Dr. Tyndall, F.R.S., a supplementary Juror at the Paris Exhibition,3 writes thus strongly: In wishing success to the undertaking in which you are engaged, I express the feeling of every individual who would like to see England rescued from a position which has long been a reproach to her. The Committee of Industrial Instruction4 is the outward and visible indication of a great public want, of a want which will assuredly find less pleasant means of utterance by and bye, if it be not met and satisfied in time…The results of such a movement are incalculable; among other things it would abolish the unnatural divorce at present existing between the cultivator of Science and the practical man; the former would learn that every practical realization of a thought furnishes a purchase for new speculative effort, while the latter would learn how society would be his ‘practice,’ had it never possessed a scientific base.
Parliamentary Papers, 1856 [2065] Third Report of the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851, to the Right Hon. Sir George Grey, Bart
George Grey: George Grey (1799–1882), English statesman and Home Secretary from 1855 to 1858.
3 April 1856: This was the official date of publication. We do not know when Tyndall actually wrote his report.
Juror at the Paris Exhibition: see letter 1070 n. 3.
Committee of Industrial Instruction: Better known as the Department of Science and Art that was created in 1853. The surplus of the Great Exhibition of 1851 was used by the Royal Commissioners of the Exhibition, and following the vision of Prince Albert, ‘to increase the means of industrial education and extend the influence of science and art upon productive society’. Various Schools of Design had been set up and aided by government grants in 1837, These were amalgamated under the umbrella of a Department of Practical Art commanded by Henry Cole (1808–82) in 1852. A science section, with the chemist Lyon Playfair (1818–98) at its head, was soon added. The combined sections were placed under the Board of Trade in March 1853 as a Department of Science and Art with Playfair and Cole as joint secretaries. Its task was to ‘promote instruction on technical questions relating to art and manufactures’ (Hansard, 3rd series, 125, (4 April 1853), c. 522).
Please cite as “Tyndall1207,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on