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In the eighteenth century, science - or 'natural philosophy' as it was
then called - caught the attention of two groups of people. For those who moved in fashionable
circles, an interest in the new philosophy stemmed from the founding, in 1660, of the
Royal Society. The Society's membership included such well-known figures
as Sir Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Edmond Halley, Samuel Pepys and Christopher Wren. Among a
wider public, access to the 'new science' came when experiments carried
out at the Royal Society were repeated by lecturers whose courses
on mechanics, pneumatics, optics, electricity, magnetism and hydrostatics were open to anyone
prepared to pay the necessary fee. For both these groups, experiments using instruments such as
air pumps, microscopes and
electrical machines provided immediate and convincing proof of
scientific ideas.
The Science Museum's King George III Collection is one of the most comprehensive surviving
collections of eighteenth-century scientific apparatus. Its diversity is shown by two contrasting
groups of apparatus. First, there is the apparatus which
King George III commissioned from the instrument maker George Adams in
1761. These instruments were used by the royal family for entertainment and instruction and are
expensive and elaborate. Second, there is the apparatus assembled
during the 1750s by Stephen Demainbray for use in
his lectures to the public. Although this apparatus was designed to
demonstrate many of the same principles as that commissioned by the King, it is cheaper,
simpler and more hard-wearing. The two collections came together in 1769 when Demainbray took
up the post of Superintendent of the Observatory at Kew
where the King's scientific instruments were housed. They were removed to King's College,
London in the mid-nineteenth century and finally to the Science Museum in 1927.
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