The Victorian Palace of Science: Scientific Knowledge and the Building of the Houses of Parliament (Science in History)
Cambridge University Press, 11/9/2017
EAN 9781108419666, ISBN10: 1108419666
Hardcover, 340 pages, 23.5 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
The Palace of Westminster, home to Britain's Houses of Parliament, is one of the most studied buildings in the world. What is less well known is that while Parliament was primarily a political building, when built between 1834 and 1860, it was also a place of scientific activity. The construction of Britain's legislature presents an extraordinary story in which politicians and officials laboured to make their new Parliament the most radical, modern building of its time by using the very latest scientific knowledge. Experimentalists employed the House of Commons as a chemistry laboratory, geologists argued over the Palace's stone, natural philosophers hung meat around the building to measure air purity, and mathematicians schemed to make Parliament the first public space where every room would have electrically-controlled time. Through such dramatic projects, Edward J. Gillin redefines our understanding of the Palace of Westminster and explores the politically troublesome character of Victorian science.
Introduction
1. A radical building
the science of politics and the new Palace of Westminster
2. Architecture and knowledge
Charles Barry and the world of mid-nineteenth-century science
3. 'The Science of Architecture'
making geological knowledge for the Houses of Parliament
4. Chemistry in the Commons
Edinburgh science and David Boswell Reid's ventilating of Parliament, 1834–1854
5. Enlightening Parliament
the Bude Light in the House of Commons and the illumination of politics
6. Order in Parliament
George Biddell Airy and the construction of time at Westminster
Conclusion
the house of experiment.