In 1876 the South Kensington Museum held a major international exhibition of scientific instruments and equipment, both historical and contemporary. Many of the items eventually formed the basis of collections now held at London's Science Museum. In May 1876, organisers arranged a series of conferences at which leading British and European scientists explained and demonstrated some of the items on display. The purpose was to emphasise the exhibition's goal not merely to preserve archaic treasures (such as Galileo's telescopes or Janssen's microscope) but to juxtapose them with current...

The amateur scientist George John Singer (1786 1817) worked in the family business of artificial flower and feather making, but all his spare time was absorbed in the study of electricity and electromagnetism. He invented his own apparatus, including a gold-leaf electrometer, and built a laboratory-cum-lecture room at the back of his house: his public demonstrations were attended by Faraday and Francis Ronalds, and he was also a friend of the pioneering 'electrician' Andrew Crosse. This significant book, published in 1814, demonstrates the breadth of Singer's knowledge of his subject and of...

The political legacy of Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) has tended to overshadow his inventions and scientific discoveries, but this work, of which the 1769 enlarged fourth edition is reissued here, gathers together published and unpublished letters which demonstrate the range of his interests. A large number (many addressed to his friend, the English botanist Peter Collinson) are about experiments with electricity, but (as the subtitle, 'to which are added letters and papers on philosophical subjects', makes clear) others discuss the setting of words to music, the warming of water by pumping,...