Session Chair: Zhao Ke (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu)
Place and Precision: Electromagnetic Geophysics and Computing at the University of Toronto
Author: Erich Weidenhammer
Beginning around the middle of the 20th century, the University of Toronto Department of Physics emerged as a centre of research and training in electromagnetic (EM) geophysical methods. The reasons for this point to the nature of applied scientific research in Canada, as well as to the geographical situation of the University. Canada, a vast and thinly populated nation, has relied on resource extraction for its prosperity. The search for minerals and petroleum has been a major driver of geophysical research. The University of Toronto, Canada’s largest research university, is located within the Canadian Shield, a large expanse of Precambrian rock in which the seismic prospecting methods, typically used in sedimentary basins, are less effective. EM geophysics therefore exists within a network of economic, technological, and colonial interests that make it a valuable perspective from which to explore applied physics in Canada.
This paper approaches this topic through a growing collection of artifacts, gathered by the University of Toronto Scientific Instrument Collection, which relate to diverse facets of EM research. These include bench-top teaching experiments simulating the operation of field instruments in the lab, as well as instruments used in both terrestrial and marine applications. Of particular importance is the ever-growing demand for computer processing power, and the concurrent development of complex algorithms, needed to interpret data produced by such instruments. There is a notable challenge in representing this computing dimension through artifacts.
Making Space: Situating Precision Makers in Canadian Communities
Author: Victoria JL Fisher
In 1858, the Provincial Exhibition of Canada West included a small display of Toronto-made mathematical instruments. Visitors, the exhibition guide declared, “were hardly prepared to see such a splendid assortment of instruments enrolled as Canadian productions.” This early interaction of delight and surprise points to both the significance of local precision and scientific instrument makers to Canadian society and the fact that it was—and is—relatively little known.
This paper reports on the findings of an Ingenium project aiming to gather and catalogue information about such makers and manufacturers to build a picture of the Canadian high technology industry in the 19th and 20th centuries. Focusing on the manufacturing and technical centre of Toronto, this paper will situate a range of types of Canadian-based precision makers and companies in their scientific and industrial communities. I will explore how they emerged through partnerships and diverse offerings, found commercial niches amid international competition from more established markets, and show how—through contact with academic and public settings—played important scientific and technological roles to local communities.
From Classroom Demonstrations to Laboratory Practices: The Province of Québec’s Network of Catholic Schools and the Foundation of the Modern University (1800-1930)
Author: Jean-François Gauvin
Several years ago, Graeme Gooday demonstrated that the rapid expansion of physical laboratories in Britain between 1865 and 1885 was not due to an advancement of research per se, but instead as an imperative for teaching of physics (except for Glasgow and Cambridge, which were established as genuine research laboratories). In the same period at Harvard, laboratory training was being implanted on campus; the Harvard faculty even encouraged high-school teachers around the country to prepare incoming students in laboratory work so they would better perform once in college. Precision measurement and laboratory work became a pedagogical virtue by the late 19th century. In Lower Canada and later in the Province of Québec (after 1867) cabinets of physics were being (nearly systematically) erected in collèges classiques, the elite catholic schools often leading to priesthood. Although several of these cabinets were very well furnished they remained, as Paolo Brenni illustrated with most European cabinets, merely prestigious ornement used to attract more students. This pattern didn’t change much when the first French-speaking university in North America was founded in 1852: Université Laval in Québec city. The goal of this paper is to briefly brush the trajectory of these cabinets over a century and, using the Université Laval as a case study, explain how their slow transformation into genuine physical laboratory took place in the 1920s.
Scientific Instruments as Dr. Dolittle’s Pushmi-Pullyu, in Early Contributions to Innovation Studies.
Author: Ryan T. MacNeil
Key figures in the early years of innovation studies – Freeman, Kline, Rosenberg, and von Hippel – all featured scientific instruments as empirical material in their theorizing. But when the resulting concepts and models are cited and discussed today, those scientific instruments are forgotten. These foundational innovation scholars had approached scientific instruments like Dr. Doolittle’s “pushmi-pullyu” (a unicorn- gazelle hybrid, with a head on each end of its body). Over a decade of debate ensued over which end of innovation was the front: science/research or technology/development. The study of scientific instruments yielded both answers—and others. However, processes of neoliberalization soon started to position scientific research as a support function for technological development in private business. Scientific instruments started to be written off as ‘unusual’ innovations because they do not always fit that mold. And by the 1990s, innovation research had completely turned toward ‘normal’ market-based technologies. The discipline is often now described as having evolved from debates about scientific ‘push’ vs. market ‘pull’ in the 1960s and 1970s, toward more complex ideas about ‘chain-links’ and ‘systems’ in the 1980s and 1990s. However, these perspectives all emerged from relatively concurrent studies of scientific instrument innovation at the beginning of that timeline. And so, it is not that better innovation models emerged through the sequential development of more exacting social science methods. Rather, the preferred ways of observing, measuring, and thinking about innovation shifted over time in response to changing political ideas about the most appropriate roles for science, government, and industry
