A History of Science — Volume 5

by Henry Smith Williams; Edward Huntington Williams

For in the midst of all his political and military triumphs, Rumford remained at heart to the very end the scientist and humanitarian. He wielded power for the good of mankind; he was not merely a ruler but a public educator. He taught the people of Bavaria economy and Yankee thrift. He established kitchens for feeding the poor on a plan that was adopted all over Europe; but, better yet, he created also workshops for their employment and pleasure-gardens for their recreation. He actually banished beggary from the principality.

It was in the hope of doing in some measure for London what he had done for Munich that this large-brained and large-hearted man was led to the project of the Royal Institution. He first discussed his plans with a committee of the Society for Alleviating the Condition of the Poor, for it was the poor, the lower ranks of society, whom he wished chiefly to benefit. But he knew that to accomplish his object, he must work through the aristocratic channels; hence the name of the establishment and the charter with its list of notables. The word institution was selected by Rumford, after much deliberation, as, on the whole, the least objectionable title for the establishment, as having a general inclusiveness not possessed by such words as school or college. Yet in effect it was a school which Rumford intended to found—a school for the general diffusion of useful knowledge. There were to be classes for mechanics, and workshops, kitchens, and model-rooms, where the "application of science to the useful purposes of life" might be directly and practically taught; also a laboratory for more technical investigations, with a "professor" in charge, who should also deliver popular lectures on science. Finally, there was to be a scientific library.

All these aims were put into effect almost from the beginning. The necessary funds were supplied solely by popular subscription and by the sale of lecture tickets (as all funds of the institution have been ever since), and before the close of the year 1800 Rumford's dream had become an actuality—as this practical man's dreams nearly always did. The new machine did not move altogether without friction, of course, but on the whole all went well for the first few years. The institution had found a local habitation in a large building in Albemarle Street, the same building which it still occupies, and for a time Rumford lived there and gave the enterprise his undivided attention. He appointed the brilliant young Humphry Davy to the professorship of chemistry, and the even more wonderful Thomas Young to that of natural philosophy. He saw the workshops and kitchens and model-rooms in running order—the entire enterprise fully launched. Then other affairs, particularly an attachment for a French lady, the widow of the famous chemist Lavoisier (whom he subsequently married, to his sorrow), called him away from England never to return. And the first chapter in the history of the Royal Institution was finished.

METHOD AND RESULT

Rumford, the humanitarian, gone, a curious change came over the spirit of the enterprise he had founded. The aristocrats who at first were merely ballast for the enterprise now made their influence felt. With true British reserve, they announced their belief that the education of the masses involved a dangerous political tendency. Hence the mechanics' school was suspended and the workshops and kitchens abolished; in a word, the chief ends for which the institution was founded were annulled. The library and the lectures remained, to be sure, but they were for the amusement of the rich, not for the betterment of the poor. It was the West End that made a fad of the institution and a society function of the lectures of Sydney Smith and of the charming youth Davy. Thus the institution came to justify its aristocratic title and its regal patronage; and the poor seemed quite forgotten.

But indeed the institution itself was poor enough in these days, after the first flush of enthusiasm died away, and it is but fair to remember that without the support of its popular lectures its very existence would have been threatened. Nor in any event are regrets much in order over the possible might-have-beens of an institution whose laboratories were the seat of the physical investigations of Thomas Young, through which the wave theory of light first gained a footing, and of the brilliant chemical researches of Davy, which practically founded the science of electro-chemistry and gave the chemical world first knowledge of a galaxy of hitherto unknown elements. Through the labors of these men, and through the popular lecture-courses delivered at the institution by such other notables of science as Wollaston, Dalton, and Rum-ford, the enterprise had become world-famous before the close of the first decade of its existence.

From that day till this the character of the Royal Institution has not greatly changed. The enterprise shifted around during its earliest years, while it was gaining its place in the scheme of things; but once that was found, like a true British institution it held its course with an inertia that a mere century of time could not be expected to alter. Rumford was the sole founder of the enterprise, but it was Davy who gave it the final and definitive cast. He it was who established the tradition that the Royal Institution was to be essentially a laboratory for brilliant original investigations, the investigator to deliver a yearly course of lectures, but to be otherwise untrammelled. It occupied, and has continued to occupy, the anomalous position of a school to which pupils are on no account admitted, and whose professors teach nothing except by a brief course of lectures to which whoever cares to pay the admission price may freely enter.

But the marvellous results achieved at the Royal Institution have more than justified the existence of so anomalous an enterprise. Superlatives are always dangerous, but it may well be doubted whether there is another single institution in the world where so many novel original discoveries in physical science have been made as have been brought to light in the laboratories of the building on Albemarle Street during this first century of its occupancy; for practically all that is to be credited to Thomas Young, Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday, and John Tyndall, not to mention living investigators, is to be credited also to the Royal Institution, whose professorial chairs these great men have successively occupied. Davy spent here the best years of his youth and prime. Faraday, his direct successor, came to the institution in a subordinate capacity as a mere boy, and was the life of the institution for half a century. Tyndall gave it forty years of service. What wonder, then, that the Briton speaks of the institution as the "Pantheon of Science"?

If you visit the Royal Institution to-day you will find it in most exterior respects not unlike what it presumably was a century ago. Its long, stone front, dinged with age, with its somewhat Pantheon-like colonnade, has an appearance of dignity rather than of striking impressiveness. The main entrance, jutting full on the sidewalk, is at the street level, and the glass door gives hospitable glimpses of the interior. Entering, one finds himself in a main central hall, at the foot of the main central staircase. The air of eminent respectability so characteristic of the British institution is over all; likewise the pervasive hush of British reserve. But you will not miss also the atmosphere of sincere if uneffusive British courtesy.

At your right, as you mount the stairway, is a large statue of Faraday; on the wall right ahead is a bronze medallion of Tyndall, placed beneath a large portrait of Davy. At the turn of the stairs is a marble bust of Wollaston. Farther on, in hall and library, you will find other busts of Faraday, other portraits of Davy; portraits of Faraday everywhere, and various other busts of notables who have had connection with the institution. You will be shown the lecture-hall where Davy, Faraday, and Tyndall pronounced their marvellous discourses; the arrangement, the seats, the cushions even if appearances speak truly, and certainly the lecture-desk itself, unchanged within the century. You may see the crude balance, clumsy indeed to modern eyes, with which Davy performed his wonders. The names and the memories of three great men—Davy, Faraday, and Tyndall—will be incessantly before you, and the least impressionable person could not well escape a certain sense of consecration of his surroundings. The hush that is over everything seems but fitting.