David Kirkaldy (1820–1897) and his museum of destruction: the visual dilemmas of an engineer as man of science

Abstract

This paper examines codes of representation in nineteenth century engineering in Britain in relation to broader visual culture. While engineering was promoted as a rational public enterprise through techniques of spectacular display, engineers who aimed to be taken seriously in the intellectual hierarchies of science had to negotiate suitable techniques for making and using images. These difficulties can be examined in the visual practices that mark the career of engineer David Kirkaldy. Beginning as a bravura naval draughtsman, Kirkaldy later negotiated his status as a serious experimenter in material testing science, changing his style of representation that at first sight seems to be in line with the 'objective' strategy in science of getting nature to represent herself. And although Kirkaldy maintained a range of visual styles to communicate with different audiences, making rhetorical use of several technologies of inscription, from hand drawing to photography, nevertheless, his work does in fact demonstrate new uses of the concept of objectivity in representation when up against the practices of engineering. While these might seem merely pragmatic in comparison to the ethical weight given to the discourse of objective representation in science, in the messy world of collapsing bridges and law suits, virtuous engineers had to develop various forms of visual knowledge as practical science. This was not 'applied science' but a differentiated form of enquiry whose complexities hold as much interest as the better known visual cultures of late nineteenth century science or art.