“National Consolidation through Science-Based Public Education: The Prehistory of Alexander Dallas Bache, 1828-1842”

Axel Jansen (German Historical Institute Washington DC)

Alexander Dallas Bache was a key architect of American scientific institutions in nineteenth-century America. As the superintendent (director) of the U.S. Coast Survey, he helped shape the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) during the 1850s and he became the first president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1863. This paper explores the prehistory of Bache’s engagement on the federal stage by considering his work as president of Girard College for Orphans in Philadelphia, as the first principal of the city’s Central High School before 1842, and as a leader of the Franklin Institute. Considering Bache’s later prominent role, how did this early work eventually qualify him for national leadership? On the basis of Bache’s correspondence, this paper will develop the idea that Bache, a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, sought to live up to his family’s deep commitment to helping build an American national state by developing institutions rooted in principles of scientific rationality. In the 1830s, Bache sought to advance his goals by shaping local institutions dedicated to expanding knowledge and to transmitting such knowledge through public rather than private education. Considerable pushback against his ideas in Philadelphia marked the political limits of Bache’s vision for science dedicated to the political “sovereign”. His career would continue on the federal plane in Washington DC after 1842 but his early experience had translated into an awareness of the particular challenges for a public role of science in America.

“Looking Outward: The U.S. Naval Observatory and its International Expeditions, 1849-1878”

Steven Dick (Former NASA Chief Historian)

The U.S. Naval Observatory, founded as the Depot of Charts and Instruments in 1830, became the de facto national observatory for the United States in 1844 with a Congressional appropriation, new buildings and instruments, and Matthew Fontaine Maury as its Superintendent. Within five years the U.S. Navy sponsored a series of wide-ranging international astronomical expeditions with connections to the Observatory. The first, the U.S. Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere, was headed by James Melville Gilliss during the period 1849-1852 and resulted in six hefty volumes of results and the founding of the Chilean National Observatory, still active today. This was followed by a series of solar eclipse expeditions to Peru (1858), Washington Territory and Vancouver (1860), the Behring Straits (1869), Gibraltar and Sicily (1870), as well as a large effort inside the United States for the 1878 eclipse. But the most elaborate expeditions were those sent around the world in 1874 and 1882 to observe the extremely rare transits of Venus. Taken together these efforts reflect a desire to increase the scientific reputation of the United States, all the while balancing the practical needs of the Navy and the nation with the desire to advance pure scientific research. The expeditions may also be viewed as part of the age of exploration, the celestial analog of the American push westward.

“Civil War Medical Photography and the Shaping of Professional Practice”

Shauna Devine (Western University)

On May 21, 1862 Union Surgeon General William Hammond issued a circular letter directing doctors to send medical and surgical specimens to the new Army Medical Museum. Physicians were asked to look for the seat of disease in organs and tissues, to study lesions and learn pathology. Within this project, unique and interesting cases were documented through medical photography. Physicians were able to capture images of illnesses and demonstrate the specificity of disease forms. Seeing the limitations of localized pathology, some physicians developed new tools such as microscopy, histology, and photomicrography (photography using a compound microscope) to elucidate pathological and physiological processes. Many photographs show the progression of specific treatments and the various stages of diseases. They also demonstrate routine procedures, interesting and unusual cases, and even operative and post-operative details. The photographs taken to preserve a medical record of the war, to help determine the amount of postwar pension payments, but most importantly to learn from Civil War bodies, proved an important stimulus for the development of scientific medicine. Civil War photographs provide a rich resource for understanding 19th century medical practice, how physicians learned, how knowledge was produced, the shaping of professional practice and the scientific possibilities of medicine. Through an examination of medical photography during the American Civil War, this paper seeks to give greater historical and epistemological reflection on the development of scientific medicine in the later nineteenth century.

“Weighing in on Whiskey: The National Academy of Sciences and Spirit Meters in the Making of the Modern Administrative State”

Daniel Kevles (Yale University)

The National Academy of Sciences was established in March 1863 by an act of Congress virtually in the dead of night. Eager to demonstrate its value to the federal government, and legitimate itself among the numerous scientists who counted its creation a backdoor coup, it willingly signed up to help the Treasury Department collect excise taxes on domestically distilled spirits. Established to finance the Civil War, the levy was directly proportional to the percentage of alcohol in the spirits. The Treasury Department wanted a “spirits meter” that would determine the percentage but provide a read-out in “proof,” which was the measure of the whiskey trade. More than that, the Department also wanted the Academy to figure out how to prevent the distillers from spiriting away the spirits before they could be assessed for taxes, a practice that it estimated was costing the government millions of dollars a year in lost revenue. This paper will fist touch briefly on the Academy’s problematic position at the time of its founding, then cover identification of a suitable spirits meter, its fix for the problem of cheating, and the tempestuous fate of its recommendations among the distillers and in the Congress. It will also show that in the end the Academy demonstrated its utility in providing the kind of technical information and technologies that were essential to the functioning of the emerging administrative state in an industrializing society.