The Royal Society of London’s history of trades programme: An early episode in applied science

Abstract

In the seventeenth century, craftsmen made most consumer products—dyed clothing, industrial chemicals, leather goods and all other household and industrial products. By the nineteenth century, the master craftsman with his apprentices had disappeared and the factory provided industrial and consumer products. The Royal Society of London’s history of trades programme was an integral part of the process which took knowledge from the craftsman and put it into the factory owners’ control. The Royal Society’s history of trades programme began in 1660 when members, excited with the new science of Galileo and the programme and promise of Francis Bacon, began the project they thought would revolutionize industry. Bacon had suggested that scholars write descriptions of trades called ‘histories of trades’ which he thought would benefit industry and provide information for the new science of the seventeenth century. Society members hoped that following Bacon’s recommendations, they could change industry as radically as Copernicus and Kepler had changed astronomy. Unfortunately, their revolution failed in the seventeenth century. Although Newton was able to bring the sciences of astronomy and mechanics to their modern forms, the makers of the applied science revolution eventually found Bacon’s programme inadequate. In 1660, however, when the Royal Society was formed, members had every reason to believe their programme would succeed, and for about two and a half decades they tried to implement Bacon’s plan. Bacon’s programme called for complete descriptions of trades, called ‘histories’, and while the Society’s scholars wrote few complete histories, they collected and published many partial accounts.