Purity vs Property? The Patenting context of constructing

1
Purity vs Property? The Patenting context of
constructing pure and applied electricity
1880-1920.

• Graeme Gooday
• Stathis Arapostathis

2
Tensions in electrical techno-science

• Overlap of physics early electrical engineering
• Cases of Henry Rowland (US), Oliver Lodge (UK)
• Both take out patents appeal for pure science
• A paradox? Historians of physics discomfort!
• Kline not a matter of physicists doing pure
  science electrical engineers doing applied.
• How did they manage their inventive research?
• How did they represent it? Who had access to it?
• What did pure science and patenting represent?
• Not necessarily mutually opposed institution
  building, family obligation, anti-monopolism
• But considerable ambivalence about prerogatives

3
Patents held in early electro-technology

• USA
• Thomas Edison c.1093 ( 1239 non-US)
• Henry Rowland 26
• UK
• William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) 70
• Silvanus P.Thompson 62
• Oliver Lodge 31
• William Preece 12
• Arthur Heaviside 6
• Oliver Heaviside 1
• James Clerk Maxwell 0

4
Patenting protecting knowledge?

• Patents a historical-legal claim to temporal
  priority in applying technical principles to
  artefact
• Temporary monopoly on use/manufacture (license)
• Potential source of income if protection not
  costly
• Corporate litigation for patent infringement
  lucrative means of enforcing knowledge monopoly!
• But patents not necessarily at odds with
  intellectual commons of scientific research
• Many only patent defensively to avoid monopoly by
  others physicists rarely bother to license or
  litigate
• Problem of openness until 1907 prior revelation
  in a scientific paper would render a UK patent
  invalid.

5
19thC pure science sponsored autonomy?

• Appeal for pure science from 1870s (Herzig)
• Category naturalized in 20thC, untenable in
  21stC?
• Purity of motivation? Inapplicability?
  Contested
• Contrast abstract science and basic science
• Non-recognition by Lord Kelvin, Lord Moulton etc
• Request for financial sponsorship with autonomy
  right to free research duty of others to pay!
• Division of labour pure researchers and appliers
• Justificatory appeal to historical-causal claim
  pure science yields practical benefits
• Rewriting of history of science-industry nexus

6
Historicizing the pure-applied nexus

• Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
• Applied pure sciences mutually independent
• Mid 19thC applied science practical
  knowledge
• Applied science ? applied pure science
• Bud Tory KCL institutionalizes industrial
  practice as applied science a form of
  academic domestication
• Gooday Late 19thC physicists/chemists invent
  causal myth of pure science to claim moral
  priority in H.E.
• Replacement for older Anglo-American term
  abstract science, and attack on dominance of
  applied science
• Aspirational propaganda for autonomous physical
  science Lodge Rowland argue for pure science
  to transcend commercial culture of
  industry/patents.

7
Kelvin contrasting posthumous views

• Times obituary of Lord Kelvin December 1907
• There cannot, he once remarked, be a greater
  mistake than that of looking superciliously upon
  the practical applications which are the life and
  soul of science his scientific enquiries were
  accordingly pursued with a keen eye for practical
  application.

Balfour, unveiling Kelvin statue, Oct 1913 That
a professor of pure science should have been also
the leading spirit in submarine telegraphy and
that he should have done so much for navigation
was surely one of those felicitous coincidences
which had never occurred before and probably was
never likely to occur again.
8
Oliver Heaviside unworldly patentee?

• Left Post Office telegraph service to lived with
  parents in London, 1874
• Olivers sole patent 1880 1407 Preventing
  induction between adjacent telegraph telephone
  lines
• 1887-93 published on applying Maxwell to theory
  of inductive loading minimize distortion on
  phone lines
• Reward UK government pension 1896
• 1899-1900 Michael Pupin seeks US patent for
  application of Heaviside
• Initially rejected due to Heavisides prior
  publication, but later succeeds
• Pupin wealthy - Heaviside outraged!

9
Henry Rowland (1848-1901) First Professor of
Physics, Johns Hopkins 1875

• Trained as a civil engineer, early work in
  electromagnetism, thermodynamics and optics
• A Plea for Pure Science AAAS 1883
  controversial.
• 26 patents (1882-1903) e.g.
• Diffraction gratings
• Electrical power engineering
• Multiplex telegraphy

Ruling engine c.1883 Patented process universal
product Rowland grating
10
Reconciling Rowlands patents purity

• Standard account diabetes diagnosed in 1890
  patent income needed to support family
• BUT does not fit the broader pattern of career
• In 1868 Rowland sought patent for multiplex
  telegraph denied support by his mother.
• 1882 patented screw thread technique for his
  diffraction gratings ( kept machine design
  secret)
• Rebuffs Edisons approaches to co-patent 1880-83
  but becomes electrical engineering consultant
• Blood sugar diagnosis in 1890 not serious gets
  health insurance anyway prior to marriage
• Does not patent again until 1893-4
  opportunistic encounter with Cataract
  Construction Co (Niagara)
• No debilitating illness till 1900 - cause of
  death unclear. Diary c.1900 retrospective claims

11
Rowlands knowledge management

• Lab funded by Johns Hopkins but Rowland seeks
  financial independence to avoid university
  politics
• Screw patent income pays for lab assistant
  Schneider issues diffraction gratings free to
  many
• Electrical consultancy and patents an opportunity
  to apply Maxwellian theories to new technologies
• Birth of children Henry 1892 and Davidge 1897 are
  what prompt by intensive patenting.
• Multiplex telegraphy 1897 brings little new
  profit
• Posthumously patents bring little income to widow

12
Oliver Lodge, (1851 -1940) First Professor of
Physics, University College Liverpool,
1881 Principal, University of Birmingham
1900-1919 Ether theorist Maxwellian
populariser 31 patents (with others) Syntony
(radio tuning) Spark plugs Lightning
conductors Smoke deposits 12 children (1878-1906)
University of Birmingham, Vanity Fair, 1904
13
Lodge and hi-tech Maxwellian physics
1880s Theorises mechanical ether tests ether
characteristics by mechanical means Did
mechanical motion carry ether? Lodge more
successful in wireless coherer for detecting
waves Syntony system for tuning widely adopted
in early wireless. Not monopolistic only sued
for infringement against Marconi 1907 when latter
made large profits
Whirling machine at Liverpool, 1893. Mather and
Platt dynamos not visible in this picture
14
Lodge on the researchers dilemma

• The instinct of the scientific worker is to
  publish everything, to hope that any useful
  aspect of it may be as quickly as possible
  utilized, and to trust to the instinct of fair
  play that he shall not be the loser when the
  things becomes commercially profitable. To grant
  him a monopoly is to grant him a move than
  doubtful boon to grant him the privilege of
  fighting for his monopoly is to grant him a
  pernicious privilege, which will sap his energy,
  was his time, and destroy his power of future
  production.
• Oliver Lodge, Signalling Without Wires (1901),
  pp.50-1

15
Principal Lodge on Pure Science Times Feb 28
1901 The first Principal of new University of
Birmingham tells local IEE branch electrical
engineers they must respect pure
science. Demarcating a division of labour
between University and IEE former can teach
pure science, defying the unregenerate man
16
Conclusion Managing conflicting obligations

• Rowland and Lodge caught between conflicting
  obligations to research, fellow professionals,
  laboratory co-workers, students and family.
• Resolution generate income from commercial work
  esp. from patents
• Moral high ground avoid patent litigation
  against infringers unless naked exploitation
  apparent.
• Promote funded pure science for future
  practitioners to be spared such conflicts
• But Pure science long remains controversial as
  category of knowledge making

17
WW1 Fletcher Moulton dissents

• I do not share the fear that so-called Pure
  Science is in danger of being neglected in the
  revival of industrial effort to which we all look
  forward. The distinction between Pure Science and
  Applied science is vague and artificial and, so
  far as my observation goes, it does not exists as
  a guiding principle in the minds of those classes
  to whom we must look for the force which will
  place Science in its right position in England.
  It is a distinction which is more actively
  present to the minds of those who are engaged in
  abstruse research than to the mind of the general
  public.

Introduction to Science and the Nation, 1917