In the nineteenth century, scientific practice underwent a dramatic                  transformation from personal endeavor to business enterprise. In Spectrum of Belief,                  Myles Jackson explores this transformation through a sociocultural history of the                  rise of precision optics in Germany. He uses the career of the optician Joseph von                  Fraunhofer (1787-1826) to probe the relationship between science and society, and                  between artisans and experimental natural philosophers, during this important                  transition.Fraunhofer came from a long line of glassmakers. Orphaned at age eleven,                  the young apprentice moved in with his master, the court decorative glass cutter. At                  age nineteen, bored with his work and angered by his master's refusal to allow him                  to study optical theory, Fraunhofer took a position at the Optical Institute                  assisting in the manufacture of achromatic lenses. Within ten years he was producing                  the world's finest achromatic lenses and prisms.Housed in an old Benedictine                  monastery, Fraunhofer's laboratory mirrored the labor of the monks. Because of his                  secrecy (after his death, even those who had worked most closely with him could not                  achieve his success), British experimental natural philosophers were unable to                  reproduce his work. This secrecy, while guaranteeing his institute's monopoly,                  thwarted Fraunhofer's attempts to gain credibility within the scientific community,                  which looked down on artisanal work and its clandestine practices as an affront. The                  response to the ensuing rise of German optical technology sheds light on crucial                  social, economic, and political issues of the period, such as mechanization, patent                  law reform, the role of skills in both physics and society, the rise of Mechanics'                  Institutes, and scientific patronage. After his death, Fraunhofer's example was used                  in the newly united Germany to argue for the merging of scientific research and                  technological innovation with industrial and state support.

Spectrum of Belief: Joseph von Fraunhofer and the Craft of Precision Optics (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology) PDF

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