The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World, by Jenny Uglow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30, 596 pages.

The News & Observer

November 3, 2002

Scientists and Entrepreneurs Start the Industrial Revolution

By Phillip Manning

Erasmus Darwin, James Watt, Matthew Boulton, Josiah Wedgwood, and Joseph Priestley were the heart of the Lunar Society, which was formed in the late 18th century. It was an informal group of friends that met to discuss the rapidly developing sciences of chemistry, mineralogy, meteorology, astronomy, and physics. The society got its name because it met on nights when the moon was full so the members could find the way home after imbibing too many bottles of wine. Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin's grandfather) was a physician, poet, and bon vivant, so fat that he had to cut a semicircle out of his dining room table to accommodate his belly. James Watt -- brilliant, shy, and pessimistic -- invented the modern steam engine. Matthew Boulton, Watt's partner, was an ebullient entrepreneur who developed the first large manufacturing operation in England, producing everything from shoe buckles to the huge "Fire-engines" (as Watt's steam engines were called) that powered the Industrial Revolution. Wedgwood (also Charles Darwin's grandfather; the children were friends, too, and Erasmus's son married Josiah's daughter) used his knowledge of the chemistry of clay and a talent for art to manufacture beautiful pottery. He then used his knack for commerce to turn the boutique operation into a large, highly profitable company.

Joseph Priestley was the most distinguished scientist among the Lunar men. In his most famous experiment, he heated an ash of mercury (mercuric oxide) and tested the gas rising from it. "[W]hat surprised me more than I can well express was that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame." The new gas was oxygen, and Priestley later concluded that air was actually a mixture of gases, one of which was oxygen. That conclusion forced chemists to abandon a belief held since Aristotle's time, namely that air was an elementary substance. Priestley's work started a revolution as far reaching as Watt's, establishing chemistry as a true science, divorced from alchemy and comparable in rigor to physics and astronomy.

Before technology made long-distance communications quick and readily available, scientists joined clubs or societies. The clubs usually formed and met in big cities, such as London or Paris or Philadelphia. In her scholarly, well-researched book "The Lunar Men," British writer Jenny Uglow tells the story of these five men who came together in the scientific backwater of Birmingham, England. Despite their isolation from the centers of science, these men fed on one another's interests, enthusiasms, and knowledge to develop the technologies that started the Industrial Revolution and changed the world.

The Lunar men's convivial sharing of information may surprise humanists who usually portray scientists as a recluses. This image of the solitary scientist probably started with Mary Shelley, who dreamed up Victor Frankenstein, the man who isolated himself and created a monster. Like all stereotypes it has an element of truth to it. Isaac Newton, possibly the greatest scientist of all, was a loner; Einstein developed his theory of relativity working in solitude in Berne, Switzerland, a scientific hinterland. However, most science is done collegially, and most scientists regularly communicate with one another using the telephone, E-mail, FAX machines, and technical journals. They also fly all over the world, attending seminars and conferences. Of course, so do lawyers, doctors, and editors. In fact, almost every profession has an annual conference, where participants meet and exchange ideas. But scientists benefit the most from such get togethers, because their ideas often come from data that someone else has generated. James Watson and Francis Crick, for example, postulated their famous double helix only after a friend showed them Rosalind Franklin's X-ray data. And so it was with the Lunar men, who time and again helped one another.

Priestley, for example, had "great uncertainty" in his experiments because the metal retorts in which he heated substances contaminated them. Responding to the problem, Wedgwood made stoneware equipment for Priestley that eliminated the contamination. Priestley discovered several new gases using the improved apparatus, which Wedgwood then began manufacturing and turned into a commercially successful laboratory supply business.

The Lunar men also helped one another in other, more dangerous, ways. Priestley was a staunch democrat and a believer in liberty for all. He supported the French Revolution when most Englishmen, fearing the fall of the monarchy in their own country, opposed it. Inflamed by government-inspired propaganda, a mob crying "Church and King!" broke into Priestley's house in Birmingham in 1791, on the anniversary of the French Revolution, looted it, and destroyed his laboratory. Priestley's wife fled, and a member of the Lunar Society took her in, despite the danger to himself.

Darwin helped out, too, nursing the men, their wives, and their children when they were sick. And as the the Lunar men aged, he helped them die. At age 64, Josiah Wedgwood fell ill. Darwin stayed with him for most of three weeks, keeping him alive "by his friendly and uncommon attention," according to one family member. As a last favor, Darwin left the sick old man a supply of laudanum. That night, Wedgwood told his family not to come in as he was sure he would sleep soundly. The next morning the door was locked from the inside. When the family broke in they found Josiah Wedgwood dead.

James Watt, the last survivor of the Lunar men, died in 1819. He lived long enough to see his steam engine change the world. The Industrial Revolution was well underway. "The legacy of the Lunar men is with us still," Uglow writes, "in the making of the modern world, and in the inspiring confidence with which all these friends, in their different ways, reached so eagerly for the moon."
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