Within recent years fairly exhaustive studies have been made on many aspects of American science and technology. For example, there have been numerous works relating to clocks and clockmakers, so that the collector and horological student have a number of useful sources on which to rely. More recently there has been a series of publications on the development of American tools and their makers. Until now, however, no systematic study has been attempted of the scientific instruments used in the United States from its colonial beginnings. While several useful regional lists of instrument makers in early America have been compiled from advertisements in contemporary newspapers and published as short articles, these, however, are fragmentary, and are inadequate to the need for documentation in this field.

With the rapidly growing interest in the history of science, it becomes necessary to have a more complete background for the student and the historian alike. It is desirable to have a more comprehensive picture of the work of the scientific practitioners of the earlier periods of American scientific development, and of their tools. At the same time it is essential to have a history of the development and distribution and use of scientific instruments by others than the practitioners and teachers. The role of the instrument maker in the American Colonies was an important one—as it was in each epoch of the history of science in Europe—and it deserves to be reported.

To make a comprehensive study of American scientific instruments and instrument makers in the American Colonies is no simple matter, partly because of an indifference to the subject in the past, and partly because of the great volume of sources that must be sifted to accomplish it. Such a project would require an organized search of all published reference works relating to the field and associated topics, of all contemporary newspapers for advertisements and notices, of civil records filed in state and community archives, of business account-books and records that have been preserved, and of business directories of the period under consideration. In addition, such a study would require the compilation of an inventory of all surviving instruments in private and public collections, and a correlation of all the data that could be assembled from these sources.

The present study attempts only in part to accomplish this aim, being no more than a preliminary compilation of the scientific instruments known to have been used during the first two centuries of American colonial existence. It merely attempts to assemble all the data that is presently available in scattered sources, and to organize it in a usable form for the student and historian of American science. A supplement relating to 19th-century instruments and instrument makers is in progress.

The most that is hoped for the present work is that it will be of temporary assistance, serving to bring forth additional information on the subject from sources not previously available or known.

EARLY AMERICAN
SCIENTIFIC
INSTRUMENTS

and Their Makers