Science in the Marketplace

Fyfe, Aileen; Lightman, Bernard

doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226150024.001.0001

Cited by 145 publications

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“…Nineteenth century scientific performance was an active and expansive field. While science practitioners saw public scientific performances as an opportunity to construct their scientific authority ( Morus, 2016 : 12), other experts were also involved in creating spectacular displays and in fascinating audiences ( Fyfe and Lightman, 2007 : 13). Public scientific performances provided not only a place for the demonstration of the newest efforts in the pursuit of knowledge, but also a fashionable event for the celebration of industrial and consumer culture.…”

Section: Entrepreneurship and Scientific Spectaclementioning

confidence: 99%

Science between the fairground and the academy: The case of Dutch science popularizer L. K. Maju (1823–1886)

Gonçalves

2020

Public Underst Sci

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Historical moment essay Public Understanding of Science 00(0) significant role in the introduction of science and technology to the Netherlands, while being, at the same time, able to navigate successfully between different audiences and institutional settings. 1. From conjuror to lantern lecturer Levie Kinsbergen was born in Zutphen, a small city in the east of the Netherlands, on 17 August 1823. His birth certificate ('Levie Kinsbergen', 1823) names his mother Mietje van Huuks, housewife, and his father Meijer Kinsbergen, showman in Amsterdam. Meijer already used the stage name Maju Kinsbergen or Kinsbergen Maju, before it was adopted by his son (Overijsselsche Courant, 1823). The Kinsbergen family was a Dutch Jewish family with many connections to the entertainment industry, namely itinerant shows in Dutch fairgrounds. 2 During the 1850s, L. K. Maju styled himself as Professor of Sleight-of-Hand and toured the country's theater venues, coffee houses, and fairgrounds with Soirées Amusantes, which included conjuring acts and experimental physics (Bredasche Courant, 1857; Provinciaal Dagblad van Noord-Brabant en's Hertogenbossche Stads-Courant, 1852). Between 1863 and 1864, Maju worked in London, where he performed conjuring feats "without any apparatus" at the Royal Colosseum and the Royal Polytechnic Institution under the stage names L. Kinsbergen Maju, Professor of Magic to the King of Holland or Herr Maju, the Great Prestidigitateur (Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, 1864; The Globe, 1863). Maju's association with the Polytechnic turned out to be a fruitful and long-lasting endeavor that widened the scope of his performances. In the following years, Maju exported the Polytechnic's sensational ghost lecture, Pepper's Ghost, which would become known in the Netherlands as De Geest van Maju (The Ghost of Maju in a literal translation), and the cabinet-based illusion The Sphinx. The Ghost was performed mainly as an itinerant act on Dutch fairgrounds between 1864 and 1865 (Algemeen Handelsblad, 1864; Rotterdamsche courant, 1865). While it was a very different setting from the rational entertainment environment of the Polytechnic, this choice enabled Maju to include the Ghost in a profitable circuit, reaching audiences across the Netherlands, while making use of his family network. When Maju imported The Sphinx from the Polytechnic in 1866, he skipped the fairground circuit and performed the illusion in permanent indoor theaters throughout the country, following the first very successful performances at the Paleis voor Volksvlijt, which was referred to as the Dutch Crystal Palace (Algemeen Handelsblad, 1866). Later that year, Maju started to add other acts (such as microscopic and agioscopic, or opaque, projection) to the short piece that was The Sphinx and to offer evening programs which included three to four sections, lasted about 2 hours and which he advertised as scientific performances (Utrechtsch Provinciaal en Stedelijk Dagblad, 1866). Maju quickly devised a new repertoire based on magic lantern lectures and technol...

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Section: Entrepreneurship and Scientific Spectaclementioning

confidence: 99%

Science between the fairground and the academy: The case of Dutch science popularizer L. K. Maju (1823–1886)

Gonçalves

2020

Public Underst Sci

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“…As the hunger for new knowledge about the world grew, the narratives published by explorers began to circulate widely and became immensely popular across late nineteenth-century society (Withers & Keighren, 2011;MacLaren, 2011). Furthermore, newspapers, magazines and other printed media were also filled with stories about the latest feats of exploration allowing a diverse array of new information to spread across all levels of European society (Fyfe & Lightman, 2007;Lightman, 2007;Newman, 2019;Sebe, 2014). Explorers also undertook lengthy lecture tours to share their experiences with audiences and, in the process, shaped ideas about the regions where they had travelled (Finnegan, 2011;Finnegan, 2017;Keighren, 2008).…”

Section: On the Stage And On The Pagementioning

confidence: 99%

Off the beaten track? Critical approaches to exploration studies

Martin

Armston‐Sheret

2019

Geography Compass

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“…To begin with, contemporary records of the Great Exhibition of 1851 11 give a picture of a very different environment for displaying progress and knowledge than might normally be associated with scientific research and development—although perhaps not so different in mid‐Victorian England where, it has been said, “middle‐class urban audiences attended glittering social gatherings, or conversaziones ” and “[s]cience figures prominently among the displays of the fine, industrial and decorative arts, antiquities, archeology, literature, ethnography, technology and music that stimulated discussion” (Fyfe and Lightman, 2007, p. 7) 12 . The exhibition, as conceived by those behind it, including Prince Albert and Henry Cole (later first Director of the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum), was more a living museum than a narrowly conceived scientific exhibition.…”

Section: Patenting At the Nineteenth‐century Exhibitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patents and Exhibitions

Richardson

2009

World Intellectual Property

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In this article I suggest that a forgotten value of the patent law system is freedom of expression. Vestiges can be found in the law's allowance for exhibition of unpatented inventions under provisions whose history can be traced back to the great exhibitions of the nineteenth century. The provisions' initial purpose may have been to preserve an inventor's ability to patent an invention at a time when exhibition was the dominant norm and patenting relatively limited. But, for various reasons to be explored in the article, patenting has now emerged as the dominant norm. When it comes to reform of patent law, if anything, I argue, the law could expand the freedom to exhibit. There may be some net benefits to be obtained in terms of supporting and driving innovation. However, the benefit most especially associated with exhibitions lies in the collective enjoyment of the spectacle—as flourished in the medieval markets and fairs long before the patent system emerged as a mechanism to permit and regulate monopolies, found a measure of official support in the nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century museums, galleries and exhibitions, and is now being rediscovered again in certain newer forms of public display of the twenty‐first century.

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Science in the Marketplace

Cited by 145 publications

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Science between the fairground and the academy: The case of Dutch science popularizer L. K. Maju (1823–1886)

Science between the fairground and the academy: The case of Dutch science popularizer L. K. Maju (1823–1886)

Off the beaten track? Critical approaches to exploration studies

Patents and Exhibitions

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