1. Audience and Effects in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

Grand public spectacles were a mainstay of courtly politics in early modern Europe (Orgel Reference Orgel1975; Apostolidès Reference Apostolidès1981; Burke Reference Burke1994). Spectacle also mattered to those inclined to natural philosophy. According to René Descartes’ biographer Adrien Baillet, it should be the business of the gentleman philosopher to attend courtly spectacle, to know what princes “do represent of most pompous and glorious upon the Theatre of the Universe” (Baillet Reference Baillet1693, 29). One of the things Descartes and his scholarly friends would have seen were the new “artificial fireworks” which graced many courtly festivals of the age, as gunners fired off thousands of rockets, bombs, and fiery stars over lakes and rivers, or from brightly-painted ephemeral castles and classical temples.

The origins of fireworks lay in China, but European fireworks followed a distinctive development after their introduction from the east in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries. Early European fireworks were used for war, with rockets, bombs, fire tubes, and grenades being hurled against enemies through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There were also peaceful fireworks, adding drama to church plays and festivals with squibs attached to flying angels or pyrotechnics made to represent the fiery mouth of Hell. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the fireworks of the battlefield and the church slowly merged into peaceful displays of military pyrotechnics, first in religious plays for the courts, and then in secular triumphs and performances based on classical allegories. By the close of the sixteenth century, many European courts employed gunner artificers to stage grand fireworks marking royal occasions, military victories, and the new year (Werrett Reference Werrett2010; Salatino Reference Salatino1997; Kohler and Villon-Lechner Reference Kohler and Villon-Lechner1988).

Artificial fireworks were “artificial,” or full of art, because they often mimicked “meteors,” the natural phenomena of the skies and the heavens, and this partly explains how fireworks derived their force as political displays. In church dramas, artificial scenery served to evoke in audiences a sense of the portentous power of the heavens – the way thunder and lightning, comets, and strange weather portended God's judgment and power over men. Artificial fireworks, imitating thunder, lightning, comets, and stars, might impress audiences with the same sense of portentous power as their natural counterparts, though it was the prince, rather than God, whose power was celebrated. Courtiers recognized this as artifice, and represented themselves as the unperturbed spectators of fireworks, while they imagined the “vulgar” masses looking on in terror, learning to submit themselves before the powers who controlled such potent effects. When a hundred thunderbolts exploded at fireworks in La Rochelle, France, in 1629, “naïve bystanders along the shore . . . were stunned and frightened and . . . thrown about pell-mell . . .. The Court alone remained still and undaunted, being well acquainted with the vanity and ostentation of these diversions” (quoted in Canova-Green Reference Canova-Green, Mulryne, Watanabe-O'Kelly and Shewring2004, 150).

Again at a display for the English Queen Elizabeth I in August 1572, a spectator contrasted the fearful response of those who were unfamiliar with fireworks to that of the Queen, who took pleasure in the display.

Fireworks of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries thus amounted to a form of artificial nature, showing suns, stars, comets, fiery exhalations, snow, rain, thunder and lightning. These effects were considered extremely powerful and deeply impressed the princely patrons and courtiers who used them as tools of political distinction. This distinction hinged on knowledge or experience of pyrotechnics. The gentleman or courtier was expected to be virtuous, partly by the habit of reading, and numerous new books on fireworks were published in the sixteenth century to offer instruction in the creation of pyrotechnic effects. Those who understood or had familiarity with fireworks then experienced them as pleasing diversions, while those who did not were imagined to be terrified as if by natural portents (Werrett Reference Werrett2010, 53–4).

This spectacular logic helps to make sense of contemporary approaches to the understanding of nature. Natural magicians in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries sought to present Nature as the source of wonderful performances, whose causes would be kept hidden from audiences but revealed to the reader of natural magical books. As Giambattista Della Porta advised the readers of his Magia naturalis,

Magical performances thus amounted to a form of small-scale spectacle, in which various remarkable effects and imitations of nature were to be displayed, being wonderful to those ignorant of magic, but not to those familiar with the relevant techniques. Della Porta drew directly on fireworks in these actions. The repertoire of effects in Magia naturalis included a whole book of fireworks recipes, and Della Porta claimed to have seen and fired pyrotechnics while living in Rome (ibid., 293–4). Many other magicians included fireworks in their works (Werrett Reference Werrett2010, 48–57).

The development of experimental philosophy out of the performances of natural magic is well-documented, as is the reticence of early experimenters such as Robert Boyle and the members of the Royal Society over the value of spectacle for natural philosophy (Golinski Reference Golinski1989; Eamon Reference Eamon1994; Findlen Reference Findlen1995; Hankins and Silverman Reference Hankins and Silverman1995). Boyle and others recognized that spectacle and wonder were important means to draw audiences to the new experimental philosophy, but simultaneously feared that too much spectacle might lead audiences to see experimental demonstrations as nothing but displays of exotic effects. I shall explore this tension further in the next section, since artificers in fact faced similar problems in producing pyrotechnic spectacles. For now it is enough to note that spectacles provided a critical resource for the shaping of experimental practice, both as a model for performance, linking together effects, experience, and knowledge, and as a standard against which to develop alternative practices. Associating the natural magicians’ habit of hiding causes to raise wonder with Catholic trickery and deceit, fellows of the Royal Society went out of their way to insist that experiment entailed revealing the causes behind Nature's wonderful effects. Wonder should be experienced in the revelation and comprehension of natural causes, which were ultimately divine, rather than in effects produced by hidden causes, as the magicians and artificers had it. Boyle's debt to spectacle is evident in his insistence that experiments and spectacles were not the same, “the works of God are not like the tricks of jugglers or the pageants that entertain princes, where concealment is necessary to wonder; but the knowledge of the works of God proportions our admiration of them” (Boyle Reference Boyle1663, 53; Werrett Reference Werrett2010, 73–5). Experiment relied on theater insofar as it was shaped in opposition to it.

By the reign of Queen Anne, British audiences had come to accept Boyle's distinction between spectacle and experiment, and even began to view artificial spectacles such as fireworks through the lens of experimental performances. If fireworks had earlier shaped natural magical performances, now experimental demonstrations shaped the ways that audiences experienced fireworks. Richard Steele, writing in the Guardian after seeing fireworks in 1714, echoed Boyle's natural theological vision of experiment, when he recalled how,

Steele was disregardful of fireworks here, stressing the “insignificancy” of human art, though he was astounded by the theological ramifications of what he had seen. His thoughts were led from fireworks to the majesty of the divine theater of nature, as they might be in a philosophical lecture. Fireworks spectacles clearly shaped Steele's vision of nature, but his theological references followed experimental traditions dating back to Boyle.

Steele's disregard for human artifice was reflected in other responses to fireworks at this time. While courtiers of the sixteenth century overcame fear of fireworks, those of the eighteenth century simply disregarded them. A French print of fireworks at Meudon in 1735 showed courtly ladies and gentlemen sitting and conversing easily with one another in front of a barrage of exploding fireworks, a scene recalling the frontispiece of the 1728 edition of Bernard de Fontenelle's Conversations on the Plurality of the Worlds. This showed a female student being casually instructed by a male philosopher beneath a sky filled with a similarly dramatic radiance of light that filled the heavens (Fontenelle Reference Fontenelle1728–29, vol. 1). Both philosophical and pyrotechnic audiences were nonchalant, literally without heat, in the face of fearsome fiery explosions.

Such reactions changed again in the second half of the eighteenth century, as the growing familiarity of audiences with fireworks and natural philosophy led to a complete reversal of the audiences’ experience of spectacle in comparison with that of the late sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries. Enlightened experimenters insisted on spreading natural philosophy to the public through lectures and education, revealing the causes behind spectacular effects and dispelling wonder in anything but the works of God. By the mid-eighteenth century, a growing middle-class could (and did) read a diverse array of publications on pyrotechnics and on natural philosophy, and might purchase both fireworks and philosophical instruments for their own private use (Stewart Reference Stewart1992; Lynn Reference Lynn2006b). Furthermore, the opening of commercial pleasure gardens in this period created regular opportunities for audiences to experience grand fireworks displays, previously limited to occasions of state or celebrations of peace or triumph, but now put on every week by artificers employed by the gardens (Werrett Reference Werrett2010, 201–33). In short, it might now be difficult to convince audiences that fireworks could be natural apparitions or fearsome portents of some powerful will, and indeed, these kinds of descriptions largely disappeared by the early eighteenth century. Fear, however, reappeared in accounts of fireworks after the mid-century as individuals sought a new form of distinction from the common spectator through the experiences of the sublime. Once knowledge of fireworks was widespread, making them familiar, it became fashionable to act as if one was afraid of them. Following Edmund Burke's popular Essay on the Sublime and the Beautiful of 1757, audiences thus exhibited themselves relishing the very passions that courtly etiquette had expected to be subdued. It became fashionable, and served as a form of distinction, to be afraid of pyrotechnic displays, though such fear, experienced at a distance from its source, might also be pleasurable and entertaining. The lecturer Adam Walker, a student of Joseph Priestley, thus recorded fireworks as both dreadful and delightful, with “a wonderful and alarming effect” (Walker Reference Walker1792, 209). Burke himself discussed fireworks as an instance of the magnificent in his Essay, comparing them to an infinity of stars (Burke Reference Burke1757, 60–1; Salatino Reference Salatino1997, 47–8). While sixteenth-century audiences contrasted fear and pleasure, enlightened spectators identified fear with pleasure. Once again, the experience of artificial spectacle and nature remained closely interlinked at this time. Volcanoes in particular were widely regarded as sublime “natural fireworks” and were often imitated in pyrotechnic displays, while natural philosophers made much of sublime phenomena in public lectures on chemistry and electricity (Werrett Reference Werrett2010, 212–19; Golinski Reference Golinski, Bensaude-Vincent and Blondel2008).

2. The Moralization of Natural and Artificial Experience

Since the sixteenth century, when knowledge of wonderful effects served to mitigate fear among spectators, the representation of fireworks and experiments in texts and images was a key element in the performance and experience of natural and artificial effects. The last section described some of the changing reactions to fireworks and experiments in the following two centuries, and argued that these experiences were closely connected and helped to shape one another. This section focuses on the representational aspects of this relationship, and the way that fireworks and natural philosophy generated texts as an aid to performance. Fireworks, like philosophical lectures, were educational – they were intended, prior to the advent of the pleasure gardens at least, to celebrate the crown or the country with emblems and symbolic narratives. However, both pyrotechnic and philosophical performers found it difficult to keep audiences’ attention focused on the morals of performances rather than the effects. Lay observation of fireworks and natural philosophy then generated knowledge, as performers used texts and images to focus their audiences’ attention on the proper meanings of displays.

Simon Schaffer has written that experimental public lectures of the eighteenth century hinged on the moralization of natural experience (Schaffer Reference Schaffer1983). Performers presented arresting natural effects and then sought to secure the philosophical meaning of those effects for audiences – typically as pointing to the glory of God as the artificer and agent behind Nature's effects and powers. Besides the many Newtonian demonstration lectures that marked the eighteenth century, these public spectacles included the paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby, the grottos of Alexander Pope and Thomas Wright, Philip de Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon, Louis-Bertrand Castel's ocular harpsichord, and the spectacular experimental repertoire developed around electricity (ibid.; Altick Reference Altick1978, 117–127; Hankins and Silverman Reference Hankins and Silverman1995, 72–85). Public spectacles such as fireworks also entailed morals – the “moralization of artificial experience” was just as important as that of the natural. Hence states expended considerable sums of money on fireworks not as diversions for the public, but as a powerful mode of propaganda. Fireworks carried messages that explosive pyrotechnic effects served to amplify and impress on audiences’ minds. Hence early modern fireworks were typically staged around elaborate ephemeral architecture presenting castles, triumphal arches or temples, colorfully painted and richly decorated with emblems, allegorical figures and statues. Displays also unfolded according to an allegorical narrative. In 1629, fireworks showing Perseus’ conquest of the sea-monster and rescue of Andromeda served to commemorate Catholic France's successful siege of La Rochelle and defense from the Protestant English (Morel Reference Morel1629). Alternatively, in the eighteenth century, British decorations for fireworks staged in Canada depicted King George and Prime Minister Pitt, together with personifications of Britannia, attended by Victory and Peace, with the female figure of France and a map of Canada prostrate at her feet. France was accompanied by “Cruelty . . . Deceit, Craft, and Envy, blasted by a Flash of Lightning from Jupiter” (Anon. 1760). Spectators should celebrate and carry such images away with them to learn appropriate virtues.

The morals of artificial and natural performances often overlapped. As I have shown elsewhere, in Russia in the 1730s and 40s, members of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences adopted fireworks displays as an alternative to philosophical lecturing as a means to interest the Russian court in the pursuit of natural knowledge (Werrett Reference Werrett2010, 103–131). In displays designed by the academy's professors, audiences were encouraged to celebrate the sciences within the broader celebration of the Russian empire and tsar. Fireworks staged in St. Petersburg in 1735 depicted the cosmologies of Tycho Brahe and Copernicus and included the figures of wonder and pleasure, “which present themselves not only when one looks at the sun, but also in discussion of the great qualities of Her Imperial Majesty” (Anon. 1735, 38). Similarly, scientific performances might incorporate praise of the sovereign or celebrations of imperial or national significance. Thomas Sprat urged that the Royal Society was founded in the midst of celebrations of the Restoration of the monarchy, “many Worthy Men began now to imagine some greater thing; and to bring out experimental knowledge, from the retreats, in which it had long hid itself, to take part in the Triumphs of that universal Jubilee” (Sprat Reference Sprat1667, 58–59). In Russia, initial plans for the Academy of Sciences demanded that scientific lectures include praise of the sovereign, and the Russian chemist Mikhail Lomonosov skillfully wove such praise into his lectures on chemistry, glass, and optics (Werrett Reference Werrett2010, 164).

Natural and artificial spectacles thus both entailed the communication of morals relating to the natural and social order, which spectacle served to make manifest or amplify through arresting effects. Experiments and fireworks displays clearly differed in their scale, the composition of their audiences and the form of morals that they were supposed to teach. But both experimenters and the creators of fireworks displays faced similar problems when attempting to ensure that performances did communicate morals to audiences in appropriate ways. Historians sometimes claim that the allegorical scenery and decorations of fireworks were their most important feature, because the quality of pyrotechnics was poor. But audiences were often dismissive of ephemeral architecture and symbolic decorations in the eighteenth century, or made their own meanings out of imagery. The eighteenth-century Russian diarist Andrey Bolotov recorded that, “It was more pleasant to watch these [fireworks] than the plans themselves: there were so many of them that . . . we did not know where to look” (Bolotov Reference Bolotov1872, 542). Audiences dismissed the symbolic components of displays. “Cardinal Virtues, I don't care for seeing them in such Combustible Figures” (Anon. 1714, 113). Audiences (and sometimes performers) thus ignored or dismissed the morals imputed in spectacle, or interpreted them in their own ways, and the same was true of philosophical effects. The Newtonian lecturer Jean Desaguliers complained of Francis Hauksbee's lectures on electrical, hydrostatic, and pneumatic effects because, “as they were only shewn and explain'd as so many curious Phaenomena, and not made Use of as Mediums to prove a Series of philosophical Propositions . . . they laid no . . . Foundation for true Philosophy” (Desaguliers Reference Desaguliers, Innys, Longman, Shewell and Hitch1745, ix). Natural phenomena were presented as mere phenomena, with no educational moral attached.

If audiences did focus more on “curious phenomena” rather than philosophical morals, then we need a language to describe their experiences. A detailed understanding of how audiences experienced and evaluated the phenomenal aspects of natural philosophical lectures remains outside the scope of this essay, though it would be of great interest. Certainly one might look to the aesthetic criteria used to evaluate fireworks in considering assessments of scientific performances. Audiences for fireworks judged pyrotechnic effects on the basis of their variety, duration, motions, colors, and contrasts, and above all on the orderliness and decorum of their performance. The methodical unfolding of a display was held in great regard. An English account from 1606 noted, “This firework very methodically, one part after another, continued burning and cracking for the space of three quarters of an hower” (Nichols Reference Nichols1828, 2:93). A Russian diary entry of the 1750s recorded how “the [fireworks] consisted of various changing figures, one after the other ignited itself with great order and accuracy” (Danilov Reference Danilov1883, 37). This high regard for methodical unfolding made its way into at least one natural philosophical vision of the cosmos – that of Leibniz, for whom the actualization of God's plan for the universe entailed a perfect, simultaneous unfolding of an infinite number of elements, the monads. Leibniz even likened his universe to a firework. Attacking the suggestion that a ship's path could not be predicted, even by God, he wrote, “as God orders all things at once beforehand, the accuracy of the path of this vessel would be no more strange than that of a rocket passing along a cord to a firework, since the whole regulation of things preserves a perfect harmony between themselves by means of their influence one upon the other” (Leibniz Reference Leibniz and Huggard1952, 65).

One way that both pyrotechnic and philosophical performers sought to secure the meanings of unstable performances was by using texts, which might render permanent, clarify, or expand on their moral messages, disciplining audience observation. Most fireworks were accompanied by brochures or engravings depicting the architectural decorations used in displays and describing their symbolic meanings. Similarly, courses of scientific lectures were often written up and published as textbooks, making ephemeral performances permanent. Desaguliers thus explained that published lectures served to set down and elaborate on mathematical explanations which had to be skirted over in lectures because they might lose the attention of the audience (Desaguliers Reference Desaguliers, Innys, Longman, Shewell and Hitch1745, xi). Desaguliers’ son Thomas, as chief fireworks master of London in the 1740s, was also involved in attempts to secure the meaning of performances though texts. In 1749, Thomas oversaw fireworks in London's Green Park for the Peace of Aix-la-Chappelle. As the display was being set up, scores of unauthorized prints of the temple and decorations were distributed, prompting the Board of Ordnance, overseeing the display, to issue official descriptions and engravings of the architecture (Werrett Reference Werrett2010, 151–2). Similarly, in St. Petersburg, Russian academicians published sometimes lengthy descriptions of the fireworks displays they designed in order to secure the allegorical meanings of displays or to clarify the scientific iconography used in performances. As I have shown in Fireworks, academicians were not competing with unofficial printmakers, as in London, but used texts to draw attention away from the impressive pyrotechnic effects devised by Russian artillerists for courtly displays (ibid., 118–9). In a world of competition for the favor of the imperial court, academicians wanted all attention focused on the allegorical narratives that the professors produced, and not on the pyrotechnic effects which audiences seemed to be most impressed by during displays. It might be added, however, that using texts to secure meanings only created further problems. Print was no less subject to flexible interpretation than performances, and certainly in the case of scientific literature, audiences imposed an uncontrollable and diverse array of readings on philosophical texts (Secord Reference Secord2000). Ultimately, audiences probably took from pyrotechnic and philosophical performances a diverse range of morals and experiences.

3. Spectacle as Language and Experiment

The first section of this essay proposed that audiences’ observations of early modern spectacles and natural phenomena were closely integrated between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The second section reminded us that spectacles such as fireworks were, like philosophical performances, educational, teaching morals to audiences about the virtues of the state or crown. Performers of both scientific and state spectacles faced similar problems when audiences ignored morals in favor of effects. Texts might be used to stabilize the meanings of performances and discipline spectators but these also faced problems of interpretive flexibility. It remains in this section to show that, given the proximity of early modern science and spectacle, the latter often served as a resource for generating new knowledge of nature. This occurred in a number of ways. First pyrotechnic imitations of nature provided standards against which to calibrate novel experiences, and as a means to determine if new natural phenomena were being seen. Second, the language of artificial spectacle helped to articulate new phenomena; and third, fireworks displays might themselves become sites of scientific observation and lay participation in the production of natural knowledge.

In the sixteenth century, audiences unfamiliar with fireworks might struggle to decide if they were natural or artificial, and used their knowledge of artifice to overcome the fear which natural meteors or artillery might induce. By the eighteenth century, fireworks were a more familiar experience among the literate classes, prompting a new effort at distinction through sublime fear. This familiarity also made fireworks into a relatively stable standard for judging Nature's appearances. Since fireworks did not exactly imitate Nature's meteors, at least in the perception of the knowledgeable observer, they might serve as phenomena by which to calibrate real meteors. Criteria for making aesthetic judgments about fireworks then served to make natural knowledge, as a sensitivity to effects – that is, the order, motions, shapes, and appearances of fireworks – helped to structure meteorological observations. As Jan Golinski has shown, “lay observation” flourished in meteorology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a fashion for observing and recording the weather growing in England alongside increasingly affordable barometers and thermometers (Golinski Reference Golinski2007, 77–107). Such accounts included sightings of remarkable fiery meteors, which observers often mistook for fireworks, before using their differences from fireworks to calibrate novel natural phenomena.

Throughout the eighteenth century, a variety of provincial physicians, military officers, and clergymen thus sent reports of remarkable fireballs, falling stars, and lightning flashes to the Royal Society, whose fellows published the most interesting correspondence in the Philosophical Transactions. Typically, reports detailed the time and place of an apparition, the color, shape, and motions of the meteor, its possible effects on local weather and the weather conditions in which it occurred. Authors often explained how apparitions they at first took for artificial effects turned out to be natural phenomena. Thus one Captain William Gordon, coming down from Whitehall in Spring 1741, saw a fireball: “I really at first took it for some artificial Fire-work, but was soon undeceived by the different Forms it appeared in, and the Routs it took through the Regions of the Air” (Gordon Reference Gordon1742–43, 58). It took several minutes before Gordon could decide that what he saw was not a firework but a natural meteor, his conclusion based on the peculiar motions of the fireball, seen only after he stopped his boat, “that I might more easily observe whether it was the Work of Art or the Work of Nature, for I was in some Doubt” (ibid., 59). Similarly the reverend George Costard, another lay observer, wrote to John Catlin in 1745, describing how he saw a “Light arise from behind the Trees and Houses [in St. James’ Park, a venue for fireworks] . . . which I took at first for a large Sky-Rocket; but when it had risen to the height of about 20 degrees, it took a motion nearly parallel to the horizon, but waved in this manner.” A drawing of a wavy line followed, and since the light moved more slowly than a rocket, Costard became convinced he was observing a natural phenomenon (Costard Reference Costard1744–45). Familiarity with the speed and directions of rocket-flights thus helped determine the nature of an observation.

As we saw in section one, in the sixteenth century, the virtuous habit of reading and being knowledgeable about the causes of wonderful effects helped elite audiences to discern the artificial from the natural in fireworks displays and so achieve social distinction. In the case of meteorological observations, distinctions of nature and art instead became productive of new natural knowledge, reversing the traditional arrangement just as sublime aesthetics turned fear of fireworks from being a mark of ignorance into a mark of distinction. Enlightened, middle-class demonstrations of philosophical virtue thus retained the ingredients of earlier magical and courtly virtue, but re-organized them so that natural knowledge was the end product rather than the starting point of the experience, recalling Boyle's admonition that explanations of natural causes should be the source of wonder rather than the effects they might be made to produce.

Fireworks also served more straightforwardly as a simile for articulating novel natural phenomena – that is, when no one doubted that a phenomenon was natural, they still used the experience and language of pyrotechny to account for what was seen. I have discussed elsewhere the widespread use of pyrotechnic language in eighteenth-century accounts of the “electric fire” (Werrett Reference Werrett2010, 183–99). Observers unfamiliar with electricity described its effects by comparison with pyrotechnics, using the familiar experience of rockets, crackers, serpents, and jets de feu (a form of candle) to articulate the sounds, appearances, and operations of the electric fire. For example, observing an electrified glass receiver at night, the abbé Nollet noted how, “The receiver is filled with a great number of jets de feu which move like serpents with lightning rapidity” (Nollet Reference Nollet1753, 75).

The use of pyrotechnic language was also salient in meteorological accounts. Any number of instances might be given of such usage by lay and expert observers alike. In 1708, a boat-master described to Royal Society fellow Orlando Bridgeman the fall of lightning on his boat, “he saw the Fire light on the Bow-spirit . . . where meeting a small resistance, it flew into small Streams like a Rocket” (Bridgeman Reference Bridgeman1708–09, 139). The abbé Jérôme Richard reported observations in 1755 of a globe de feu which traversed the skies and “ended in the form of a rocket nuanced with the colours of the rainbow . . . terminated by four stars the colour of sulphur . . . followed by a violent explosion” (Richard Reference Richard1770–71, 2:166). Pyrotechnic terms were also common in descriptions of volcanoes and the aurora borealis. Johann Gmelin observed the aurora in Siberia with sublime horror,

The visual and aural experience of fireworks thus provided a standard against which to calibrate fiery effects in the skies, and a language for articulating their appearance. Finally, the scene of spectacle could itself be a site for experimental investigations in the eighteenth century. A brief account of one such scene brings out the way the spectacle of science and fireworks could converge in this period, while also highlighting differences in the observational strategies which each practice's audiences enacted. Observing nature and spectacle were evidently similar and mutually constitutive enterprises, but entailed different disciplines of the body and the eye, gearing their attention in different directions, albeit in often similar ways.

In November 1748 an article appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, whose author was probably Royal Society fellow and mathematician Benjamin Robins (Anon. 1748; Steele Reference Steele1994). The article proposed a “geometrical use” for rockets as signals and requested readers to attend to the Green Park fireworks to be held for the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in the following April – the same display overseen by Thomas Desaguliers discussed above. To be held in the Green Park in London, the display was to be the grandest England had ever seen, with music by Handel and pyrotechnics by imported Italian artificers, working together with Desaguliers and the antiquarian and comptroller of the Board of Ordnance Sir Charles Frederick. Robins proposed that audiences might observe the height to which rockets used in the display ascended, and the furthest distance at which they could be seen, because knowing this could make rockets useful as signals for navigation and surveying. He requested anyone within fifteen to fifty miles of the Green Park to check the sky to see how far away the rockets could be observed, and asked more local observers to measure the angle of the rockets at their highest altitude. Results would be published and compared in the Gentleman's Magazine.

Robins thus imagined that acts of spectatorship at the fireworks could also be philosophical observations. The fireworks display served as a means to bring together a community of observers, while Robins took for granted the skill of the Italian artificers to fire the rockets, and made no plans to fire them himself. Robins also assumed, in line with the contemporary fashion for nonchalant witnessing, that audiences would be able to discern artificial rockets from natural lights at great distances, and would observe them dispassionately, without being overcome by the fear that marked reactions to both earlier and later spectacles. To ensure the proper measures were taken, audiences, like philosophical observers, would send their observations to Robins, who would print them to make a permanent record of the results.

In the event, however, Robins’ plans came to little. After the fireworks, only one letter appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, from a Welsh reader in Carmarthen claiming to have seen flashes in the sky on the night of the display, but without any measures of height. The author identified the flashes as fireworks by reference to meteors: “I don't pretend that I saw any body of fire, only a blaze of light, which neither descended like a meteor, nor expanded itself abroad like a lightning, but ascended and died” (Cymra Reference Cymra1749, 218). Robins’ assumptions that public observations of fireworks could produce useful knowledge thus proved futile, though there was nothing in principle to stop them. Instead, Robins turned to his own experiments on rockets, publishing the results in the Philosophical Transactions the following year (Robins Reference Robins1749; Ellicot Reference Ellicot1749). While this attempt at stimulating public observations failed, it points to the proximity of philosophical observations to the witnessing of spectacle.