Edward Nairne b.
SandwichSandwich is a historic town in Kent, south-east England. It was one of the Cinque Ports and still has many original medieval buildings. While once a major port, it is now two miles from the sea, its historic centre preserved.....
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, 1726; d.
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
, September 1 1806, was an optician and scientific instrument maker. He was apprenticed to the optician Matthew Loft in 1741 and established his own business at 20 Cornhill in London after Loft's death in 1748. In 1774 he took his apprentice Thomas Blunt into partnership, a relationship that lasted until 1793 when Blunt opened his own shop at 22 Cornhill.
Nairne patented several electrical machines, including an
electrostatic generatorAn electrostatic generator, or electrostatic machine, is a mechanical device that produces static electricity, or electricity at high voltage and low continuous current...
consisting of a glass cylinder mounted on glass insulators; the device can supply either positive or negative electricity, and was intended for medicinal use.
Edward Nairne b.
SandwichSandwich is a historic town in Kent, south-east England. It was one of the Cinque Ports and still has many original medieval buildings. While once a major port, it is now two miles from the sea, its historic centre preserved.....
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, 1726; d.
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
, September 1 1806, was an optician and scientific instrument maker. He was apprenticed to the optician Matthew Loft in 1741 and established his own business at 20 Cornhill in London after Loft's death in 1748. In 1774 he took his apprentice Thomas Blunt into partnership, a relationship that lasted until 1793 when Blunt opened his own shop at 22 Cornhill.
Nairne patented several electrical machines, including an
electrostatic generatorAn electrostatic generator, or electrostatic machine, is a mechanical device that produces static electricity, or electricity at high voltage and low continuous current...
consisting of a glass cylinder mounted on glass insulators; the device can supply either positive or negative electricity, and was intended for medicinal use. In the eighth edition of the instruction manual for this device he claimed that "electricity is almost a specific in some disorders, and deserves to be held in the highest estimation for its efficacy in many others". He recommended its use for nervous disorders, bruises, burns, scales, bloodshot eyes, toothache, sciatica, epilepsy, hysteria, agues and so on. He also made improvements to the Cuff
microscopeA microscope is an instrument to see objects too tiny for the naked eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy. Microscopic means invisible to the eye unless aided by a microscope.-History:An early microscope was made in 1590 in Middelburg, The...
, building it into a portable case and calling it a chest microscope.
In the early 1770s, Edward Nairne constructed the first successful marine
barometerA barometer is an instrument used to measure atmospheric pressure. It can measure the pressure exerted by the atmosphere by using water, air, or mercury. Pressure tendency can forecast short term changes in the weather...
by constricting the glass tube between the cistern and register plate. The instrument was suspended from gimbals mounted within a freestanding frame to provide additional stability. Nairne’s first marine barometer was sent on
James CookCaptain James Cook, FRS RN , was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer, ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy...
’s second voyage to the
South PacificThe Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. Its name is derived from the Latin name Tepre Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. It extends from the Arctic in the north to Antarctica in the south, bounded by Asia and...
.
One of the earliest references to
rubberNatural rubber is an elastomer that was originally derived from a milky colloidal suspension, or latex, found in the sap of some plants. The purified form of natural rubber is the chemical polyisoprene, which can also be produced synthetically...
in
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
appears to be in 1770, when Edward Nairne was selling cubes of natural rubber at his shop at 20 Cornhill. The cubes, meant to be
eraserAn eraser or rubber is an article of stationery that is used for removing pencil and sometimes pen writings. Erasers have a rubbery consistency and are often white or pink, although modern materials allow them to be made in any color. Many pencils are equipped with an eraser on one end...
s, sold for the astonishingly high price of 3
shillingThe shilling is a unit of currency used in current and former English Commonwealth countries and still used in countries which have become republics, such as Kenya. The word shilling comes from schilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of...
s per half-inch cube. Nairne is credited with creating the first rubber eraser. Prior to using rubber,
breadcrumbBreadcrumbs or bread crumbs are small particles of dry bread, which are used for breading or crumbing foods, topping casseroles, stuffing poultry, thickening stews, and adding inexpensive bulk to meatloaves and similar foods. They are documented in cookbooks as early as 1716...
s were used as erasers. Nairne says he inadvertently picked up a piece of rubber instead of breadcrumbs, discovered its erasing properties, and began selling rubber erasers.
Nairne was a regular contributor to the Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal SocietyThe Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, or even the Royal, is a learned society for science that was founded in 1660 and is considered by most to be the oldest such society still in existence...
of London, and was elected a fellow of that institution in 1776. He enjoyed an extensive international reputation, and was in correspondence with
Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat...
for whom he made a set of magnets and a telescope around 1758. Also on Franklin's recommendation, he was asked to supply instruments for the fire-damaged collection at Harvard.
External articles
General
Publications
- Nairne, Edward, "Directions for using the electrical machine; ". London, 1764. (ed. engraved by J. Couse; Advertisement)
- Nairne, Edward, "Description of the electric machine". Paris, 1784.
- Nairne, Edward, "The description and use of Nairne's patent electrical machine : with the addition of some philosophical experiments and medical observations". London (Nairne and Blunt), 1783. LCCN 85664571 //r90