After Boyle and the Leviathan: the Second Generation of British Air Pumps

Abstract

This paper examines the second generation of British air pumps, covering the period 1700-1750. The air pump originated in the 1650s and 1660s thanks to the work of Otto von Guericke in Magdeburg, Robert Boyle in Oxford and London, and Accademia del Cimento in Florence. While these first models were often seen as unreliable and temperamental, and available to a small group only, the next period saw the air pump transformed into a publicly accessible device for use in public and private demonstrations, in practical applications, as well as in the production of new knowledge. In England, the instrument maker Francis Hauksbee and his followers played a decisive role in this process, which was connected, among other things, to popular medicine, anatomy and health. In this period, pneumatics (the field of air pumps and air-pump practice) reached a state where the pump came to be regarded as an unproblematic tool; and where a vacuum' came to be thought of and handled as an object.

Science Artisans and Open Science Hardware

“…The air pump performed the new philosophical and scientific theory of change as a process involving atoms, void, and chance, which challenged the standard teleological explanations of nature based on a tedious debate with Aristotle’s “horror vacui”—nature fearing empty places (van Helden, 1991). This radical instrument performing atomism paradoxically also supported the religious beliefs in spirits understood as immaterial forces (Brundtland, 2011; Heilbron, 1989; Shapin & Schaffer, 2011). Simon Schaffer (1987) shows how the new experimental practice and a model of testimony surrounding the air pump actually preserved these old theological themes of spirits and souls.…”

Francis Hauksbee and his air pump

“…What follows is an overview. 50 In his experiments on light and electricity, Hauksbee used the air pump to evacuate rotatable glass globes and cylinders, managing to create a flickering, bluish light inside them by rubbing the outside surface. 51 The light would disappear gradually when air was let into the vessels, but at atmospheric pressure, rubbing (and hence electrifying) the glass would enable it to attract woollen threads, etc.…”