Wedgwood was briefly Nicholson’s employer, then (along with Boulton) a colleague in a London scientific society. Davy, Dalton and Berzelius were among contributors to Nicholson’s pioneering popular scientific journal. Carlisle was a friend of his, collaborating in the discovery of electrolysis; Godwin another friend. Volta met Nicholson on a visit to England, and acknowledged his influence. Koenig consulted Nicholson in his role as patent agent about his own invention of a high-speed printing press, featuring an undeveloped idea of Nicholson’s. Hazlitt simply recorded that he’d had an interesting conversation with him.
Profession: inventor
Thomas Wedgwood
Josiah Wedgwood was Thomas (or Tom) Wedgwood’s father. Both Stubbs and Darwin taught him, Darwin also prescribing the opium to which he later became addicted. Priestley and Watt were friends of Wedgwood’s father’s but with whom he also maintained a correspondence. Southey wrote to Wedgwood about Davy’s nitrous oxide; Davy wrote up Wedgwood’s important photographic image-forming discoveries. Tom and his brother supported Coleridge for most of his adult life, so he could concentrate on writing: Wedgwood and Coleridge were close friends, engaging in passionate intellectual discussion and enthusiastic drug-experimentation.
Samuel Morse
Morse attended Silliman’s lectures as a student at Yale, and got to know him. He studied painting with Allston then went to England with him, met Coleridge and Haydon soon after, and was helped as a painter by West. Thorvaldsen was a friend in Rome, while Cooper, a longtime friend, appeared in his painting ‘The Gallery of the Louvre.’ Vail, Gale, Henry and Draper all helped Morse develop his telegraph, Henry disputing his rights as inventor. He painted his distant cousin Whitney and neighbour Webster, met Daguerre in Paris, and took on Brady as an apprentice. Stuart, Wilberforce and Agassiz were all correspondents.
Samuel Morse knew…
- William Wilberforce
- Washington Allston
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Noah Webster
- Mathew Brady
- Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre
- Louis Agassiz
- Lorenzo da Ponte
- Leonard Gale
- Joseph Henry
- John William Draper
- James Fenimore Cooper
- Gilbert Stuart
- Eli Whitney
- Bertel Thorvaldsen
- Benjamin West
- Benjamin Silliman Sr.
- Benjamin Haydon
- Alfred Vail
Nicéphore Niépce
Niépce and Daguerre went into partnership after discovering their common interests in inventing a permanent form of photography. The engraver Lemaître or the lens-maker Chevalier, both known to Daguerre, may have made the introduction: both assisted Niépce in his experiments. Niépce visited Bauer in Kew in 1827 and presented him with what is generally regarded as the first photograph. Claude was Niépce’s brother — they jointly developed the pyréolophore (1806), the world’s first internal combustion engine. Carnot was impressed by the Niépces’ hydraulic machine but told them another plan had been chosen.
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre
After a career in theatrical spectacle (he was responsible for the Paris and London dioramas, and had been a scene-painter for the Paris Opera), Daguerre joined with Niépce to develop the first permanent form of photography. Morse, who met Daguerre in Paris, may or may not have taken the process back with him, but was one of the first to make daguerrotypes in North America. Arago got government funding for Daguerre and Niépce’s work thus allowing the technique to be made public, though the latter had by then died.
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre knew…
Joseph Priestley
Josiah Wedgwood funded Priestley’s experiments and was a fellow-member of the Lunar Society, as were Boulton, Watt, Darwin and Keir (who helped him with experiments). Wilkinson was his wife’s brother, Hill helped run his Sunday school, Price preceded him in his Hackney ministry, and Banks offered to get him on one of Cook’s voyages. He met and corresponded with Lavoisier, who took all the credit for the discovery of oxygen. Blake knew him through Johnson. Silliman was impressed by his discovery of soda water, Jefferson sought his curricular advice, and Franklin (a Lunar Society guest) called him an “honest heretic.”
Joseph Priestley knew…
- James Keir
- Arthur Young
- John Wilkinson
- Rowland Hill
- Roger Joseph Boscovich
- Torbern Bergman
- John Pringle
- Marie-Anne Paulze
- Antoine Lavoisier
- Johann Reinhold Forster
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
- Thomas Paine
- Joseph Johnson
- Richard Price
- Matthew Boulton
- Erasmus Darwin
- Josiah Wedgwood
- James Watt
- Henry Cavendish
- Alessandro Volta
- William Godwin
- Thomas Jefferson
- Joseph Banks
- William Blake
- Thomas Wedgwood
- Joseph Wright
- William Jones, philologist
- Anna Laetitia Barbauld
- Jeremy Bentham
- Baron d'Holbach
- Benjamin Silliman Sr.
- Benjamin Franklin
Eli Whitney
Silliman was a friend of Whitney’s for 25 years, starting at Yale; in a memoir he wrote eloquently of Whitney’s ingenuity. Morse painted his distant cousin Whitney’s portrait in 1821, when both were neighbours near Yale. While Whitney exchanged letters with Thomas Jefferson about a patent, there is more myth-making than clear evidence to suggest that the relationship passed beyond the functional and formal.
Eli Whitney knew…
Charles Willson Peale
Peale studied under West in London, having previously been taught by Copley. Humboldt went with Peale to meet Jefferson in the White House. Jefferson helped Peale organise the exhumation of a mastodon skeleton (which went into the museum Peale had opened), as well as commissioning from him a ‘polygraph’ for copying documents, and donating a collection of minerals to his museum (as also did Franklin, Haüy and Maclure). Banks was a correspondent. Several of Peale’s many children, most notably Titian Peale, had multifaceted careers as artists among other things.
Charles Wheatstone
Wheatstone enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Faraday, who because of his acute shyness usually got Wheatstone to deliver his lectures for him. Roget was like Faraday an old friend. Ørsted, twice Wheatstone’s age, discussed Chladni figures with him on a London visit. Henry met Wheatstone (and Faraday) on a visit to Britain in 1837. Wheatstone corresponded with Siemens on electromagnetic resistance, with Stokes on the chemistry of colour, and with Maxwell on issues relating to telegraphy.
Benjamin Franklin
Price and Priestley moved in the same radical circles in London, while Priestley and Hume both welcomed him as a guest. He assisted at Voltaire’s masonic initiation. Pringle was a frequent travelling-companion in Europe; Walpole called on the two in Paris, where Franklin was a regular at d’Holbach’s salon. Casanova sat next to him, listening to him discussing aeronautical balloons with Condorcet (who also later persuaded him that slavery and racial inequality were corrupt). Lavoisier and Franklin fixed the lightning-conductors Franklin had invented to a Paris church; Boswell admiringly quoted him to Johnson.
Benjamin Franklin knew…
- John Hunter
- Philippe Pinel
- Giovanni Battista Beccaria
- James Keir
- William Small
- Roger Joseph Boscovich
- John Pringle
- Jérôme Lalande
- Robert Fulton
- Joseph Black
- Marie-Anne Paulze
- Jean-Antoine Nollet
- Antoine Lavoisier
- Johann Reinhold Forster
- Horace-Bénédict de Saussure
- Félix Vicq d'Azyr
- Lazare Carnot
- Thomas Paine
- Joseph Johnson
- Richard Price
- Matthew Boulton
- Erasmus Darwin
- Josiah Wedgwood
- Henry Cavendish
- Alessandro Volta
- John Trumbull
- Thomas Jefferson
- Joseph Banks
- Samuel Johnson
- Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
- William Wilberforce
- Thomas Blacklock
- Noah Webster
- Marquis de Condorcet
- Joseph Priestley
- Jean le Rond d'Alembert
- James Boswell
- Horace Walpole
- Hans Sloane
- Giacomo Casanova
- Georg Forster
- David Hume
- Baron d'Holbach
- Charles Willson Peale
- Benjamin West
- William Jones, philologist
- William Herschel
- Comte de Buffon
- Voltaire
- John Baskerville
- Nevil Maskelyne
- William Hunter
- Adam Smith
- Adam Ferguson
- Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais