Early American Scientific Instruments and Their Makers

The Tools of Science

Philosophical and Practical Instruments

Development of the sciences in the American Colonies was critically dependent upon the available tools—scientific instruments—and the men who made and used them. These tools may be separated into two groups. The first group consists of philosophical instruments and scientific teaching apparatus produced and employed for experimentation and teaching in educational institutions. The second includes the so-called “mathematical instruments” of practical use, which were employed by mathematical practitioners and laymen alike for the mensural and nautical needs of the Colonies. It is particularly with this second group that the present study is concerned.

It has been generally assumed that scientific instruments, as well as the instrument makers, of the first two centuries of American colonization were imported from England, and that the movement declined by the beginning of the 19th century with the development of skilled native craftsmen.1 This assumption is basically true for those instruments grouped under philosophical and scientific apparatus for experimentation and teaching. Almost all of these items were in fact imported from England and France until well into the 19th century.

Likewise, the very earliest examples of mathematical instruments for surveying and navigation in the Colonies were imported with the settlers from England. It was not long after the establishment of the first settlements, however, that the settlers, and later the first generation of native Americans, began to produce their own instruments. Records derived from historical archives and from the instruments themselves reveal that a considerable number of the instruments available and used in the Colonies before 1800 were of native production. Apparently, relatively few instrument makers immigrated to the American continent before the end of the Revolutionary War. Later, with the beginning of the 19th century, makers of and dealers in instruments in England and France became aware of the growing new market, and emigrated in numbers to establish shops in the major cities of commerce in the United States.

Quite possibly the few instrument makers trained in England who immigrated to the Colonies in the early epoch of Colonial development may have in turn trained others in their communities, although no evidence has yet been found. Perhaps more data on this aspect of the subject will eventually come to light.

There is reason to believe that a few mathematical practitioners and instrument makers lived and worked in the New England colonies as early as the first century of colonization.

The evidence, frankly meager, consists of two items. The first is a reference relating to James Halsie of Boston. In a land deed made out to him in 1674 he was referred to as a “Mathematician.”2 Halsie was listed as a freeman of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1690. He apparently was the forbear of the several members of the Halsy family of instrument makers of Boston of the 18th century, mentioned later in this study. It is uncertain whether the use of the term “mathematician” in this connection meant an artisan, but if not it may be inferred that Halsie was a practitioner.

The second piece of evidence is even more slender; it consists of an inscription upon a dialing rule (fig. 1) for making sundials and charts. The instrument is of cast brass, 20-7/16 inches long and 1-11/16 inches wide. The date “1674” is inscribed on the rule together with the name of its original owner, “Arthur Willis.” The instrument almost certainly was produced by the school of Henry Sutton, the notable English instrument maker who worked in Threadneedle Street in London from about 1637 through 1665. The name and date inscriptions are consistent and contemporary with the workmanship of the rule, and were probably inscribed by the maker for the original owner. It is conceivable that Arthur Willis was an Englishman and that the rule was brought into this country even in relatively recent times. However, it is claimed that the rule was owned and used by Nathaniel Footes, surveyor of Springfield, Massachusetts. Nathaniel Footes, believed to have been originally from Salem, subsequently moved from Springfield to Wethersfield, Conn. The instrument was later owned and used in Connecticut not later than the early 19th century3 by the forbears of Mr. Newton C. Brainard of Hartford, Connecticut. If records relating to Willis as a resident of the New England colonies can be recovered, it may then be possible to establish whether he worked in the Colonies as a mathematical practitioner in the 17th century. His name is included on a tentative basis.

The Need for Instruments

The production and use of scientific instruments in the American Colonies reflected colonial development in education and in territorial and economic expansion, and closely paralleled the same development in England, where the first mathematical practitioners were the teachers of navigational and commercial arithmetic and the surveyors employed in the redistribution of land following the dissolution of the monasteries. As the communities became established and the settlers gained a foothold on the soil, their attention naturally turned to improving their lot by expanding the land under cultivation and by trading their products for other needs. The growth of the communities became increasingly rapid from the end of the 17th century, and the land expansion closely paralleled the development of trade. The educational institutions placed greater emphasis on the sciences as their curriculums developed. Particularly there was a greater preoccupation with the sciences on the part of the layman because of the need for knowledge of surveying and navigation.

The colonial school curriculum was accordingly designed from the practical point of view to emphasize practical mathematics, and there was an increasing demand for instruction in all aspects of the subject. One of the earliest advertisements of this nature appeared in The Boston Gazette in March 1719. In the issue of February 19 to March 7 the advertisement stated that:

This day Mr. Samuel Grainger opens his school at the House formerly Sir Charles Hobby’s, where will be taught Grammar Writing after a free and easy manner in all the usual Hands, Arithmetick in a concise and Practical Method, Merchants Accompts, and the Mathematicks.

He hopes that more thinking People will in no wise be discouraged from sending their children thither, on the account of the reports newly reviv’d, because these dancing Phaenomena’s were never seen nor heard of in School Hours.

The advertisement was further amplified in its second appearance, in the issue of March 21-22, 1719:

At the house formerly Sir Charles Hobby’s are taught grammar, writing, after a free & easy manner in all hands usually practiced, Arithmetick Vulgar and Decimal in a concise and Practical Method, Merchants Accompts, Geometry, Algebra, Mensuration, Geography, Trigonometry, Astronomy, Navigation and other parts of the Mathematicks, with the use of the Globes and other Mathematical Instruments, by Samuel Grainger.

They whose business won’t permit ’em to attend the usual School Hours, shall be carefully attended and Instructed in the Evenings.

R. F. Seybold4 has noted that: “In advertisements of 1753 and 1754, John Lewis, of New York City, announced ‘What is called a New Method of Navigation, is an excellent Method of Trigonometry here particularly applied to Navigation; But it is of great use in all kinds of measuring and in solving many Arithmetical Questions.’ James Cosgrove, of Philadelphia, in 1755, taught ‘geometry, trigonometry, and their application in surveying, navigation, etc.,’ and Alexander Power, in 1766, ‘With their Application to Surveying, Navigation, Geography, and Astronomy’.” These subjects were featured also in the evening schools of the colonial period, maintained by private schoolmasters in some of the larger communities for the education of those who could not attend school in the daytime.

According to Seybold, surveying and navigation were the most popular mathematical subjects taught. Some explanation is to be derived from the statement by Schoen5 that: “In the days when the ‘bounds’ of great wilderness tracts were being marked off by deep-cut blazes in the trees along a line, a knowledge of land surveying was a useful skill, and many a boy learned its elements by following the ‘boundsgoer’ in his work of ‘running the line.’ And those who did not actually take part in running the line must have attended many a gay springtime ‘processioning’ when neighbors made a festive occasion out of ‘perambulating the bounds’.” “Vague land grants and inaccurate surveys,” he adds, “made the subject of boundary lines a prime issue in the everyday life of colonial homes.”

At the same time there was interest in the other aspects of the mathematical sciences. As early as 1743, for instance, a Harvard mathematician named Nathan Prince advertised in Boston that if he were given “suitable Encouragement” he would establish a school to teach “Geography and Astronomy, With the Use of the Globes, and the several kinds of Projecting the Sphere” among other things.6 A decade later, Theophilus Grew, professor in the academy at Philadelphia which has become the University of Pennsylvania, published a treatise on globes, with the title:

The Description and Use of the Globes, Celestial and Terrestrial; With Variety for Examples for the Learner’s Exercises: Intended for the Use of Such Persons as would attain to the Knowledge of those Instruments; But Chiefly designed for the Instruction of the young Gentlemen at the Academy in Philadelphia. To which is added Rules for working all the Cases in Plain and Spherical Triangles without a Scheme. By Theophilus Grew, Mathematical Professor. Germantown, Printed by Christopher Sower, 1753.7

Thus, the need for practical mathematical instruments for the surveyor and navigator became critical in proportion to the need for men to make and use them, and it is not surprising to discover that the majority of the instruments produced and advertised by early American makers were for surveying, with nautical instruments in second place. Generally, the surveyors were not professionals; they were farmers, tradesmen, or craftsmen with a sound knowledge of basic arithmetic and occasionally with some advanced study of the subject as taught in the evening schools. The surveying of provincial and intercolonial boundaries required greater skill, however, as well as a knowledge of astronomy, and this work was relegated to the scientific men of the period.

As the increasing preoccupation with subdivision of land and with surveying led to a greater demand for suitable instruments, it was the skilled craftsmen of the community, such as the clockmaker and the silversmith, that were called upon to produce them. Superb examples also were produced by the advanced scientific men, or “mathematical practitioners,” of the period.

Colonial Training in Instrument Making

One may well ask, where did these native craftsmen acquire the knowledge that enabled them to produce so skillfully the accurate and often delicate mathematical instruments? There were a number of possible sources for this knowledge. The first source lies in England, where some of these craftsmen could have studied or served apprenticeships. After completing their apprenticeship with English mathematical practitioners, they may have immigrated to the Colonies and taught the craft to others. This seems to be entirely plausible, and was probably true, for example, of Thomas Harland the clockmaker, Anthony Lamb, and perhaps several others. However, these were the exceptions instead of the rule, since a biographical study of the instrument makers in general reveals that they were for the most part native to America. It is not likely that the one or two isolated practitioners that had been trained in England could have taught so many others who worked in the same epoch.

Another source for this knowledge of instrument making was probably the reference works on the subject that had been published in England and in France. As an example, Nicolas Bion’s Traitè de la Construction et des Principaux Usages des Instruments de Mathematique, which had been first published in 1686, was translated into English by Edmund Stone in 1723, and went into several English editions. Copies of this work in English undoubtedly found their way to America soon after publication. Other popular works were Aaron Rathbone’s The Surveyor, which appeared in London in 1616 (see fig. 2); William Leybourn’s The Compleat Surveyor, in 1653; and George Atwell’s Faithfull Surveyour, in 1662. Other works popular in the Colonies were R. Norwood’s Epitome, or The Doctrine of Triangles (London, 1659) and J. Love’s Geodasia, or the Art of Surveying (London, 1688).

These works undoubtedly inspired similar publications in America, for many books on surveying and navigation appeared there before the beginning of the 19th century. Chief among them were S. Moore’s An Accurate System of Surveying (Litchfield, Conn., 1796), Z. Jess’s A Compendious System of Practical Surveying (Wilmington, 1799), Abel Flint’s Surveying (Hartford, 1804), and J. Day’s Principles of Navigation and Surveying (New Haven, 1817).

The published works were unquestionably responsible for much of the training in the making of mathematical instruments in America, although no documentary evidence has yet been recovered to prove it.

Another important influence on early American instrument-making which must be noted was that of the clockmaker as an artisan. A comprehensive study of surviving instruments and related records has revealed that only a few of the many clockmakers working in the American Colonies in the 18th century made mathematical instruments. Yet, a large proportion of the surviving surveying and nautical instruments produced before 1800 were the work of clockmakers. Classic among these must be noted the instruments produced by the brothers David and Benjamin Rittenhouse (see p. 15 and figs. 3 and 4), as well as the fine surveying instruments made by four separate members of the Chandlee family, whose clockmaking traditions began early in the 17th century (see p. 54).

Finally, one must not overlook the fact that examples of English and other European instruments were available in the Colonies, and that at least some of the early colonial makers undoubtedly copied them. It is apparent from some surviving early American instruments that the materials, designs, dimensions, and details of European prototypes had been deliberately copied. It is possible to see in public collections, for instance, a Davis quadrant of English manufacture exhibited beside a later example, signed by a New England maker, which comes extraordinarily close to duplicating it in every feature.

As with the presumed influence of published works, the practice of copying imported instruments cannot be documented, but it must have been engaged in by many of the unschooled New England instrument makers. By this means some may even have profited to the degree that they became professional craftsmen without benefit of formal apprenticeship.

Yet it is remarkable that although numerous instruments were produced by native artisans, in addition to the substantial number which were imported before the end of the 18th century, relatively few specimens have survived in public collections as well as in private hands. Despite the exhaustive combing of attics and barns throughout the country by dealers in antiques and by avid collectors during the past several decades, the number of surviving instruments now known is incredibly small in comparison with the numbers known to have been made locally or imported before the beginning of the 19th century. Since instruments are not items which would ordinarily be deliberately discarded or destroyed, or melted down for the recovery of the metal, this small percentage of survival presents a puzzle which has not been resolved.