Thomas Baldwin and the Creation of the Hot Air Balloon as a Scientific and Aesthetic Site of Knowledge in the Late Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 169 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Fiona Amery
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
Balloon Flight ◽  
Hot Air ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
New Perspective

‘But what scenes of grandeur and beauty! A tear of pure delight flashed in his eye! Of pure and exquisite delight and rapture; to look down on the unexpected change already wrought in the works of art and nature, contracted to a span by the new perspective, diminished almost beyond the bounds of credibility’.1 So wrote Thomas Baldwin in his account of his hot air balloon flight from Chester to Warrington in Lancashire on 8 September 1785. This telling description of his emotional response to the prospect of the earth from the balloon car epitomises Baldwin’s dual concern with aesthetic pleasure and scientific understanding. He felt elated viewing the land anew from his aerial position, amazed at the transformation it revealed and the experimental opportunities it presented.

Horace-Bénédict De Saussure’s Quest for Mont Blanc

Peak Pursuits ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 90-115
Author(s):  
Caroline Schaumann
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Influential Observations ◽  
New Model ◽  
Alexander Von Humboldt ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Louis Agassiz

This chapter recounts the late eighteenth century to trace the steps of Conrad Gessner, the Swiss naturalist who is widely credited as the father of Alpinism. It analyzes Horace-Bénédict de Saussure's “Voyages dans les Alpes” that delineated scientific observations and ecstatic descriptions of Saussure's travels. It also explores Saussure's creation of an entirely new model of depicting a mountain's summit perspective, introduction of influential observations on glaciers and glacial movement, and obsession with climbing Mont Blanc. The chapter talks about how Alexander von Humboldt referenced Saussure in his own publications and credited Saussure's accomplishment whenever possible. It also mentions Swiss geologist and zoologist Louis Agassiz, who was among the first to publicly suggest that glaciers covered large parts of the earth during an “ice age.”

scholarly journals Aeromania and Enlightenment: The Politics of Hot Air Balloons in Karamzin's "Letters of a Russian Traveler"

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Rodolphe Baudin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Hot Air ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Young Writer ◽  
Social Autonomy

This paper focuses on Karamzin’s depiction, in Letters of a Russian Traveler, of Abbé Miolan’s failed hot air balloon flight in Paris in July 1784. After briefly tracing the history of aeromania in late eighteenth-century France and England, as well as its contemporary Russian reception, notably by Catherine the Great, the paper identifies Karamzin’s sources of information on the event and analyses the reasons why the Russian writer mentioned it in his travelogue. It demonstrates that Karamzin’s depiction of a physical experiment embodying European capacity for innovation in the late eighteenth century was not an expression of scientific curiosity. Instead, the young writer used the episode as a metaphor of social and political management, in order to reflect on the questions of social autonomy and the relation of the enlightened public with State power in both France and Russia. By depicting Miolan’s failed flight as a condemnable nuissance to public order, reminiscent of the revolutionary trouble he had witnessed during his journey through France, Karamzin showed his endorsement of Catherine’s conservative conception of the Enlightenment. By depicting how the French public sphere dealt with Miolan and possibly implicitly comparing it with the way Catherine had dealt with Radishchev, he nevertheless showed the superiority of self-regulation over political violence in managing the nobility’s growing longing for autonomy.

scholarly journals On the Origin of the Pastorals' Authenticity Criticism: A ‘New’ Perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-320
Author(s):  
Jermo Van Nes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Common ◽  
New Perspective

It is generally agreed among contemporary scholars that the modern critique of the authorship claim of the New Testament letters addressed to Timothy and Titus originated in early nineteenth-century Germany with the studies of Schmidt and Schleiermacher on 1 Timothy. However, a late eighteenth-century study by the British clergyman Edward Evanson challenges this consensus as it proves Titus to have been suspect of pseudonymity before. This ‘new’ perspective found in Evanson's neglected source also nuances the common assumption that from its very beginnings the critical campaign against the letters' authenticity was mainly driven by linguistic considerations.

scholarly journals ‘Waer vriendenmin gaet, hand aen hand, met liefde voor het Vaderland’ : Het zingen van politieke liederen als verbindende praktijk in het Nederlandse revolutietijdvak (1780-1815)

2021 ◽  
Vol 133 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-638
Author(s):  
Renée Vulto
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Dutch History ◽  
Revolutionary Period

Abstract Singing Politics. Political song and collective singing practices during the Dutch revolutionary period (1780-1815)In the Dutch revolutionary period of the late eighteenth century, song was often used as a political tool to construct communities that shared interests, ideologies, and feelings. Abstract feelings of unity were made concrete through the experience of collective singing. Despite being continuously employed as a unifying practice, the ways of singing and the feelings that were involved nevertheless changed in accordance with the turbulent circumstances of the time ‐ from the emergence of the Patriots, to the Batavian Revolution, throughout the Napoleonic years, and towards the establishment of a Dutch monarchy. This essay goes beyond analysing songs as textual sources and investigates when, where, and by whom these songs were sung. By approaching the collective singing of political communities as emotional practices, we can develop a new perspective on this episode of Dutch history, in which we acknowledge the feelings and experiences of the historical actors that shaped the developments of that time.

scholarly journals Scottish chemistry, classification and the late mineralogical career of the ‘ingenious’ Professor John Walker (1779–1803)

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. EDDY
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The University ◽  
John Walker

During the first decade of the nineteenth century, Edinburgh was the scene of several lively debates concerning the structure of the Earth. Though the ideas of groups like the ‘Wernerians’ and the ‘Huttonians’ have received due attention, little has been done to explicate the practice of mineralogy as it existed in the decades before the debates. To dig deeper into the eighteenth-century subject that formed the foundation of nineteenth-century geology in Scotland, this essay concentrates on Rev. Dr John Walker, the University of Edinburgh's Professor of Natural History (1779–1803). In pursuing this topic, it builds on an earlier BJHS article in which I excavated his early career as a mineralogist (1749–79). After first addressing a few historiographical points and the provenance of the student manuscripts upon which this study is based, I explain the method that Walker used to arrange minerals. I then move on to show that, like his younger attempts at mineralogical classification, his mature system was based predominantly upon chemistry. This sets the stage for the last half of the essay where I reconstruct the mineralogical system that Walker taught to the hundreds of students who sat in his natural history lectures from 1782 until 1800. I then conclude with a few observations about the relevance of his mineralogy to the scientific community of late eighteenth-century Edinburgh.

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