Villain of Steam: Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859)

Villain of Steam: Dionysius Lardner

(1793-1859)

Presentation at British Society for the History of Mathematics, Birmingham,

05/12/2015

1

Anna Martin, Project ManagerVillain of Steam [email protected]

Dionysius Lardner overview

World famous in his day

His books and lectures inspired many including Darwin and Jevons to take up science as a career

Involved in a very famous scandal and his name became a taboo

Forgotten today except for half remembered quotes:

“A successful steam boat passage across the Atlantic was about as likely as a man walking on the moon”, Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 1999

“If a train travelled as sixty miles an hour all the passengers would be asphyxiated” (i.e. suffocate).

Marlborough Street, Dublin

Born Dublin c.1793

Son of a Marlborough Street Whig lawyer

Decided age 19 to seek a career as a TCD professor

Educated at Trinity College Dublin

Influences

TCD students - The Royal Dunsink Observatory

Frances Bacon

William Petty

The importance of science to a successful society

The importance of scientific education

The importance of scientific publication

The importance of systematic experiment

Woodhouse Babbage

John BrinkleyBartholomew Lloyd

The value of Analytical calculus

Analytical Calculus: the paradigm shift

Babbage, Hershel, Whewell andCambridge AnalyticalsLardner and Dublin Analyticals

NewtonFluxions (Dot Notation)

(Arthur) Brown (St Johns, Cambridge)(Philip ?)Hudson Supported the

value of Newton’s Fluxions

Leibnitz

d’Alembert, Euler

Lagrange and Laplace Taught the

value of Analytical calculus(Algebreic notation)

Rowan HamiltonDarwin

Rowan Hamilton Mallet, Jevons

Re-wrote the textbooks and syllabus (Dublin 1813, Cambridge 1817)Re-wrote science

Lardner’s textbooks System of Algebraic Geometry (1823) An Elementary Treatise on the Differential and Integral Calculus

(1826) The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid (1826) etc. etc.

Sprang from understanding of students’ needs from time as a grinder Used real life examples Included sample exam questions Used simple language (and wherever possible rounded numbers up in

popular lectures)


Babbage, Hershel, Whewell andCambridge AnalyticalsLardner and Dublin Analyticals

NewtonFluxions (Dot Notation)

(Arthur) Brown (St Johns, Cambridge)(Philip?)Hudson

Supported the value of Newton’s Fluxions

Leibnitz

d’Alembert, Euler

Lagrange and Laplace Taught the

value of Analytical calculus(Algebreic notation)

Rowan HamiltonDarwin

Rowan Hamilton Mallet, Jevons

Re-wrote the textbooks and syllabus (Dublin 1813, Cambridge 1817)Re-wrote science

Dionysius Lardner by Daniel Maclise

William Rowan Hamilton trained using textbooks

Goes on to apply Analytical calculus to invent Quaternions

Highly regarded by economists for his late masterwork Railway Economy mentioned in Das Kapital

First use of a graph in an economics book

Jevons “” To Lardner's Railway Economy I was probably most indebted”” “He treats certain questions of Political Economy in a highly scientific and

mathematical spirit. Thus the relation of the rate of fares to the gross receipts and net profits of a railway company are beautifully demonstrated ... by means of a diagram. It is proven that the maximum profit occurs at the point where the curve of gross receipts becomes parallel to the curve of expenses of conveyance.”

Cited in D. Hooks p. 106-7 (footnote 4. citing Hicks ‘Leon Walras’ pp240-42)

Lardner suggests using mathematics in economics

“…I have of late been devoting a small portion of time to a science as new … to me as it is interesting. I mean Political Economy. I am quite fascinated with it and cannot persuade myself that it is not susceptible of all the rigor of mathematical reasoning. Nay I see no positive reason why the language and operations of analysis should not be applied to it.”

Lardner to Babbage, TCD, April 8, 1826 Babbage Correspondence British Library MsADd37183, f.274 Babbage’s On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers, was published in 1835 .


Cambridge AnalyticalsBabbage, Hershel, Whewell and (?)Lardner

Cournot

Ellet and Dupuit

Idea of using complicated mathematics in economics

Marginal Untilitarians

Marx

Lardner’s Railway Economy

Re-wrote economics Jevons

Idea of price differentiation

Idea of changing figures into a graph

Idea of allowing for maintenance

Whewell Group

Henry Brougham promotes education

Brougham+Fear of revolution=Educational reforms

Politicians and ‘scientists’ become partners

Brougham’s 1825 pamphlet starts a nationwide craze for mechanics’ institutes and the diffusion of useful knowledge

The funding of the London University and the SDUK

Foundation of the University of London

The rise of cheap literature

Steam Printing invented

Economies of scale

Mass production

A rise in demand and literacy

Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia

Financed with Longman and John Taylor

Edited by Lardner

The six shillings sciences

Monthly collectible volumes built into libraries

Publihsed by authoritative writers

Authors of Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia

Augstus De Morgan

Sir Walter Scott

Mary Shelly

John Hershel

Sir Thomas MooreRobert Southey

Promotion of Babbage’s engines

Passion for new inventions

Futurologist

Lecture tour in Northern England Scientific and Literary societies

Climax at the Royal Institution, where Ada Lovelace attended and was inspired

Article in the Edinburgh Review inspires real life Scheutz calculating Engine

Involvement in railway research and controversy

Lectures and book on the steam engine

Interested in experiments with speed and wind resistance

Expert witness in the Atmospheric railway, Box Hill and Broad Gauge controversies

Tried to guess the effects of air in tunnels

Tried to guess whether steam ships could cross the Atlantic

The Walking Engine

The first railway passenger service

Brunel’s Box Tunnel

Atlantic steam passage controversy

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Successful crossing of the Atlantic turns Lardner into a laughing stock

Animal magnetism

Much in demand showing the aristocracy the scientific sights

Irish playwrite Dion Bouicicault

Lardner’s wife left him when he was a grinder

He had an affair with his friend George Darley’s sister Mary Bourciquot and fathered Dion Boucicault (Dionysius Lardner Boucicault)

Lady Blessington’s salon (Lardner in foreground)

Can you spot: Lardner (centre stage)Lady Blessington, Dickens,Bulwer Lytton,Disraeli

Gets divorced,

Seeks new wife/life?

Ellen Terry, whom Mary Heavisides resembled

Runs away with the Mary, the wife of Captain Heavisides and daughter of Colonel Spicer.

Dear John letter

Punch up in a Calais hotel

Sued for £13,000 damages

Frontispiece to Lardner’s ‘Lectures of Science and Art’

Travel incognito to America

Unmasked

Rejection by the international scientific community

Travels around America studying transport

Lectures in theatres and opera houses to a quarter of the population of America

Makes $40,000

Involved in a fire

The staff of the New York Tribune

It has nice pictures It is Cheap

It is written by himself.

The book goes global and inspires readers to take up science

Horace Greeley loves the lectures

The New York Tribune writes up all his articles and turns them into a book, later reworked as “Dr Lardner’s Museum of Science and Art’.

Colophon from ‘Handbook of Philosophy’

An early steam engine

Lardner in Thackeray’s cartoon (1)

Lardner and Bulwer Lyttton in Thackeray’s cartoon

Lardner and Thomas Norton Longman in Thackeray’s cartoon (4)

AL Martin, Villain of Steam (Dublin, Tyndall Scientific, 2015) ISBN 9780993242007

Full list of references, sources and picture credits are given in Villain of Steam.

Presentation produced by Marlinspike Publishing for Tyndall Scientific

©2015