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SUMMARY:Iron holds the whale - Jenny Bulstrode (Department of History and 
 Philosophy of Science)
DTSTART:20171113T130000Z
DTEND:20171113T140000Z
UID:TALK85141@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Sebestian Kroupa
DESCRIPTION:Just past noon\, on 30 January 1839\, a fight broke out in the
  Admiralty Library. On the one side\, an official committee of savants in 
 magnetic surveying\, appointed to reform the Navy's dangerously defective 
 compasses\; on the other\, the Reverend William Scoresby\, a whaler turned
  clergyman who ministered to his congregation of mariners from a floating 
 pulpit. While the committee and the former captain shared a common evangel
 ism\, they differed in its expression\; a conflict that erupted over knowl
 edge of iron.\n\nA household name for his whaling journals and Arctic natu
 ral histories\, in 1836 Scoresby caused a stir among the magnetic communit
 y for his remarkable mastery of the properties of iron. In particular\, hi
 s 'compound needle' drew envious eyes\, so light\, and so powerful it woul
 d surpass the finest variation compass. In spring 1838\, the committee sol
 icited Scoresby's help\; a year later they pulled him\, and his compound n
 eedle\, apart in a heated contest of disputed ownership. Through the early
  nineteenth century\, revolutionary changes in the means of production tra
 nsformed the nature of iron\, rendering its properties in flux and uncerta
 in. The right to make\, manipulate\, and assess iron became the stuff of f
 erocious contest for savants of the survey sciences\, as it was for combin
 ations protesting the depreciation of their work under the changing labour
  economy. Scoresby staked his claim to knowledge of the metal by drawing o
 n the labour law of the whale-boats\, a culture peculiarly preoccupied wit
 h the properties of certain materials\, ink and skin\, parchment and iron.
  Extant collections of Scoresby's iron in Greenwich and Whitby are the tra
 ces of a battle between ways of knowing this protean metal\; 'not down in 
 any map\; true places never are'.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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