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David Kirkaldy (1820–1897) and his Museum of Destruction: The Visual Dilemmas of an Engineer as Man of Science

This article is the outcome of a research inquiry into discourses of ‘objectivity’ in scientific visual representations, asking whether we can see the same process in the visual practices associated with engineering and engineers during their drive for professional recognition in the nineteenth century. My investigation used critical historiographical analysis of recent literature alongside empirical historical archive research, using interdisciplinary methods derived from art and design and also from histories of science and technology. Using my PhD dissertation (Robertson 'Drawing the line' 2011), I developed new empirical data, in combination with responses to conference paper presentations given to the British Society for the History of Science, and the History of Science Society in North America. The first version of this article was prepared for the 6th European Spring School on History of Science and Popularization (http://schct.iec.cat/school_11/spring11_index.htm), a postdoctoral seminar for which the core speakers such as myself were selected by peer review competition for a viva-style questioning by the panel of international specialist academics (Daniela Bleichmar, University of Southern California; Klaus Hentschel, University of Stuttgart; and Nick Hopwood, University of Cambridge). Like a normal conference, this event was also open to other academics world wide who also presented their findings; the format deliberately encouraged more severe questioning of participants than is often the case. With these revisions, the article was submitted for publication in Endeavour, and was accepted because it examined an area of visual culture (technical representations) that are poorly theorised by both art or design history and also by historians of science. Working across these fields allowed me to situate the images I was discussing in the wider ‘artworld’ of visual representations, and also to make an original contribution to debates in science and technology about the construction of ideas of ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ science through representation.