offered by Francis Hauksbee, who had died the previous month. Adverts reveal that Desaguliers performed in the widow Hauksbee's home ‘at the upper end of Hindcourt in Fleetstreet’, where he offered the same instruction in ‘Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy, consisting of Four Parts, viz. Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, and Optics’.Footnote 48
Desaguliers had competition for his popularized experimental (read Newtonian) philosophy. Newton's Lucasian successor, William Whiston, was also associated with the Hauksbee family in offering instruction in ‘Mechanicks, Opticks, Hydrostaticks and Pneumaticks’. In 1717 Whiston partnered with Francis Hauksbee the younger (nephew to the elder Francis Hauksbee) to perform a ‘Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy’ at the younger Hauksbee's home in ‘Crane Court near Fetter Lane, Fleetstreet’ at 6 p.m. The course began on 6 February 1717.Footnote 49 This is one of the only adverts Whiston placed in the Post Man for his lectures of this type, which were marketed with much greater frequency in the Daily Courant. That he chose the Post Man rather than the Post Boy is hardly surprising, given his clearly Whig politics. But Whiston did not shun the Post Boy as an advertising medium. From the surviving notes taken by Reverend Dr Thomas Morell, one of those in attendance at Whiston's lectures, we know that the material covered was technical and yet plainly presented.Footnote 50 Morell wrote a commentary on Locke's Essay under commission from Queen Caroline; he was a strong Whig who despised all things Jacobite. His presence at the lecture reveals that Whiston was successful in tapping a Whig audience. However, we must also note that Alexander Pope, surely no Whig, is also known to have attended some of Whiston's lectures, evidence of bipartisan appeal.
Whiston also turned to the Post Man in autumn 1714 when he began offering a solution to the problem of longitude. Along with his partner Humphrey Ditton, Whiston had been one of the most vocal proponents of an ‘Act for providing a publick Reward for such Person or Persons as shall discover the Longitude at Sea’ on 3 July 1714. The high stakes involved in ending this navigational quandary for the Admiralty required an equally high reward. The Board of Longitude, the body selected to oversee and evaluate solutions to the problem, was ready to hand out as much as £20,000 for solutions accurate to one-half of a degree or thirty miles.Footnote 51 Whiston and Ditton's plan was very public. The pair believed that observing the starburst flash of an explosive shell fired between 6,400 and 10,000 feet in the air at specific times from cannon on ships stationed along trade routes would let other ships at sea accurately determine their longitude either by timing the difference between sighting the light and its sound or by measuring the angle of the burst of light. Testing their theory required practice runs and reports from observers. With this in mind, an advert in late October alerted readers of the Post Man that
Mr. Whiston hereby informs the Publick, That in order to shew the Progress already made in Mr. Ditton's and his new Method for discovering the Longitude, there will be every Saturday Night that is tollerably clear, a Ball of Fire thrown up from Black Heath about a Mile high, and that the time will be exactly at 8 a Clock by Mr. Graham's Regulator, at Mr. Tompion's former Shop, near Water Lane, Fleeetstreet. And he desires the Curious within 50 or 60 Miles of London, to make and communicate their Observations as to its Azymuth, Altitude and the time it is visible every where, and to avoid, as far as they can, looking thro the thick Air of London.Footnote 52
Another advert in July 1715 asked for more exacting information. After advising that on 20 July, providing that the sky was clear, ‘Balls of Fire’ would appear at regular intervals, Whiston stated that
curious Persons are desired to observe the bearing of those Balls of Fire from the Meridian, and the Interval of Time between the first sight of the Light, and the hearing of the Sound of the Mortar; at least, to take the Angular Distance of 3 or more known Rockets, tho' it be without regard to the Meridian, and to communicate the same to some of the Persons concern'd, who will thereby be enabled to fix all such Places in their true Situations.Footnote 53
Two years later, in 1717, Whiston published even more complicated instructions. Now observers were asked
how plainly, and how many Seconds the Balls are seen; and if they well can, at what utmost Altitude, and in what Angle from the Meridian they are seen: And in what Places within 20 or 30 miles, how many seconds the sound is heard after the first Sight of the Light also.Footnote 54
Although he made a lot of noise, Whiston was unsuccessful in this plan.
His flashy public experiments in longitude having produced little more than smoke in the air, Whiston promoted an alternative method in the Post Boy early in March 1720. As part of his lectures at the Marine Coffeehouse on Tuesdays and at Button's Coffeehouse on Thursdays, Whiston promised to ‘Explain the newly discovered Properties of the Load-stone, and those Horizontal and Dipping Needles, with the Manner of finding the Longitude and Latitude at Sea and Land by the Dipping Needle, both by Experiments and Lectures upon them’.Footnote 55 He only lectured. Unlike his earlier efforts, Whiston did not seek participation and skilled observational reports from his audience of Post Boy readers. While Whiston might still harbour ill-feelings towards the Tories, whom he blamed for running him out of Cambridge some ten years earlier, their money was just as good as that offered by the Whigs with whom he usually associated.
In 1717 an anonymous advertisement in the Post Man on 20 April offered a ‘Course of Humane and Comparative Anatomy, with a Course of Operation and Bandages … To Conclude with a Course of Chyrurgical Pathology, in which all the Maladies of the soft and solid Parts will be explained, and their Cure taught’. Lectures adding instruction in surgical technique to the anatomical topics of the previous series were to start on 29 March 1717. The same course was again offered on 2 December.Footnote 56 It was not until the following year that adverts for the latest course, starting on 15 December 1718, revealed the lecturer as Swiss-born surgeon Nathanael St André. The addition of St André's name was not the only alteration to the adverts, which now offered a
Course of Human and Comparative Anatomy, in which all the modern Discoveries will be shewn, with the Doctrine of the Animal Occonomy, demonstrated on a Curious Collection of Preparations. Also a course of Chirurgical Operations, Pathology, and Bandages, the manner of reducing all kinds of Fractures and luxations; with great improvements in Machines and Bandages.Footnote 57
The course continued in the months of March, September, November and December through 1720 with each incarnation of the advertisement offering a slightly more descriptive account. St André would continue lecturing in anatomy until 1725 to supplement his income as surgeon at Westminster Infirmary before becoming a surgeon in George I's household. He would, however, become the object of ridicule in late 1726 and after because of his involvement with the Godalming woman Mary Toft's claim to have given birth to rabbits. Entirely convinced of the legitimacy of Toft's unusual offspring, St André brought her before George I. Toft eventually confessed to duping her physician and cleared him of any involvement in the hoax, as did others who investigated the matter. For St André, something of a shameless self-promoter who saw any publicity as good, the episode that kept his name on London's lips during November and December 1726 (which was also the time of heavy lecture advertisements) could not have been entirely disappointing.Footnote 58
The potential audience for anatomical and surgical lectures diminished further in 1719 when two more advertised courses appeared in the Post Boy to join the one already offered by St André. That three sets of lectures on very similar topics could survive speaks to their popularity. ‘A Course in Human and Comparative Anatomy’ demonstrated by Thomas Brathwaite, Surgeon, took place on 2 March 1719. Space became a premium as the date drew near, because the advert advised those who might wait that ‘Forty Subscriptions are already enter'd’, although what the maximum number of participants for the course might be is not mentioned.Footnote 59 Brathwaite's direct rival was another surgeon, John Douglas. In September 1718 Douglas advertised that from 1 October he would be offering not only lessons in anatomy but also instruction in ‘Chirurgical Operations, Dressings and Bandages’.Footnote 60 Douglas had earlier served as surgeon-general of the Leeward Islands between 1711 and 1714, when they were under the governorship of his brother Walter. One of Douglas's other brothers, James, a renowned anatomist and male midwife, was involved in the above-mentioned case of Mary Toft, being one of the investigators who cleared St André of any impropriety. Aside from his lectures, which continued through February and September 1720, Douglas enjoyed some renown in 1719 for his newly celebrated technique of a supra-pubic operation to remove stones from the bladder. Before the procedure was superseded in 1726 by a lateral incision, Douglas's account of his work was translated into several European languages.
While anatomical and surgical rivals placed competing adverts in the Post Boy in 1718 and 1719, another lecture series in ‘Mechanical, Hydrostatical, Pneumatical, and Optical Experiments’ squeezed into the increasingly crowded market. Benjamin Worster and Thomas Watts offered the jointly taught course. The partners had initially undertaken natural-philosophy lectures in 1719 at Richard Steele's Censorium, a theatre designed to present ‘All of the Works of Invention, All of the Sciences, as well as mechanick Arts’. But adverts show that they also lectured at Thomas Watts's Academy in Little Tower Street in early 1719 and this location had become their sole venue by 1720.Footnote 61 In late December 1718 Watts and Worster advertised that their course contained ‘not only all that is usual, but likewise some considerable Experiments which are entirely new; and that the Apparatus itself is new and compleat, and everything contriv'd according to the latest Improvements’. If this were old wine, they had placed it in new bottles. The adverts continued for lecture series to begin in January and November 1719 and 1720. Later adverts promised ‘the whole being very diverting and useful, not only for those who have learnt Mathematics, but for such as are not at all acquainted with that Study’.Footnote 62 Watts would go on to be a Whig MP for St Michael and later Tregony; he is remembered mainly for his 1716 work Essay in the Proper Method for Forming the Man of Business, which reflected his keen interest in the practical applications of mathematics particularly in the commercial setting. This same desire is evident in other adverts placed by Watts and Worster. Mathematics was sold as being ‘useful’ and beneficial for daily lives. In adverts that began appearing in late 1718 Watts offered to school interested persons in the mathematics of business. ‘Young Gentlemen are completely qualify'd for Business’, the advert promised, ‘from the Methods or Use in real Business; by Thomas Watts’. What was more, those who attended were encouraged to hear the ‘Courses in Experimental Philosophy’ held at the same location.Footnote 63 Advertisements for the business school, which should be seen as solicitations for both sets of lectures, ran with great frequency from January 1719 to December 1720, appearing in the Post Boy no less than thirty-six times.Footnote 64
Instruments and tools of public science
Often accompanying lectures was the sale of instruments as items to be purchased by a public who might acquire them to conduct their own experiments or simply display the instruments as conversation pieces. Richard Sorrenson argues that scientific instruments, especially microscopes and telescopes, gave their owners the opportunity to take voyages of natural-philosophical discovery, even if the passengers never left their homes. Not only did advertisements allow the means to obtain such devices, but reading about them was the early modern equivalent of window-shopping, where even those who could never own the tools could read about them.Footnote 65 Globes were among the earliest scientific instruments offered for sale in the Whig Post Man or Tory Post Boy. The popularity of globes was long-standing and, according to a recent assessment, may even have served as inspiration for the name of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in 1599.Footnote 66 James Moxon, the son of one of England's most famous instrument-makers, Joseph Moxon, advertised in the Post Boy during April 1696 that he sold ‘North and South Hemispheres, 16 Inches diameter, projected upon the Poles of the World, which by the help of a moveable horizon, are rendered serviceable in any Latitude, with a Book of their use’. The spheres and the book came in a variety of forms, with or without a wainscot box, bound or unbound. Prices ranged from eight shillings down to two shillings and sixpence. While the elder Moxon had died in 1691, his son continued the family business and cleverly used only his first initial in the advertisements. This was probably to capitalize on his father's international fame. Joseph Moxon's reputation was so great that as late as 1710 European visitors searched in vain for his shop.Footnote 67
An advert for globes did not appear in the Post Man until Senex placed one in late 1707. Emphasizing the accuracy of his globes, available in diameters of sixteen and twelve inches, Senex, who was friendly with secretary of the Royal Society Hans Sloane, stated that the
Stars on the Celestial are laid down from the Observations of Capt. Halley, Mr. Havelius and other eminent Astronomers, with 19 Constellations never before Printed on any Globe. The Terrestrial is according to the newest Observations, communicated to the Royal Society at London, and the Royal Academy at Paris.
With celestial globes depicting spherical representations of the night sky, consumers of public science did not have to confine their interest to Earth alone. Moreover, the same advert noted that ‘Subscriptions are also being taken for a set of globes of Mars’.Footnote 68 In 1709 Senex provided customers the opportunity to figuratively hold the world in their hands: ‘A new pair of Pocket Globes 3 Inches Diameter, according to the latest Discoveries and Observations very curiously Engraven; the likeness never before published’, were ready for purchase.Footnote 69
Following Moxon's 1696 advert, readers of the Post Boy did not see another globe advertised until 21 February 1713. Senex's former business partner Charles Price had branched out on his own, but the earlier association is evident in his advert. ‘Just Finish'd’, Price proclaimed, were ‘a new pair of Globes, 9 Inches Diameter. The stars on the Coelestial are laid down from Dr. Halley's and Mr. Hevelius's correct Observations, with all the new Constellations’. However, Price's adverts also hoped to attract the eye of those involved in maritime endeavours because included on his globes were ‘Latitudes and Longitudes of Places’ all ‘laid down according to the newest observations, with the Trade-winds, Monsoons, &c’.Footnote 70 The former partners were now competitors. Five days after Price's advert, on 26 February, Senex placed one for his latest set of globes. After telling readers that he also offered William Whiston's A Scheme of the Solar System, which was based on ‘Sir I. Newton's wonderful discoveries’, Senex let it be known he and his new partner J. Maxwell ‘are now engraving, and will speedily publish, a most complete and correct Pair of Globes, of about 30 inches Diameter; to be sold at moderate Price, and for which none is desired to advance any Money beforehand’. For those who could not wait, Senex offered, as before, ‘Globes 16, 12, and 3 inches Diameter; all according to the latest Observation and Improvements’.Footnote 71 The advert appeared twice more, into March.
Instruments of measurement, including gauges and slide rules, were marketed to readers of both newspapers. We begin with the Post Boy. On 31 October 1696 Thomas Everard, who had introduced multi-scale slide rules to England in 1683, now advertised a guidebook for their use entitled Stereometry: or the Art of Gauging made easie.Footnote 72 The impetus for his work on slide rules had been his job as an excise officer, in which he needed a quicker method for determining duty on barrels of alcohol after the Excise Office had demand greater precision. His choice of newspaper for adverts in the 1690s should not surprise, because he had ‘been accused of disaffection to the government’ and speaking in favour of James II.Footnote 73
John Worgan, who made and sold mathematical instruments such as a circumferentor (a surveying instrument used to measure horizontal angles), magnetic compasses, plane tables, quadrants and sectors, advertised in June 1697 a ‘Short Treatise’ that detailed the operation of his several instruments.Footnote 74 This was both a manual of instruction and also another form of advertising. In October of the same year William Hunt, about whom almost nothing is known except that he identified himself as a ‘Philomath’, offered for sale ‘A Mathematical Companion, or the Description and Use of a New Sliding-Rule’. Not only would the work help in the use of the slide rule, but it would also reveal the instrument's potential in the realms of ‘Military Orders’, and ‘Astronomy, Navigation, Fortification’ and ‘Gunnery’. Hunt promised that all of the calculations solved with the slide rule would ‘be speedily Resolved without the help of a pen’.Footnote 75 For artillery officers with little time to range their guns, no doubt this was a blessing.
Some of the advertisements reveal the vast contrasts in wealth generated through selling instruments to the public. John Yarwell was a well-known maker of optical instruments such as telescopes (ranging in length from three to eight feet), microscopes, reading glasses (both monocles and spectacles), magnifying glasses and prisms. In December 1695 he advertised in the Post Man for all these observational tools, which were ‘approved on by the Members of the Royal Society’. He switched to the Post Boy in 1697 but the advert was almost identical. These advertisements complemented his practise of distributing trade cards which detailed his instruments.Footnote 76 Yarwell was tremendously successful in his profession, as seen in the terms of his will in which he left £300 to ‘the Poor of the Parish of St. Paul’ and £100 each to Christ's Hospital and the Spectacle Makers Guild, in addition to other bequests of £50 and £100 to friends and family.Footnote 77 Clearly there was money to be made in public science sales. However, the market was not equal for all who sought their fortune. John Sturt, an engraver who hoped to reap a reward from the great interest in the eclipse of 1715 by offering for sale an Eclipseometer, a sheet that allowed the path of the moon to be followed along a schematic diagram with a graduated scale that was to be used in conjunction with a clock, often had to beg for payment from customers.Footnote 78
Other instruments advertised in the Post Man included ‘A Treatise of Watch and Clockwork’ and a book that detailed what might be accomplished by ‘by Mechanick Engines, in removing and raising Bodies of vast Weights’.Footnote 79 Francis Hauksbee, who would have a career as a public lecturer and maker of sophisticated instruments such as air pumps, placed one of his first adverts in the Post Man on 4 July 1699. He burst onto the scene offering a ‘New way of Glass-cupping, performed without Fire, Lamp, or mouth suction’, along with all the apparatus needed to conduct the procedure, ‘Glasses that will Cup a whole finger or toe at once, besides other larger and smaller that can be useful any other way, several glasses being applied at a time where there is occasion’ for ‘the publick good’. Not only would Hauksbee sell the cups to anyone in the medical profession, he would demonstrate ‘the manner of Operation to any Physician or Surgeon that shall desire it, it being now practised by several of the most Eminent Surgeons of this City’.Footnote 80 Sales were equally product and showmanship.
George Willdey was the most prolific advertiser for items of public science and rightly merits separate treatment. He had apprenticed under John Yarwell, belonged to the Spectacle Makers Guild and worked an as optical instrument fabricator, map-maker and toy seller. Beginning his career by competing with his former master, Willdey branched out between 1707 and 1710 into selling maps of the world produced by Charles Price and John Senex when the two were still partners. During 1710 Price and Willdey formed a partnership, which dissolved in 1713.Footnote 81 Willdey, sole proprietor by 1715, was a highly respected craftsman whose atlases were particularly prized. Eager to capitalize on the expanding market for public science, Willdey began extensive advertising in the Post Man during 1717 and into 1720. An abbreviated version of an early advert promoted
Cheap Useful and Instructive Ornaments for Rooms, Stair Cases, &c. being 19 large new Maps curiously and correctly done, each on two Sheets of large Imperial Paper, including the latest Discoveries and Observations of Messieurs of the Royal Societies of London and Paris. … Price but 9d. each tho' really worth 18 d. Sold so cheap only by G. Willdey at the Great Toy and Print Shop the corner of Ludgatestreet next to St. Paul's where is also Sold the very best Cutlers Ware and curious toys, Spectacles, Telescopes, Perspective Glasses, Reading Glasses, and many other Useful Curiosities, of which no person hath better goods, better choice, or sell more reasonably.Footnote 82
Willdey offered both practical and decorative items, technical precision and aesthetic beauty. Here we see two avenues of the public science market coming into play. He wished to sell his wares to both the savant and the dilettante: beautiful yet informative maps for the home and quality observational tools such as telescopes and other optical instruments. While a similar advert appeared periodically in 1714 and 1715, this one ran from 29 January 1717 to 14 January 1718 with no less than eighty appearances, or about twice weekly. It remained essentially unaltered except that in July of 1717 Willdey began to note that at his shop ‘likewise may be had new Italian Flowers, just imported, at Reasonable Rates’ and that in 1718 the number of maps increased to twenty.
In May 1718 a major change did appear in the advertising copy. Willdey wrote that his stock now included
at the most modest prices the newest sorts of Globes of 3, 9, 12 and 16 Inches Diameter; and in a few weeks will be finished as his own Charge, Pair of 20 Inches Diameter, including the latest Discoveries and Observations, each pair of these last fitted up, in the best Manner, with new improvements, will not exceed 6 guineas.
He claimed no one made better instruments or sold them at better prices. This latest version appeared from about 20 May 1718 to 31 December 1720 with a total of at least 163 placements, or slightly over once a week. Readers who anticipated the release of the twenty-inch globes may have become increasingly impatient as little more than promises materialized until they were ready for sale in June 1719. During October and November 1720 Willdey advertised that his talents with optical instruments allowed him to produce something quite unusual:
I have now finished the best Burning Glass in the World, and plac'd it upon the Top of my House, it produces a Heat many Degrees exceeding that of the most Artificial and hottest Furnace, and in less than a Minute melts Iron, Gold, Silver, Copper, or Brass, and notwithstanding it so soon Liquifies Metals, yet the fury of this Celestial Fire is much better exprest, by its melting of vitrifying Salt, Pumice, Bricks, Tiles, Crusibles, Sand, Marble, and most sorts of Stone; its greatest Heat is in the Air, at ten foot distance from the Glass, but hath many Degrees of Heat; in one it will serve for a Hot Bath, in another for a Sun Kitchen, where meat may be Boil'd, Bak'd, Roasted, Stewed, or Broil'd. Coffee, Tea, Chocolate made; in another Iron or other metals forged or melted into all manner of shapes, and whatever is done by other fire, may be done by the Celestial Heat.Footnote 83
The timing of this advertisement suggests Willdey hoped to tap interest in burning glasses, perhaps prompted by the demonstrations of them before the Royal Society in 1718 conducted by John Harris and Desaguliers. But there was also English pride at stake, as indicated by the caveat that Willdey's burning glass ‘far exceeds that show'd in the Privy Garden’. In 1718 François Villette, engineer to the Elector of Cologne, had displayed a large burning glass in the Privy Garden at Whitehall. Villette's father had built the instrument in France and secured the approval of and payment from the French king. Willdey's notice that his was now the largest burning glass in the world was almost certainly a means to reassert English optical prowess.Footnote 84 Wanting to share his invention with Londoners but still wishing to turn a profit, Willdey offered to show his burning glass without charge provided that a customer had bought at least five shillings' worth of items from his store. There was no mention of an admission charge without purchase; promotion of scientific utility was fine, but sales were better. The number of Willdey's adverts makes him by volume the most active public science advertiser during the period covered by this study, with some 250 adverts. While he placed no adverts in the Tory Post Boy, it is evident that the market Willdey sought so actively was not one in which Whigs were the only potential consumers.
Conclusion
In her recent book, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Maxine Berg comments on the importance of advertising in England's burgeoning consumer society:
Advertising, even in the early decades of the eighteenth century, was an economic and cultural activity in its own right. It successfully capitalized on the imitative impulses at the heart of fashion, connecting image and text across different parts of print culture. Few have celebrated the virtues of advertising, yet advertising formed a part of the making of consumer goods; it was an aspect of product innovation.Footnote 85
It is to be hoped that other historians of science will take Berg's assertion seriously and acknowledge the crucial yet often neglected role played by advertisements in the promotion of public science as a commodity in the early modern era. Revealing the richness of newspaper advertisements has been one of the goals of this article, which has examined two of London's key newspapers. This tour of the back pages of two political newspapers has shown that the numerous and greatly varied products of public science in general were directed at Whig and Tory alike. This suggests that in the process of integrating science into the wider culture, political allegiances did not leave their imprint on the advertising process, even in an age of political rivalry such as characterizes the era between 1695 and 1720. While the production of natural philosophy may have been laden with political connotations, when it came to selling this knowledge to readers of London's newspapers political allegiances were not a consideration. Street-level public science advertisements carried no political banner. This conclusion bolsters the position of Anita Guerrini, who has suggested that Newtonianism, which may reasonably be extended to encompass contemporary natural philosophy generally, ‘was not confined to a particular political or religious frame of mind in the early eighteenth century’.Footnote 86 What mattered most was sales, where Tory money was just as coveted by advertisers as was Whig.
