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OCR for page 16
`, Scientists and Scientific
-
Organizations in
Mid-Century America
Long before the National Academy of Sciences became a reality
(somewhat fortuitously at the height of the American Civil War), a
number of energetic and far-seeing scientists of the nineteenth cen-
tury had seen the need for a central body of scientists that could
render advice and assistance to the federal government. Some of the
early attempts are described in the preceding chapter.
The middle of the century witnessed the rise of the Smithsonian
Institution and the creation of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS), both of which were directly related to
the creation of the Academy.
The Smithson Bequest
The history of the Smithsonian Institution, the first scientific research
organization to be established by the federal government is, in fact, so
closely linked with that of the National Academy of Sciences, which
followed two decades later, that some knowledge of the former is
16
OCR for page 17
Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America 1 it 7
necessary to an understanding of the circumstances under which the
Academy came into being.
The early days of the two institutions were most closely interlinked
by the personalities of the men who dominated both, particularly
Joseph Henry, first Secretary of the Smithsonian and second Presi-
dent of the Academy, and Alexander Dallas Bache, one of the
Smithsonian's original Regents and first President of the Academy.
Then, too, the "homeless" Academy occupied a room in the "Castle
on the Mall," home of the Smithsonian Institution, for over fifty
years.
The story of the Smithsonian begins in England. On June 26, ~829,
James Smithson, an English chemist and mineralogist of modest
attainments but strong faith in the future of science, died in Genoa,
Italy, at the age of sixty-four. Three years earlier he had made a will
in which a nephew, Henry James Hungerford, was to be his heir, but
in the event the nephew died childless, the whole of his very consider-
able fortune was to go "to the United States of America, to found at
Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an
Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among
men."
The reasons for this quixotic gesture with its far-reaching conse-
quences remain obscure. Smithson never traveled to the United States
and so far as is known was not thought to have been acquainted with
any Americans, with the possible exception of Joel Barlow.
Some speculation has centered upon the circumstances of his birth.
He was the illegitimate son of parents of illustrious heritage. His
father was Hugh Smithson, who later became Hugh Percy, the first
Duke of Northumberland under the third creation of the title. His
mother was Elizabeth Hungerford Keate Macie, a widow who was
lineally descended from Henry VII through her great-granduncle,
Charles, Duke of Somerset.
Paul Oehser points out that Smithson wrote in one of his manu-
scripts: "The best blood of England flows in my veins; on my father's
side ~ am a Northumberland, on my mother's I am related to Kings,
but this avails me not. My name shall live in the memory of men
when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct
and forgotten."2
Into this statement one may read an underlying note of bitterness
1 Paul H. Oehser, Sons of Science: The Story of the Smithsonian Institution and its Leaders
(New York: Greenwood Press, ~968), pp. ~-~3.
2 Ibid.
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~ 8 I Scientasts and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
against the rigidity of the British class system. And since Smithson's
nephew, the prior beneficiary of his estate, died childless in ~835, his
fortune ultimately came to the United States.
When news of the bequest reached this country in ~836, it precipi-
tated a curious controversy. Congress was divided as to whether the
United States could accept the money. The arguments over a national
university were revived, and there were even those who felt that it was
beneath the dignity of the United States to receive such a gift from
abroad.3 The final vote in the House, however, was eighty-five yeas
and seventy-six nays; the vote in the Senate was twenty-six to thirteen.
President Andrew Jackson dispatched to England Richard Rush,
the son of Dr. Benjamin Rush and a lawyer and former Minister to
the Court of St. James's, to bring back the legacy. Rush returned to
Philadelphia in September ~838 aboard the clipper Mediator, bringing
with him £~o4,g60 in gold sovereigns, Smithson's library, and his
collection of minerals. The sovereigns were recoined into $508,3 ~ 8.46
in American money. In ~867 a residuary legacy of $26,~o was re-
ceived, and the total ultimately amounted to $6so,ooo, a great fortune
in that day.4
Even before the initial funds had arrived in the United States, the
Secretary of the Treasury, Levi Woodbury, was advertising that he
would shortly have available for investment around a half million
dollars. The funds were used to purchase state bonds, the largest
amount going to Arkansas, with smaller sums going for bonds of
other states. John Quincy Adams, Chairman of the Smithson Bequest
Committee of the House, who had been dismayed by this proposal,
introduced a bill that would have established an interest-bearing
Smithsonian Fund directly within the Treasury. The bill was de-
feated, however, and the states defaulted on the bonds, so that the
funds were essentially frittered away. It was not until August ~846
that President James K. Polk signed into law a bill creating the
Smithsonian Institution. The law also provided for full restitution of
the original funds, along the lines of the Adams formula; namely that
the original sum of the bequest be lent to the Treasury with interest,
at 6 percent, from the date of the funds' arrival.5
Meanwhile during the eight years that had elapsed between the
~ A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and al ctivities to
1940 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ~957), pp. 67-68.
Encyclopedia Britannica, lath ea., s.v. '~Smithsonian Institution," by Charles Greeley
Abbot; Dupree, Science in the Federal Government, p. 79.
5 Geoffrey T. Hellman, The Smithsonian, Octopus on the Mall (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippin-
cott Co., ~967), pp. 42-45.
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Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America 1 ~ 9
arrival of the money at the Philadelphia Mint and the enactment of
the law that made the Smithsonian Institution a reality, another kind
of controversy raged over the use to which the funds were to be put.
Perhaps the most active were the proponents for a national university,
to be modeled on the best in Europe. John Quincy Adams, champion
of utility and the exact sciences, wanted a great observatory, superior
to those at Greenwich and Paris, to advance practical astronomy and
prepare yearly nautical almanacs.6 Hassler sought a school for as-
tronomers, under his own direction. The National Institute saw
Smithson's bequest under its management enhancing a galaxy of
scientific interests in the capital. Congress debated such proposals as
the construction of a great national library, a normal school for the
training of teachers, a farm school, and other "academical institutes of
education."7
As signed into law, however, the Smithsonian's enabling act called
for a museum of natural history, a chemical laboratory, a library, a
gallery of art, and lecture rooms. The accumulated interest of
$242,129 was to be used to erect a building for the Institution. From
the income of the trust fund, approximately $30,ooo annually, not
more than $25,000 was to be used to purchase books for a national
library. Unable to agree further on Smithson's intentions, Congress
left the spending of the balance of the income to the Secretary, who
was to direct the Institution, and to its Board of Regents, which was to
organize and oversee its functions. The latter was to consist of the
Vice-President of the United States, George M. Dallas; the Chief
Justice, Roger B. Taney; three members of the Senate, George Evans,
Sidney Breese, and Isaac S. Pennybacker; three members of the
House, Robert Dale Owen (who had wanted a normal school), William
Jervis Hough, and Henry Washington Hilliard; and citizens-at-large
Rufus Choate (proponent of the library), Gideon Hawley, Richard
Rush, William C. Preston, Col. Joseph G. Totten, Alexander D.
Bache, and the Mayor of Washington, William W. Seaton.8
Congress had directed that two members of the National Institute,
as the leading scientific society in the capital, must be on the Board,
6 Wilcomb E. Washburn (ed.), The Great Design: Two Lectures on the Smithson Bequest
John Quincy Adams, 1839 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, ~965), pp. 36, 70-7~.
7 Bessie Zaban Jones, Lighthouse of the Skies. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory:
Background and History, 1846-1955 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, ~965), pp. ~3
ff.
8 William J. Rhees (ed.), The Smithsonian Institution: Documents Relative to its Origin and
History, 1835-1889 (Washington: Government Printing Office, egos), Vol. I, pp.
429-438.
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20 I Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
The Smithsonian Institution cat ~860 (Photograph by A. J. Russell, Mathew Brady
assistant, courtesy the Smithsonian Institution).
and by joint resolution named Colonel Totten, one of the founders of
the Institute and Chief of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, and Bache,
Superintendent of the Coast Survey and nephew of Vice-President
George M. Dallas, Chancellor-elect of the Smithsonian.
Bache and Henry
Alexander Dallas Bache, great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin and
grandson of Alexander l. Dallas, Secretary of the Treasury during
Madison's administration, was born in Philadelphia on July ~9, ~806.
At fifteen he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which
was then offering, through its engineering and technical curricula,
the first systematic study of science in the United States. Upon
graduation he was assigned as an assistant in the engineering depart-
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Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America 1 2 ~
ment of the Military Academy and later transferred to Colonel
Totten's staff at Newport, Rhode Island, where Fort Adams was
under construction. In ~828, Bache was unexpectedly offered the
professorship of natural philosophy and chemistry at the University
of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and, on the strength of that prospect,
resigned his commission and married Nancy Clarke Fowler, daughter
of a prominent Newport citizen.
He had read on his own in natural philosophy and chemistry before
the University appointment, and, with the aid of textbooks on as-
tronomy and optics and of compendia surveying the elements of
electricity, magnetism, electromagnetism, mechanics, geology, and
mineralogy, he prepared the lectures and experiments that com-
prised the three-year course in natural philosophy at the University.9
Within a year he was elected to membership in the American Philo-
sophical Society on the strength of his appointment at the University
and his first research effort, "On the specific heat of the atoms of
bodies." About that time he turned to the studies and experiments in
terrestrial magnetism and meteorology that he continue`] intermit-
tently to the end of his life.
It was probably at the Philosophical Society that Bache first met
Joseph Henry; for soon after coming to Princeton in ~83~ as Profes-
sor of Natural Philosophy, Henry began visiting the library of the
Society, some fifty miles distant, "to post up my knowledge of the
current discoveries in science" and to revel in its "upwards of gooo
volumes of books on the subject of science."~° Henry, then in his
thirty-sixth year, was nine years older than Bache; but with their
common interest in terrestrial magnetism the two became fast friends
and joint experimenters. That interest seems to have developed
independently, but almost simultaneously for them, in the autumn of
~830.~ Besides its usefulness in navigation and meteorology, geo-
magnetics interested Henry because of its importance in surveying,
"since boundaries of all estates were originally fixed and described by
9 Merle M. Odgers, Alexander Dallas Bache: Scientist and Educator, 1806-1867 (Philadel-
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1947), pp. ~ 5, ~ 6, ~ ~ -a a, ~ o4.
10 Joseph Henry to his brother James, October 27, ~834, and January 23, ~835. [Unless
otherwise designated, all Henry correspondence is from the Joseph Henry Papers,
Archives of the Smithsonian Institution. For Henry's earlier years, see Nathan Reingold
(ed.), The Papers of Joseph Henry, Vol. I, December 1797 October 1832. The Albany Years
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, ~ 97~).] Henry's first extant letters to
Bache are dated from Princeton in July ~834 and concern magnetic observations.
" See Henry's note in American f ournal of Science 20:203 ( ~ 83 ~ ).
1
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.
22 I Scientists anti Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
the directions of the magnetic needle." By experiment and observa-
tion he hoped to discover the law of variation of the needle.
In ~836, Girard College, a school for orphan boys, was founded
In Philadelphia, and Bache was named President and sent abroad to
v ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ — ~ r—~ — . as . . ~ an. v ~ v `_ A . A V Ad. . I_ . . . _ `. . ~ ~ V ~ _ .. . ~ `^ _ _ _. ~ . . _~ ~
model. The College almost immediately became involved in civic
controversy and litigation and did not open for another decade;
Bache, on his return from abroad in ~838, retained his connection
with the College, but accepted the direction of the new Central High
School of Philadelphia, the first public school outside New England.
Six years after having left the University of Pennsylvania, Bache
returned, in ~84~, but remained for only one year. Upon the death of
Hassler in ~843, he sought and obtained the post of Superintendent
of the Coast Survey and its Office off Weights and Measures. In this he
had the strong support of Henry and almost the whole of the
scientific community on the Eastern Seaboard.~4
Bache, then living on Twentieth Street in Washington, had closely
followed the last years of debate over the Smithson bequest, seeing in
the Institution a scientific organization whose endowment would
assure its permanence, that would have the force of the federal
government behind it, and the prestige of its location in the nation's
capital. It wanted only a strong-minded and dedicated man of science
to preside over its establishment and shape its formative years. Shortly
after his appointment to the Board of Regents, Bache wrote to Henry
|2 Henry to James D. Forbes, Professor of Natural Philosophy, Edinburgh University,
June 6, ~836 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
, Bache's trip to Europe marked an epoch in ocean travel. At the turn of the century,
Jefferson reported that the winter voyage from France to New York by his friend
Du Pont de Nemours had taken three months and five days [Du Pont do Nemours, N`z-
tion~l Education in the United States, tr. B. G. du Pont (Newark: University of Delaware
Press, ~923), p. xii]. Bache, crossing to Europe by test packet in the autumn of ~836.
made the voyage in thirty-three days. His return on that marvel of the age, the steamer
Great Western, in fourteen days, ended the terror of the Atlantic and prompter! Henry's
reflection: "We will not now be so remote a province of Great Britain in reference to
literature and science as we have been" [Henry to Dr. Thomas Thompson of Glasgow,
September z8, ~838 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives) ].
i. See the letters from Bache to Henry, both dated November ~ I, ~843, in one of which
Bache referred to his candidacy for the post just the year before, when Congress was
considering a reorganization of Hassler's Survey; also Henry to Bache, December 6,
1843 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
For Henry's efforts on behalf of Bache to head the work of the Coast Survey, "the
most important from a scientific point of view which has ever been undertaken by our
government," see his correspondence in November ~ 843 (Joseph Henry Papers,
Smithsonian Institution Archives).
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Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America 1 23
at Princeton and asked his permission to propose his name to the
Board. t5
Joseph Henry was born on December ~7, ~797, in Albany, New
York, one of the first towns in the American colonies to be granted a
city charter (~6861. Nathan Reingold has observed that:
Early nineteenth-century Albany was not the American Frontier town one
might expect but a fair-sized, wealthy, and vigorous city. In ~820, Albany was
the ninth largest city in the United States; by ~830 it ranked eighth. It was the
seat of state government and a trading and manufacturing center at the
junction of the Hudson River and Erie Canal (after its opening in
~8~51.... In many respects Henry's experience foreshadowed his life and
future role in Washington as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The
two capitals were approximately the same size (Albany, in fact, was slightly
larger in ~846), and Henry learned to move as freely among Washington's
politicians as he had among Albany's. He may also have acquired here his
later antipathy to mingling science and politics.
Henry's Scottish parents were in such straitened circumstances that
when he was seven he was sent to live with his uncle in a neighboring
village.~7 Despite his meager elementary schooling, he found when he
was twelve that he was a reader, and at sixteen, home again in Albany,
he came upon his first book of science, Lectures on Experimental
Philosophy, Astronomy, and Chemistry, by the English clergyman George
Gregory, published in London in ~808. Certain at last of his course,
Henry attended night classes in geometry, mechanics, and grammar
at the Albany Academy, supporting himself by teaching the latter
subject in the district school and by private tutoring. He assisted the
principal of the Academy in preparing his chemical demonstrations
and studied anatomy and physiology under local doctors when for a
time he considered becoming a man of science by way of medicine. He
gained some knowledge of mathematics out of books, and of chemis-
try, geology, and botany by attendance at philosophical lectures given
at the Academy.
In ~8~4, upon the union of two local philosophical societies as the
35 By early November ~846 Henry was being urged from many quarters to seek the
post, but on Bache's advice refused to commit himself, leaving his course entirely in
Bache's hands. Henry to Bache, November 2 and ~6, ~846 (Joseph Henry Papers,
Smithsonian Institution Archives).
]6 Reingold (ed.), The Papers of Joseph Hens, Vol. I, p. xix.
|7 In a letter to Miss Montague, April 4, ~872, Henry said his Scottish grandfather
Hendrie (meaning "ruler of the home") changed his name to Henry when he came to
America (loseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
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24 I Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
Albany Institute, Henry was appointed its librarian. About this time
he began tentative investigations in chemistry, electricity, and gal-
vanism; and in October of that year presented to the members of the
Institute his first paper, "On the Chemical and Mechanical Effects of
Steam." His second paper and first publication five months later,
"The Production of Cold by the Rarefaction of Air," appeared in the
Institute's Transactions. ~8
In April ~8~6, Henry was appointed Professor of Mathematics and
Natural Philosophy at the Albany Academy and that autumn began
teaching its So pupils the rudiments of arithmetic, mathematics,
physics, and chemistry. Franklin's experiments, Priestley's history of
electricity, and accounts of the pioneer discoveries of Charles de
Coulomb, Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, Hans Christian Oersted,
Andre-Marie Ampere, and Francis Arago were available to Henry
when, after his seven-hour day in class, he turned to the experiments
in electricity and magnetism that were to bring him fame.
Between ~ 827 and ~ 83 I, his development of Arago's electromagnet
from a philosophic toy to an instrument with immediate industrial
application brought him his first recognition, but he had to be
prodded by reports of similar experiments abroad before he pub-
lished his results.~9 In ~ 83 ~ he demonstrated at the Academy the first
electromagnetic telegraph. To the end of his days he regretted that he
had neither published nor patented the invention. A new and more
powerful magnet, and a little engine that he also constructed that
year, powered by alternate magnetic attraction and repulsion, antici-
pated the modern direct-current electric motor.20
Henry's discovery of the principle of electromagnetic induction
may have antedated Michael Faraday's announcement late in ~83~,
but Henry did not publish his findings until seven months later, in
pages hastily added to Benjamin Silliman's American Journal of Science
and Arts (often called Silliman's journal). The last paragraph of that
paper also reported what has been called Henry's greatest single
8 Thomas Coulson, Joseph Henry: His Life and Work (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 195O), pp. 14-18, 21-22.
i9 Albany Institute, Transactions 1:22 (~827); Henry to Benjamin Silliman, December 9,
~83O [" . . . by delaying the principles of these experiments for nearly two years I've
had the mortification of being anticipated...." Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian
Institution Archives)]; AmericanJournal of Science 19:400 (1831); Coulson,Joseph Henry,
.
pp. 41, 4 - 47
20Amer7can Journal of Science 20:201, 340 (1831); Coulson, Joseph Henry, pp. ~2-53,
67-70.
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Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America / 25
contribution to science, his discovery, two years earlier, of elec-
tromagnetic self-induction.2i
His burst of genius that year won Henry little recognition in Europe
where Faraday reigned supreme, but it made his name known
throughout the scientific community in the United States. In ~83s, at
the urging of Dr. John Torrey, Professor of Chemistry at the College
of New Jersey at Princeton, of Benjamin Silliman, and of others, the
College called Henry to its chair of natural philosophy.
With his characteristic candor, Henry in his letter of acceptance
asked, "Are you aware of the fact that I am not a graduate of any
College and that I am principally self-educated?" He admitted freely
that he would be happy to escape the drudgery of teaching mathe-
matics and the elements of arithmetic, for he was most anxious to
establish "the reputation of a man of science." Upon the promise that
he would teach but one or two classes a day and be free to continue his
experiments, he came to Princeton that fall.22
In addition to the subjects of natural philosophy and astronomy, he
was asked to lecture on architecture that first year, and took over
Torrey's classes in chemistry, geology, and mineralogy while Torrey
spent the year abroad. Somehow he also found time to build succes-
sively larger electromagnets for his researches, out of which came the
relay or circuit breaker, later so crucial to the success of the telegraph
system devised by Samuel F. B. Morse.25
Henry's election to the American Philosophical Society in ~835 may
have owed something to the dispute over the priority of Faraday's
claim to the discovery of self-induction, but he probably would have
been elected in any case, following his appointment to Princeton and
the exhibition of his electromagnets by his friends. Both groups
vigorously supported the American claim to priority of discovery.24
Furthermore, Henry was already friendly with some of the most
2t American Journal of Science 22 :403~08 (~832); Coulson, Joseph Henry, pp. 76 95., 897
Tog—~ To.
22 John Maclean, Vice-President of the College, to Henry, June ~8, ~832, and reply,
June ~8; Maclean to Henry, August a, ~832 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian
Institution Archives); John Maclean, History of the College of New Jersey, from Its Origin in
1746 to the Commencement of 1854 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., ~877), pp.
288-29~, 336-337
23 Coulson, Joseph Hens, pp. ~ o3- ~ o4, ~ o7- ~ ~ o, 2 ~ 5.
24 William Hamilton, Franklin Institute, to Henry, May 2~, ~834; Bache to Henry,
January 3,~835 (]oseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives); Journal of the
Franklin Institute 15: 169 ( ~ 835); American Philosophical Society, Transactions 5 :223, 229
(~837).
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26 I Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
active scientific members of the Society, including Bache, Silliman,
and Robert Hare.
Elected to the Philosophical Society with Henry were John Torrey,
the physician, chemist, and botanist; meteorologist James F. Espy;
and geologist Henry D. Rogers, all three destined to be good friends
and close associates in the years to come.
Between Henry's first meeting with Bache at the Philosophical
Society in ~833 and the latter's offer to propose Henry as the head of
the Smithsonian Institution, thirteen years had elapsed. Henry con-
tinued to teach at Princeton and to publish his electromagnetic
experiments, many of them related to discoveries subsequently made
by Lord Kelvin, James Maxwell, James Joule, and Heinrich Hertz. He
was to observe with chagrin their triumphs of theory and mathe-
matical logic that deduced universal laws of electricity from experi-
ments he too had made. Nevertheless, if Europe acknowledged his
contributions only posthumously, he was regarded in his own time
and country as the nation's foremost physicist and experimentalist.25
With Henry's growing fame came a long succession of offers, most
of which he declined. In ~835 the University of Virginia, without
asking if he would accept, elected him to its chair of natural philoso-
phy at a salary "the largest in the United States." Fearful lest it lose
him, Princeton countered with the promise of a new laboratory, a new
home, and salary increases for himself and the professors associated
with him.26 Another offer came the next year when Bache, appointed
to head Girard College, entreated Henry to take the chair he was
vacating at the University of Pennsylvania.27 But Henry was not
ambitious for mere preferment; he was happy at Princeton, and could
not be persuaded.
A turning point in his life occurred in ~836-~837. He came to
Washington for the first time, to secure letters of introduction for his
pending trip to England, and then returned to Princeton for a month
and a half to finish his entire year's course before sailing.
25 Coulson,.Joseph Henry, pp. ~40 ff
Henry's name was given to the international standard unit of induction on a motion
by the French delegate and a second by the British representative at the International
Electrical Congress held at Chicago in ~893.
26 Henry to his brother lames, August 2, ~835 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian
Institution Archives).
27 Henry to his wife Harriet, July 23, ~836; Professor R. M. Patterson of the University
to Henry, August ~4, ~836 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
Again Princeton countered, offering improvements in facilities and a trip to Europe
to obtain new apparatus and instruments for his laboratory Cohn Maclean to Henry,
July 25, ~836 (ibid. ) ].
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32 / Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
The Institution would "stimulate men of talent to make original
researches, by offering suitable rewards for memoirs containing resew
truths; and . . . [would] appropriate . . . funds for particular re-
searches," such as a system of meteorological observations for solving
the problem of American storms; explorations in natural history;
geological, magnetic, and topographical surveys; new determinations
of the weight of the earth, of the velocity of electricity and of light;
ethnological researches in the races of man in North America; and the
exploration of mounds and other remains of the ancient people of
North America.42
To diffuse knowledge, the Institution intended to "publish a series
of periodical reports of the progress of the different branches of
knowledge; and . . . publish occasionally separate treatises on subjects
of general interest."43 This Henry was to accomplish through the
worldwide distribution of his heavily appendixed Annual Reports, the
quarto Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, and the octave Smith-
son?an Miscellaneous Collections.
Henry's "Programme," adopted provisionally by the Board of Re-
gents at once, became the settled policy of the Institution, but owing
to the broad phrasing of Smithson's will, not until ~86~ was he able to
say that contention from Congress and the public over its operation
had finally come to an end.44 Other objections took somewhat longer.
In ~866 Congress relieved the Smithsonian of its library of some forty
thousand volumes; in ~868 the national herbarium foisted on it was
transferred to the Department of Agriculture. Two years later Con-
gress appropriated full support for the museum.45
42 Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report for 1847, p. ~ 74.
45 At., pp. ~ 74- ~ 75, ~ 79. For his special concern for original research, see pp. ~ 74,
~8~.
Henry also also approved of specialization in science. As he said, "A life devoted
exclusively to the study of a single insect, is not spent in vain" (Smithsonian Institution,
Annual Report for 1855, p. so).
44 Henry, "Sketch of the Organization and Operation of the Institution," in Smithso-
nian Institution, Annual Report for 1865, p p. ~ 2- ~ 3.
To answer early misunderstandings about the functions of the Smithsonian, Henry
explained his program in the Annual Report for 1850, pp. 5-8. The contention
continued, reaching a climax in ~855 when Rufus Choate, the proponent earlier for
making the Smithsonian a national library, resigned as Regent and requested Congress
to inquire into the management and expenditure of funds of the Smithsonian. Both the
House and Senate committees of investigation exonerated Henry (Smithsonian Institu-
tion, Annual Reportfor 1895, pp. ~3-~4; 1856, pp. ~-~6; SmithsonianInstitution Circular,
1855, "U.S. Congress, House Select Committee on the Smithsonian Institution").
Determined to make his policy prevail, Henry prefaced his Annual Report with the
"Programme of Organization" from ~855 to ~872.
45 Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report for 1872, pp. ~e, 4~; Dupree, Science in the
Federal Government, p. ~ 55.
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Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America 1 33
The meager income of the Smithsonian, fixed by its endowment
and dissipated by the provisions Congress had stipulated, served to
nullify Henry's plans for carrying out through the Smithsonian the
"great design" for American science he had set down for Bache a
decade earlier. Nevertheless his direction of the Institution did much
to improve the scientific reputation of this country abroad and to
make science better understood and respected at home. He saw that
the Smithsonian supported worthy research to the limits of its ability,
that it published costly works of abstruse scholarship or of limited
appeal, and by its example made clear to the public the distinction
between the increase, diffusion, and application of knowledge. The
disquisition Henry wrote on that distinction in one of his reports
concluded with Francis Bacon's dictum on the ends of knowledge and
the purpose of the academy in the New Atlantis. It was a distinction he
raised again when he became President of the National Academy of
Sciences.46
Growth and Spread of Scientific Societies
The impulse to form societies to satisfy "a nation of joiners," as the
United States has been called, had been compulsive since colonial
days. By the time ground was broken for the Smithsonian, in ~847,
almost a hundred academies and societies for the promotion of
science dotted the nation, most of them concentrated between Boston
and Washington; but a number were located beyond the Appa-
lachians and even one or two across the Mississippi.47 Some by their
names proclaimed general philosophical interest in the sciences, or
special interest in chemistry or mineralogy, but the overwhelming
number were local academies of "natural history" or "natural
science." Their proliferation, and the ascendancy of the naturalists,
geologists, and explorers had, however, done little, in Henry's view, to
raise the status of science or advance its cause.
"There are," he wrote in ~84~, "very few in the United States
engaged in original research although there are more interested in
popular science among us than in any other part of the world." The
geologists were attempting "to get up a society similar to the British
Association Efor the Advancement of Science]." But Henry doubted
"the expediency of forming a society of the kind to embrace all
46 Dupree, Science in the Federal Government, pp. 86-go. The dictum is quoted here in
Chapter 1, p. 4, and in Henry's essay in his~4nnualReportfor 1859, pp. ~3-~7.
47 Ralph S. Bates, Scientific Societies in the United States, ad ed. (New York: Columbia
University Press, ~958), pp. 37, 38.
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34 I Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
branches of science. We have among us too few working men and too
large a number of those who would occupy the time of the meeting in
idle discussion."48
The early years of the nation had promised better. The enthusiasm
for science in the colonies and the new republic, fostered by patrician
amateurs of science and by visiting academicians, had generated a
large body of new and valuable natural history and made contribu-
tions to the physical sciences, which, though peripheral to the great
discoveries earlier in Europe, were still considerable. The period saw
the beginnings of specialization in this country, as an indigenous
botany, zoology, and geology emerged from natural history; physics,
chemistry, and astronomy from natural philosophy; and as medical
botany, medical chemistry, anatomy, and pathology became distinct
aspects of medicine. In Henry's century a new revolution in science
was gathering its forces as interest shifted from astronomy to geology
and from physics to biology, from the sciences of nature to the
. ,.
sciences ot man.
After the middle of the century, the colleges and universities began
to produce small numbers of scientists and amateurs of science who
swelled the ranks of the teaching profession and the philosophical
societies and joined in the effort to advance scientific interests. The
first graduate school, at Yale, was established in 1846, but did not
award a doctorate in science until ~86~.
More aware than most of the facilities and the prestige afforded
men of science in Europe, Joseph Henry saw as typical his own
experience in trying to make real contributions to knowledge. "We
labor under many disadvantages in this country in the way of original
experiments," he had written in ~836, "in the difficulty and delay of
publication, and the problem of being anticipated; or of going over
ground that has already been successfully cultivated."49 His trip
abroad that summer confirmed his anxiety about American science.
The serious men of science for whom Henry spoke probably
numbered between five and six hundred in a population of about
fifteen million, their strongest bond the vision of a nation enriched
and strengthened by a growing stream of discoveries.50 The kind of
48 Henry to M. De La Rive, Professor of Natural Philosophy (physics) at the University
of Geneva, draft letter, November 12, ~84~ Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian
Institution Archives).
49 Henry to Prof. James D. Forbes, Edinburgh University, typed copy of letter of June
6, ~836 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
50 The total of scientists and serious amateurs at mid-century probably did not exceed
eight hundred and forty. See Donald deB. Beaver, "The American Scientific Commu-
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Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America / 35
original experiments that Henry had in mind were those of Franklin
in electricity and his own in electromagnetism, the latter made only
with knowledge after the fact of the same studies being conducted
abroad. A more recent instance of that lag in scientific communication
had prompted him to write Bache asking whether he had "any
information about the beautiful theory established by Ohm." Bache hadn't,
though Georg Simon Ohm had published his paper in ~826, eight
years before.5~
It was that kind of intelligence, beyond the province of Silliman's
Journal, that Henry sought to make available in the reports and
summaries of scientific progress in Smithsonian publications and in
his plan, announced in ~848, for a vast continuing index to world
scientific literatures It was a need met for a time by the publication,
begun in ~850, of The Annual of Scientific Discovery, compiled from
American, British, French, and German publications.
An impulse was needed to give encouragement and direction to
really serious scientists, but Henry did not see it in the National
Institute in the capital. Nor did it seem likely to come from the new
nity, ~800-~860: A Statistical-Historical Study" (Yale University: Ph.D. dissertation,
66), p. ~34
In ~853, Spencer F. Baird, Secretary of the AAAS and Assistant Secretary of the
Smithsonian, compiled a register of "Addresses of Scientific Men in the United States',
totaling silo names (Baird Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives). More than half
the assembled form letters are from confessed amateurs: jewelers, watchmakers,
attorneys, farmers, apothecaries, dental surgeons, clergymen, and high school and
seminary principals. Internal evidence suggests that the volume had its origin in a
canvass to swell the ranks of the American Association, and subsequently, with the
addition of sheets having such names as Agassiz, Alexander, Caswell, Bache, Hilgard,
and Maury (but not Baird himself or Henry), became a directory.
A second Baird directory, similarly compiled in ~875, and lettered on its binding
"Answers to Circular/Smithsonian Correspondents/Subjects in which Interested," with
each questionnaire also asking for information on private collections, comprised almost
three times as many names as the first, a large proportion of them physicians, lawyers,
editors, teachers, and students.
5~ Henry to Bache, December ~7, ~834, and reply, January 3, ~835 Joseph Henry
Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
Although Ohm's paper, published in full in ~827, was known in Europe, his law was
not established until Pouillet challenged it in ~83 I, whence it came to the attention of
the Royal Society (Eugene Lommel, "The Scientific Work of Georg Simon Ohm,"
Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report for 1891, pp. 247-256).
52 Henry's proposed index to nineteenth-century scientific literature, first described in
Smithsonian Institution,AnnualReportfor 1847, pp. ~77, ~82-~83, for lack of Smithso-
nian funds was actually undertaken by the Royal Society in ~858 and completed in
~925. See Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report for 1851, p. dog; 1867, pp. 57-58;
Lyons, The Royal Society 1660-1940, pp. 284-285, 287-288, 307, 309-3~ I.
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36 / Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
association proposed by the geologists.53 The prospective organization
had its genesis in New York State's Geological Survey. Seeking a way
to coordinate the efforts of its geologists with those of Pennsylvania
and New England, whose work often crossed neighboring state bor-
ders, members of the several surveys had met at the Franklin Institute
on April 2, ~840, and, with fellow geologists invited from Delaware,
Virginia, and Michigan, had organized the Association of American
Geologists.
To accommodate the interstate membership, subsequent meetings
were held at Albany, Washington, New Haven, New York, and
Boston, at which first naturalists and then chemists, physicists, and
other men of science were admitted to membership. Within five years
almost every prominent figure in American science was on its roster.
Henry had joined in ~840; Bache after 1842.
Louis Agassiz and His Influence on American Science
The effort to organize science in this country was at low ebb when an
event occurred that was to have far-reaching consequences for
American science. In the early fall of ~846, the Swiss naturalist Louis
Agassiz arrived in Boston to give the Lowell Institute lectures on "The
Plan of Creation in the Animal Kingdom" and, with a two-year grant
from Frederick William IV of Prussia, to make a comprehensive study
of the natural history of the New World.54
Agassiz was not only famous as a naturalist, he was also a born
projector of grand designs for science and a man of inexhaustible
enthusiasm and drive. His energy and his compulsion to dominate
made him dogmatic and sometimes ruthless, both as an associate and
as a scientist, but he could also be the most agreeable and irresistible
of friends and companions. Before he was thirty-six he had earned a
reputation in Europe for his Recherches sur les po7ssons fossiles (~833-
~844), considered the most original and definitive work of its kind.
His Etudes sur les glaciers (~84~) was equally original in its unique
concept of the great Ice Age and was at once recognized as a classic of
geologic literature.55
When Agassiz arrived in America, he knew only Silliman at Yale
S. Henry to M. De La Rive, November 12, ~84~ Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian
Institution Archives).
54 Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
~ 960), pp. ~ i4, ~ ~ 6, ~ ~ 9.
55 Ibid., pp. 79, 95.
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Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America 1 37
Louis Agassiz lecturing at Penikese, the first American seaside laboratory (Photograph
courtesy the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University).
(who had sent him a complete set of the American Journal of Science and
Arts), Augustus A. Gould of Boston, and, through correspondence,
two other naturalists in Philadelphia and Boston. Then thirty-nine
and a strikingly handsome man who exuded self-confidence and
dedication to science, he charmed everyone he met and, as a superb
and tireless lecturer and envoy of Old World culture, soon became a
nationwide celebrity.
Agassiz saw at once the insularity afflicting the efforts of American
men of science "owing to their deference towards England." As a
consequence, "the scientific work of central Europe reaches them
through English channels," he wrote Henri Milne-Edwards, and
announced his determination to "render a real service to them and to
science, by freeing them from this tutelage, raising them in their own
eyes, and drawing them also a little more towards ourselves."56
56 Agassiz to Henri Milne-Edwards, entomologist at the Jardin des Plants, Paris, May 3 I,
~847, in Elizabeth Cary Agassiz (ed.), Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., ~885), p. 435.
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38 / Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
In ~848 he was installed as Professor of Zoology and Geology at
Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School. Eight years later, full of his
projects for a great natural history of the United States and, simulta-
neously, an epic series of volumes spanning the whole of American
natural history, Agassiz made his decision to remain in America
"under the conviction that I shall exert a more advantageous and
more extensive influence on the progress of science in this country
than in Europe."57 He became a citizen in ~86~.
Even before his appointment at Harvard, he had met Bache, who at
once put at his disposal a Coast Survey vessel under Lt. Charles Henry
Davis for a cruise of exploration off Cape Cod and Nantucket. He had
won also the friendship of Henry and subsidies from the Smithsonian
when his grant from the Prussian monarch gave out.58
Agassiz's almost overnight assimilation into the world of American
science, his acceptance as the authority on European professional
standards and practices, and his capture of the American public
through his lecture tours made him a force previously unknown in
the intellectual community. As no one before him, he commanded
attention when he deplored not only public indifference to science in
America, whose investigators were better known in Europe than at
home, but also the tendency of Americans to look to European
authority rather than native achievement. As he wrote to geologist
and paleontologist James Hall, in ~849, ". . . until there are men in
America whose authority is acknowledged in matters of science there
will be no true intellectual independence, however great be . . . political
freedom."59
This lack of authority had been on the minds of both Henry and
Bache for more than a decade, when friends of Samuel F. B. Morse in
~838 had claimed for him, without contradiction, "the entire origin"
of the magnetic telegraph, and when, not long after, Henry had
learned that a claim to the solution of the whole problem of terrestrial
magnetism had been given unquestioning credence in a hearing
before Congress.
I am now more than ever of your opinion [Henry wrote Bache at the time]
that the real working men in the way of science in this country should make
common cause and endeavor by every proper means unitedly to raise their
own scientific character, to make science more respected at home, to increase
the facilities of scientific investigation and the inducements to scientific
57 Lurie, Louis Agassiz, p. 193.
S8 Ibid., pp ~ ~5, ~25 ff
Ibid., p. ~63.
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Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America 1 39
labours.... At present however Charlatanism is much more likely to meet
with attention and reward that true unpretending merit.60
And Bache had used as an argument the threat of charlatanry in
persuading Henry to come to the Smithsonian.
The dilemma had been much discussed at the meetings of the
Association of American Geologists (later, Geologists and Naturalists).
The Association had flourished from the beginning; and as its num-
bers rose above four hundred, some of its members saw in it the
nucleus for the central, comprehensive, and authoritative organiza-
tion of science needed in the nation. The catalyst was Agassiz. When
he was invited to address the Association on his current and planned
research at its meeting in Boston in September ~84:, he remained
afterward and was elected to membership. The same day he was
appointed to a committee with Henry D. Rogers, Director of the New
Jersey Geological Survey, and the mathematician Benjamin Peirce to
plan the reorganization of the society.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science
At the September meeting a year later, the society of geologists
became the American Association for the Promotion (later, Ad-
vancement) of Science (AAAS), on the model of the similarly com-
prehensive and peripatetic British Association. It intended to exert a
broader influence than that possible to any of the established societies,
and,
by periodical and migratory meetings, to promote intercourse between those
who are cultivating science in different parts of the United States; to give a
stronger and more general impulse, and a more systematic direction to
science in our country; and to procure for the labours of scientific men,
increased facilities and a wider usefulness.6i
60 Henry to Bache, August 9, ~838 Uoseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution
Archives).
6~ AAAS, Proceedings I :8 (~848); Bates, Scientific Societies in the United Sates, pp. 73-77.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science, founded in ~83~ to give
greater systematic direction to scientific inquiry, arose out of criticism of the Royal
Society, whose membership qualifications of wealth, as much as scientific merit, had
reduced the Society, as some thought, to a social club.
An attempt to organize a similar association in this country had been made earlier, in
~838, by a group under Dr. John C. Warren, Harvard Professor of Anatomy and
Surgery and the finest surgeon of his time. Their effort to enlist the aid of the
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4° / Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
Seeking the widest possible membership, the AAAS more than dou-
bled its numbers in less than a decade, from 46 ~ original members to
Too by ~854. The Association, by sheer numbers and the prestige of
some of them, succeeded in representing organized science where
previous organizations had failed. It proceeded at once to form
special committees to study scientific problems of national concern
and to establish communications with federal and state officials. A
committee under fared Sparks, Harvard President, opened corre-
spondence with the Secretary of the Navy to seek support for Lt.
Matthew Maury's compilation of charts of winds and currents at the
Navy's Depot of Charts and Instruments. Another, under Dr. Robert
W. Gibbes, Charleston physician and chemist, petitioned the gover-
nors of the states to expand their geological surveys. One, under
Henry, sought congressional support for the formal establishment
of standard weights and measures. Robert Hare and Agassiz's com-
mittee urged the inclusion of scientific members on all boundary
commissions and exploratory expeditions of the government. Still
other committees undertook advisory assistance to the Coast Survey,
establishment of a prime meridian, and an investigation of physical
constants. Henry, as a subcommittee of one, was asked to prepare
a code of scientific ethics for adoption by the Association.62
Through the many members of the AAAS connected with the
surveying and exploring agencies of the War and Navy Departments
and the General Land Office, and in tale Patent Office, Coast Survey,
Naval Observatory, and the Smithsonian, the committees demon-
American Philosophical Society in setting up an Association for the Promotion of
Science was unsuccessful. See Warren to Joseph Henry, September z9, 1838 (Joseph
Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives), and Edward Warren, Life of./ohn
Collins Warren, M.D. Compiled Chiefly from His Autobiography and Journals (Boston:
Ticknor and Fields, 1860), vol. II, pp. 1-2.
62 AAAS, Proceedings 2 :vii-ix ( ~ 850); 3 :vi ( 1 85 ~ ); 5 :vii ( 1 853).
Bache, speaking for the Association and inspired by Henry's address on ethics as
retiring president on August as, ~850, requested him to set out "the clear principles
laid down upon this subject" in the address [Proceedings 6:1ix, (1852) ].
"Unfortunately for our scientific morals," a historian of the AAAS commented later,
"the subject was not elucidated by any report" [Science 59:386, (May 2, 1924)].
A fragment of Henry's address (four sheets), setting out in prosodic clauses the moral
purposes and obligations of men of science, is in "Notes and Other Material" (Joseph
Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
The subject of ethics was very much on Henry's mind at the time, and three months
after his address, he wrote Bache that in a recent interview with Lieutenant Maury, he
had found him "rather I think indefinite in his views of scientific ethics" [Henry to
Bache, November So, 1850 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives) ] .
A sequel occurred thirteen years later when the National Academy reviewed Maury's
chart work.
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Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America 1 4 ~
strafed their usefulness to federal agencies even though the Associa-
-tion lacked national recognition and support. That kind of recogni-
tion and influence had first been sought by the National Institute in
Washington. Although it was granted a congressional charter, its
linkage between government and science was superficial and de-
pended mainly on the important politicians and government officials
in its membership. And, unlike the AAAS, its members had no scientific
expertise. By ~850, the membership of the failing National Institute
was down to twenty-seven, and its influence was almost at an end.
Neither the peripatetic and all-embracing American Association
rotor the politically oriented Institute represented the kind of institu-
tion that was needed in the nation's capital. In ~848, Henry had
resisted renewed plans to revive the Institute, since he did not
consider it well adapted to promote original research and felt that it
was likely to remain little more than a museum. As he wrote Bache,
In the first place I object to the name National Institute and would propose
that of the national Scar with different departments. In the second place the
movement should not be alone made by persons in Washington. Much more
prominent men of science throughout the country should be allowed to
participated
Bache, in his address as retiring President of the AAAS at its meeting
in Albany in August ~85~, proposed as a responsibility of the federal
government the establishment of an authoritative tribunal for science
and vehicle for the promotion and support of national science, taking
as his models not the Royal Society but the vigorous British Associa-
tion and the French Institute, the researches of the latter in abstract
science then flourishing under the patronage of the Republic.
The nation, said Bache, was making such rapid progress in material
improvements owing to applied science that it was
impossible for either the legislative or executive departments of our Govern-
ment to avoid incidentally, if not directly, being involved in the decision of
such questions.... [T] here are few applications of science which do not bear
on the interests of commerce and navigation, naval or military concerns, the
customs, roads, the light-houses, the public lands, post-offices, and post-
roads, either directly or remotely.
To assist in those decisions he envisioned
an institution of science, supplementary to existing ones . . . to guide public action in
reference to scientific matters. . . an institute of which the members belong in
63 Henry to Bache, May 27, ~848; Henry to Francis Markoe, August ~6, ~848 Joseph
Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
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42 / Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
turn to each of our widely scattered States, working at their places of
residence, and reporting their results; meeting only at particular times, and
for special purposes; engaged in researches self-directed or desired by the
body, called for by Congress or by the Executive, who furnish the means for
the inquiries.... Such a body would supply a place not occupied by existing
institutions, and which our own ~AAAS] iS, from its temporary and voluntary
character, not able to supply.64
The great size of this nation made such "a central organization" and
"permanent consulting body" necessary, to give advice to the gov-
ernment, not only in new undertakings but also with respect to
existing ones, and to advise on doubtful points. Without an authority,
these decisions would not be made, or be left to influence, or to
imperfect knowledge. Only an organization of counsellors preemi-
nent in science would be competent to deal with such matters as
standards of weights and measures and their regulation, the fixing of
proper scales of the barometer and thermometer, and the determina-
tion of the prime meridian. It would advise also on explorations that
should be made on land and water, on systems of extended
meteorological observations, on charts of navigation and nautical
almanacs, and on plans for geological and geographical surveys.
Moreover, said Bache, the time was approaching when matters involv-
ing standards would be ripe for general settlement throughout the
world, and only the recommendations of an authoritative national
body similar to those abroad could lead to general and uniform
adoption for world use.65
The speech was an extraordinary blueprint for a new National
Institute writ large, to utilize, as an immediate source, the member-
ship of the American Association and of its committees that were
rendering service to federal agencies. The examples abroad and past
experience here clearly demonstrated that the best and, perhaps, only
hope for the advancement of science resided in the government,
through its support of a permanent scientific council. Such recogni-
tion would give character to true men of science, enable them to
develop standards of high competency, and not least, put down the
pretenders and charlatans in science who all too frequently had the
ear of legislative and judicial bodies.
64 "Address of Professor A. D. Bache," AAAS, Proceedings 6:xlviii, 1-ii ( ~852).
wind., pp. lvii-lviii.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
joseph henry
