For my MPhil dissertation, I investigated how the scientific instrument trade could be characterised based on the “advertised trades” of instrument makers across the nineteenth century in Scotland. This information was extracted from the SIMON database, and I am incredibly grateful to the Tools of Knowledge project team that allowed me to have access to this data.

SIMON contains records of over 10,000 instrument makers in the UK from the 16th to the 20th century, and many of these records have an “advertised trade”, which the database curator (Gloria Clifton) believed best represented the work of a given maker. Further information stored for each maker include the dates they were active in the trade, their location and any recognised instruments they have produced.

The number of Advertised Trades are massive, and so I classified all the values in for Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow into 21 broader categories. An example category is `Medical' which features the advertised trades: surgical instrument seller, pharmacist and druggist.

Below is a summary of some main findings from the categorised trade method for each of the three chosen locations (Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow).

Figure 1: A key for the graphs that follow

Manchester

• This location was chosen to “test” the methods I had developed due to the existing knowledge about the instrument trade in Manchester.
• It validated the decline in the importance of natural philosophy for the trade, as optical instruments and mathematical instruments became more popular.

Figure 2: Proportions of makers by categories of advertised trade, Manchester, 1800-1900

Figure 3: Proportions of makers by categories of advertised trade, Edinburgh, 1800-1900

Edinburgh

• The traditional “mathematical, optical, philosophical” instruments maintained a steady control of the trade throughout the century.
• Edinburgh (and Glasgow to a lesser extent) are unique in terms of instrument making by the proportion of the trade that chemistry instrument making makes up and I explored the ways in which instrument makers interacted with the local community around chemistry in Edinburgh.

Glasgow

• Unsurprisingly, as overall trade and activity around the Clyde developed across the nineteenth century, an increasing proportion of instrument makers were involved with this industry.
• Additionally, instrument makers involved with the metalwork and woodwork industries were a lot more prominent in Glasgow compared to Edinburgh.

Figure 4: Proportions of makers by categories of advertised trade, Glasgow, 1800-1900

Additional work including assessing how the instrument makers combined trade across different categories, and how the popularity of certain advertised trades within the broader categories changed over time periods.

I’m in the process of developing these methods to apply them to other major centres of instrument making across the industrial revolution.