Lunar Society

Schofield, R. E. (1937) The industrial orientation of science in the Lunar Society of Birmingham , Isis, vol 48, pp408-4l5... 

There had been isolated British chemists of distinction in the eighteenth century We have encountered some of them, most notably Joseph Priestley and Joseph Black. Priestley had taught in a dissenting academy, and the members of the private and informal Lunar Society of Birmingham had supported his research. He had had to teach himself the techniques of research and to devise a good deal of his own apparatus. He did not have students or assistants... 

He continued to communicate with his friends of the Lunar Society to whom he sent accounts of his scientific discoveries. They in turn did not forget him, and, as late as 1801 Watt and Boulton presented him with furnace and other apparatus for making large quantities of air. ... 

Priestley, accepting these results, discussed them with the members of the Lunar Society and the Lunatics, as they were called, agreed with him. Boulton especially was enthusiastic. We have long talked of phlogiston, he declared, without knowing what we talked about, but now that Dr. Priestley brought the matter to light we can pour that element... 

In Birmingham and its environs Hutton met other members of the Lunar Society, including Matthew Boulton and Erasmus Darwin. On a visit to the latter in Lichfield, Hutton used Darwin s house as a base for expeditions into Derbyshire and also participated in an experiment with an airgun and thermometer to demonstrate how the expansion of air cools it.31 Darwin was later to make use of this fact in explaining processes of devaporation in clouds and in steam engines, as we will see in a moment. 

It is not immediately obvious. .. that his opposition to the theory of oxidation was a compulsive reaction which was to dominate Priesdey s research until his death. Indeed the first set of experiments [undertaken in Birmingham] seems wholly unrelated to that controversy...the immediate motive appears to have been the geological interests of his fellow members of the Lunar Society.40... 

Another member of the Lunar Society, Erasmus Darwin, took an abiding interest in the steam engine, an interest at once visionary, poetic and scientific. We find in sources produced by and linked to him, further confirmation of the chemical nature of the invention as seen by Boulton and Watt s contemporaries and also of its close association with meteorological ideas and understandings. 

R. E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1963). Another excellent account of the group is J. Uglow, The Lunar Men The Friends who made the Future, 1730-1810 (London Faber and Faber, 2002). 

Boulton to Watt, 26 July 1781, 28 July 1781, Archives of Soho, MS3147/3/5. See also Schofield, The EnlightenedJoseph Priestley, pp. 160-1 where Schofield puts this episode into the broader context of Priesdey s willingness at this time to put his skills at the service of the practical ventures pursued by his new Lunar Society associates. On the subsequent, mainly nineteenth century, history of air engines see Marsden, Blowing Hot and Cold)... 

See Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham, p. 189 D. King-Hele (ed.), The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 204, letter 82(4), note 5. 

Schofield, EnlightenedJoseph Priestley, ip. 161 Schofield, Lunar Society, pp. 201-2, 333, 241 Watt to Priestley, n. d. Thursday) Royal Society, Box PH 13, cited in Hills, James Watt, Volume 2, p. 218. 

Several members of the Lunar Society were major contributors, the Wedgwoods more prominent than the Watts in this regard. See T. H. Levere, Dr. Thomas Beddoes and the Establishment of his Pneumatic Institution. A Tale of Three Presidents , Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 32 (1977), pp. 41-9. The most extraordinary funding, a bond for 10,000 pounds, came from James Keir in Bond for performance of Covenant. Dr Beddoes to Jas. Keir Wm. Reynolds Esqrs., 27 August 1793, emended to 16 April 1794, National Archives (Kew), MSC 104/41. Keir was also a staunch phlo-gistonist. 

Watt to William Small, 17 August 1773, quoted in Schofield, The Lunar Society, p. 70, and in W. E. K. Middleton, A History of the Theories of Rain and other Forms of Precipita-tion (London Oldbourne, 1965), p. 37. 

Schofield, The Lunar Society, p. 240 Watt to Black, 13 December 1782, in Robinson and MacKie, Partners in Science, pp. 117-18. 

Schofield, R. E., The Lunar Society ofBirmingham. A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1963). 

Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World (New York Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2002) Schofield, Lunar Society. 

Darwin lived in Derby, some 35 miles from Birmingham, but although he seldom attended meetings of the Lunar Society, he was regularly consulted by Watt and Wedgwood on medical matters. 

Schofield, Lunar Society, 377 Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley A Study of his Life and Work from 1773 to 1804 (University Park, PA Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 404. 

R. E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp. 1-491. 

Priestley s Experiments and Observations relating to the Generation of Air from Water (London, 1793, 39 PP-) dedicated to The Members of the Lunar Society at Birmingham , with the explanation that the members held their meetings every month, on the Monday that was nearest to the full moon, in order to have the benefit of its light on returning home . There seems to be some doubt as to who the other members were the Society was founded... 

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