An Education for the Whole People

2020 ◽  
pp. 172-199
Author(s):  
Anton Howes

This chapter emphasizes Henry Cole and Prince Albert's intention to create a top-down system of industrial education, as seen in countries like France. It discusses how Cole sought to align the Great Exhibition with the movement for working-class self-sufficiency. It also talks about how Cole tried to use the Royal Society of Arts to set up new drawing schools for artisans in towns where there was not already a government school of design. The chapter draws attention to a civil servant named Harry Chester who wrote to the Society with a suggestion, imploring it to aid the mechanics' institutions in late 1851. It describes Chester's obsession to improve education, even inventing a slow-burning stove to make sure classrooms would be warm on cold mornings.

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 4425-4447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Antonetti ◽  
Massimiliano Zappa

Abstract. Both modellers and experimentalists agree that using expert knowledge can improve the realism of conceptual hydrological models. However, their use of expert knowledge differs for each step in the modelling procedure, which involves hydrologically mapping the dominant runoff processes (DRPs) occurring on a given catchment, parameterising these processes within a model, and allocating its parameters. Modellers generally use very simplified mapping approaches, applying their knowledge in constraining the model by defining parameter and process relational rules. In contrast, experimentalists usually prefer to invest all their detailed and qualitative knowledge about processes in obtaining as realistic spatial distribution of DRPs as possible, and in defining narrow value ranges for each model parameter.Runoff simulations are affected by equifinality and numerous other uncertainty sources, which challenge the assumption that the more expert knowledge is used, the better will be the results obtained. To test for the extent to which expert knowledge can improve simulation results under uncertainty, we therefore applied a total of 60 modelling chain combinations forced by five rainfall datasets of increasing accuracy to four nested catchments in the Swiss Pre-Alps. These datasets include hourly precipitation data from automatic stations interpolated with Thiessen polygons and with the inverse distance weighting (IDW) method, as well as different spatial aggregations of Combiprecip, a combination between ground measurements and radar quantitative estimations of precipitation. To map the spatial distribution of the DRPs, three mapping approaches with different levels of involvement of expert knowledge were used to derive so-called process maps. Finally, both a typical modellers' top-down set-up relying on parameter and process constraints and an experimentalists' set-up based on bottom-up thinking and on field expertise were implemented using a newly developed process-based runoff generation module (RGM-PRO). To quantify the uncertainty originating from forcing data, process maps, model parameterisation, and parameter allocation strategy, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed.The simulation results showed that (i) the modelling chains based on the most complex process maps performed slightly better than those based on less expert knowledge; (ii) the bottom-up set-up performed better than the top-down one when simulating short-duration events, but similarly to the top-down set-up when simulating long-duration events; (iii) the differences in performance arising from the different forcing data were due to compensation effects; and (iv) the bottom-up set-up can help identify uncertainty sources, but is prone to overconfidence problems, whereas the top-down set-up seems to accommodate uncertainties in the input data best. Overall, modellers' and experimentalists' concept of model realism differ. This means that the level of detail a model should have to accurately reproduce the DRPs expected must be agreed in advance.


1909 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 145-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. H. L. Schwarz

Dr. J. R. Sutton has recently read a most important paper to the Royal Society of South Africa on the diurnal variation of level at Kimberley. The paper gave the preliminary results of observations made during the course of three years upon the variation of the level of the ground as recorded by a large horizontal pendulum of a special design made for the author by the Cambridge Instrument Company. It appeared from the results that the movements in the surface of the ground, which set up corresponding movements in the pendulum, were very great. The maximum westerly elongation of the extremity of the pendulum occurred about 5.30 a.m., the maximum easterly about 4.15 p.m., the medium positions a little before 11 a.m. and 9.30 p.m. Geometrically these movements may be represented on the hypothesis that the hemisphere facing the sun bulges out, forming a sort of meniscus to the geosphere. The rise and fall of the surface of the ground which such a supposition would postulate is enormous, and the very magnitude has led Dr. Sutton to hesitate in giving the figures. There can, however, be very little doubt that some rise and fall in the earth's surface is occasioned by the sun's gravitational pull, although the present figures may have to be lessened by taking into consideration other causes which contribute to the disturbance of the pendulum.


I think it must have been Harold Hartley’s sense of history which first marked me down for his attention. In 1950 he had been President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. 1951 was the centenary year of the Great Exhibition, inspired and largely managed by Prince Albert. Harold apparently made up his mind that it would be appropriate for me to succeed him as President of the British Association for that anniversary year. Furthermore, he hoped thereby to enlist my interest in all things scientific in the expectation that this connexion would give encouragement to scientists. In this way, at the age of 30, I was ‘Hartled’ into a position for which I had absolutely no qualifications whatever and which is usually reserved for the most distinguished scientists of the day. What is more, I was a serving Naval Officer with the Mediterranean Fleet and therefore not entirely unoccupied. It was Sir David Martin who first publicly referred to the verb ‘to Hartle’ which is declined like this: ‘I think’, ‘You do’, ‘It is successfully accomplished.’ Sir David Martin explained the process this way: ‘If Harold, in his persuasive way, says he thinks something or other should be done and convinces you that you can help, you don’t gripe about it, you put off other things to do what he suggests and do it much better than you thought you were capable of doing it.’


2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-129
Author(s):  
Jason Reid

This article also examines how the decline of teen-oriented room décor expertise reflected significant changes in the way gender and class influenced teen room culture during the tail end of the Cold War. Earlier teen décor strategies were often aimed towards affluent women; by contrast, the child-centric, do-it-yourself approach, as an informal, inexpensive alternative, was better suited to grant boys and working class teens from both sexes a greater role in the room design discourse. This article evaluates how middle-class home décor experts during the early decades of the twentieth century re-envisioned the teen bedroom as a space that was to be designed and maintained almost exclusively by teens rather than parents. However, many of the experts who formulated this advice would eventually become victims of their own success. By the 1960s and 1970s, teens were expected to have near total control over their bedrooms, which, in turn, challenged the validity of top-down forms of expertise.


Author(s):  
Tanja Bueltmann ◽  
Donald M. MacRaild

This chapter moves beyond the St George’s societies that scholars portray as proof that the English principally indulged in elite civic activism rather than ethnic behaviour. A second tier of English association developed in the 1870s catering specifically for independent working class migrants. The Order of the Sons of St George (OSStG; 1870) and the Sons of England (1874) represented something different. Clearly, working-class Englishmen and women in the US and Canada felt the need for another type of organization—one whose fees they could afford, something that provided them with mutual aid. These English ethnic friendly societies drew upon homeland traditions. In the US, they also took shape with an American culture of associating. Such organizations were structured by the imperatives of class solidarity and ethnic togetherness. Indeed, ethnicity also sponsored (and was sponsored by) tension and competition with the Irish. This chapter traces these developments with a particular view to the context in which they were founded, and where they were set up. The OSStG, for instance, came about in part as a coordinated response to a heightened ethnic consciousness.


2020 ◽  
pp. 200-217
Author(s):  
Anton Howes

This chapter examines the Great Exhibition of 1851, which is considered an industrial audit of the world that included exhibits from Britain's empire and other foreign nations. It talks about the East India Company, a private company that exercised control over almost all of the Indian subcontinent that provided displays of the products of India in the Great Exhibition. It also explains the aim of the Great Exhibition, which was to reveal to merchants and manufacturers in Britain the kinds of raw materials that might be imported for Englishmen to work upon. The chapter highlights the Royal Society of Arts' activities over the previous century, which focused on the spread of information instead of awarding premiums for exploiting new resources. It describes how the products of Britain's colonies brought attention to merchants and manufacturers in Britain itself.


1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
Karen Latimer

The Queen’s University of Belfast set-up a fee based service in 1991 aimed initially at built environment professionals. The Architecture and Planning Information Service at the University has long been a major source of architectural and environmental information in Ireland, and has close links with the Architectural Library at University College Dublin and with professional bodies such as the Royal Society of Ulster Architects and the Royal Town Planning Institute in Northern Ireland. Problems encountered include the relationship and balance of services to internal and external (fee-paying) users, staff training, setting realistic prices, quality control, and contract issues. Future trends are likely to include the development of client-tailored services and further collaboration between providers of fee-based services from different institutions.


The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (D. S. I. R.) was established in 1916 and, in June 1917, the Cold Storage and Ice Association sent a deputation to the Department’s Advisory Council, stating that thousands of tons of food were lost annually by decay before they could be marketed, and urging the national importance of research by Government on the preservation of foodstuffs. The Council agreed to consider the matter, and in October a report was prepared and presented by the late Sir William Hardy (then Mr W. B. Hardy, Secretary of the Royal Society and Secretary of the Society’s Food (War) Committee), and three other Fellows of the Society, the late Professors W. M. Bayliss, J. B. Farmer and Gowland Hopkins. A Research Director and a Research Board were recommended and appointed, the terms of reference of the Board being ‘To organize and control research into the preparation and preservation of foods’. The decision thus taken implied that the work to be done was considered to belong broadly to the class of national researches better conducted by the State than by industry with Government assistance. Hardy was the first Director and the members of the Board were Sir Kenneth Anderson, Sir Walter Fletcher, Sir Richard Threlfall, Professor T. B. Wood, Sir Thomas MacKenzie (High Commissioner for New Zealand) and Sir Joseph Broodbank (Chairman of the Port of London Authority). The Board became known as the Food Investigation Board—or the ‘F. I. B.’. The word ‘investigation’ rather than ‘research’ was used to avoid confusion with the Fuel Research Board—F. R. B.—which had been set up in the previous year. £5000 was allocated for the expenses of the first half-year, and the Board presented its first report in November 1918.


2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN FISHER

AbstractIn January 1729 a paper written by James Bradley was read at two meetings of the Royal Society. On a newly discovered motion of the fixed stars, later described as the theory of the aberration of light, it was to transform the science of astrometry. The paper appeared as a narrative of a programme of observation first begun at Kew and finalized at Wanstead, but it was, in reality, a careful reconstruction devised to enhance his reputation in response to a recognition that the programme was initially conducted in terms that were inimical to what he conceived to be his interest. The planned attempt to repeat Robert Hooke's celebrated experiment by James Pound, Samuel Molyneux and George Graham was set up at Molyneux's residence in Kew with James Bradley replacing Pound after his untimely and sudden demise. The unexpected and counterintuitive behaviour of the object star γ Draconis and the eradication of any suspicion of instrumental or systemic error led to the abandonment of the attempt to measure annual parallax and the initiation of new conjectures. An annual nutation was proposed but after the observation of a control star, 35 Camelopardalis, this conjecture was abandoned. Unknown to Bradley and Graham a premature approach was made by Molyneux to Newton claiming that the ‘nutation’ negated the whole of Newton's system. In the abandonment of the nutation yet another conjecture opposed to Newtonian theory was proposed and abandoned. Bradley determined to use his own instrument designed on different principles by Graham to observe the phenomenon in Wanstead. At Wanstead Bradley observed many stars to determine the parameters of the phenomenon. With the law of the motion described, Bradley proposed a hypothesis to explain it. Drawn from his earlier work on the ephemerides of Jupiter's satellites his hypothesis of the ‘new-discovered motion’ was quickly presented to the Royal Society as Bradley was working on a later and more definitive version of his paper. It is this later, third, unpublished version that is commonly referred to throughout this essay. It issued a challenge to ‘anti-Copernicans’ to offer an explanation of the observed phenomenon in geostatic terms. One such astronomer, Eustachio Manfredi, had examined the phenomenon of ‘aberrations’ in detail, the term being his. It was Bradley who first applied the term to the ‘new-discovered motion’ and within a short time ‘aberration’ was being applied by astronomers in the reduction of their observations. Annual aberration was widely accepted as evidence of the motion of the Earth. The paper enhanced Bradley's reputation and projected him into the forefront of European astronomers.


Polar Record ◽  
1951 ◽  
Vol 6 (41) ◽  
pp. 88-90
Author(s):  
G. E. R. Deacon

In 1944 Vice-Admiral Sir John Edgell, K.B.E., C.B., F.R.S., then Hydrographer of the Navy, advised the British Government that in its contribution to research in oceanography this country had fallen seriously behind other countries, including many which had no comparable traditions of interest in the oceans and their navigation, and that an oceanographical institute should be set up in Great Britain. The subject was referred to the Royal Society, and the Oceanographical Sub-Committee of the National Committee for Geodesy and Geophysics showed itself, in a report which was accepted by the Society, to be strongly in favour of setting up a national oceanographical institute. It urged the primary need for researches of physical character because marine physical investigations had taken a secondary place to marine biology ever since the Challenger Expedition of 1872–76, and because the biological aspects were well looked after by existing authorities such as the Marine Biological Associations of the United Kingdom and Scotland, the Fisheries Laboratories at Lowestoft and Aberdeen, the Discovery Investigations, and marine biological laboratories associated with universities.


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