Andrew Crosse
Encyclopedia
Fyne Court
Fyne Court is a National Trust-owned nature reserve and visitor centre in Broomfield, Somerset, England.The nature reserve is set in parkland which was originally the pleasure grounds of a large house belonging to pioneer 19th-century electrician, Andrew Crosse, whose family had owned the house...
, Broomfield, Somerset
Broomfield, Somerset
Broomfield is a village and civil parish in the Sedgemoor district of Somerset, England, situated about five miles north of Taunton. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 224....
. Crosse was an early pioneer and experimenter in the use of electricity and one of the last of the 'gentlemen scientists'. He became widely known and somewhat notorious after press reporting of a 1836 electrocrystallization experiment during which insects 'appeared'.
Early life
Crosse was the first son of Richard Crosse and Susannah Porter. In 1788 he accompanied them on a trip to France, where he went to school for a time in OrléansOrléans
-Prehistory and Roman:Cenabum was a Gallic stronghold, one of the principal towns of the Carnutes tribe where the Druids held their annual assembly. It was conquered and destroyed by Julius Caesar in 52 BC, then rebuilt under the Roman Empire...
. From the age of 6 until he was eight he stayed with a tutor, the Reverend White, in Dorchester, where he learned Greek. On February 1, 1792 he was sent to boarding school in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
.
Around the age of 12 Crosse persuaded one of his teachers to let him attend a series of lectures on the natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
s, the second of which was on the subject of electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
, which led to his life-long interest in the subject. Crosse first started experimenting with electricity during his time in the sixth form
Sixth form
In the education systems of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and of Commonwealth West Indian countries such as Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Jamaica and Malta, the sixth form is the final two years of secondary education, where students, usually sixteen to eighteen years of age,...
when he built a home-made Leyden jar
Leyden jar
A Leyden jar, or Leiden jar, is a device that "stores" static electricity between two electrodes on the inside and outside of a jar. It was invented independently by German cleric Ewald Georg von Kleist on 11 October 1745 and by Dutch scientist Pieter van Musschenbroek of Leiden in 1745–1746. The...
. After leaving school, Crosse studied at Brazen Nose College, Oxford
Brasenose College, Oxford
Brasenose College, originally Brazen Nose College , is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. As of 2006, it has an estimated financial endowment of £98m...
.
Scientific research
Having lost his parents - his father in 1800 and mother in 1805 - at the age of 21 Crosse took over the management of the family estates. After abandoning his studies for the barBarrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
, Crosse devoted his spare time increasingly to studying electricity at Fyne Court, where he developed his own laboratory
Laboratory
A laboratory is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. The title of laboratory is also used for certain other facilities where the processes or equipment used are similar to those in scientific laboratories...
. He also studied mineralogy
Mineralogy
Mineralogy is the study of chemistry, crystal structure, and physical properties of minerals. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, as well as their utilization.-History:Early writing...
and became interested in the formation of crystalline deposits in caves. Around 1807 Crosse married his interests together and started to experiment with electrocrystallization, forming crystalline lime carbonate from water taken from Holwell Cavern. He returned to the subject again from around 1817 and in subsequent years produced a total of 24 electrocrystallized minerals.
Among his experiments Crosse erected 'an extensive apparatus for examining the electricity of the atmosphere' incorporating, at one point, an insulated wire some 1.25 miles (2 km) long, later shortened to 1,800 feet (549m), suspended from poles and trees. Using this he was able to determine the polarity of the atmosphere under various weather conditions, with his results being published by his friend George Singer in 1814 as part of Singers Elements of Electricity and Electro-Chemistry.
Along with Sir Humphry Davy
Humphry Davy
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet FRS MRIA was a British chemist and inventor. He is probably best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine...
(who later visited Fyne Court in 1827), Crosse was one of the first to develop large voltaic pile
Voltaic pile
A voltaic pile is a set of individual Galvanic cells placed in series. The voltaic pile, invented by Alessandro Volta in 1800, was the first electric battery...
s. Although it was not the largest he built, Henry Minchin Noad
Henry Minchin Noad
-Biography:Noad, born at Shawford, near Frome, Somerset, 22 June 1815, was son of Humphrey Noad, by Miss Hunn, a half-sister of the Rt. Hon. George Canning. He was educated at Frome grammar school, and was intended for the civil service in India, but the untimely death of his patron, William...
's Manual of Electricity describes a battery consisting of 50 jars containing 73 square feet (6.8 m²) of coated surface. Using his wires he was able to charge and discharge it some 20 times a minute, 'accompanied by reports almost as loud as those of a cannon'. Due to such experiments he became known locally as 'the thunder and lightning man'. In 1836 Sir Richard Phillips described seeing a wide variety of voltaic piles at Fyne Court totalling 2,500, of which 1,500 were in use when he visited.
Although little of his work had been published and Crosse had largely studied for his own interest, in 1836 he was persuaded to attend a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
British Association for the Advancement of Science
frame|right|"The BA" logoThe British Association for the Advancement of Science or the British Science Association, formerly known as the BA, is a learned society with the object of promoting science, directing general attention to scientific matters, and facilitating interaction between...
in Bristol. After describing his discoveries over dinner at the house of a friend in Bristol, he was further persuaded to recount them to both the chemical and geological sections of the meeting, where they proved to be of great interest. These included his electrocrystallization and atmospheric experiments, and his improvements to the voltaic battery.
Crosse went on to successfully separate copper from its ores using electrolysis
Electrolysis
In chemistry and manufacturing, electrolysis is a method of using a direct electric current to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction...
, experimented with the electrolysis of sea water, wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
and brandy
Brandy
Brandy is a spirit produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35%–60% alcohol by volume and is typically taken as an after-dinner drink...
to purify them, and examined the effect of electricity on vegetation, and researched various other areas of interest. He was also interested in the practical uses of electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
and magnetism
Magnetism
Magnetism is a property of materials that respond at an atomic or subatomic level to an applied magnetic field. Ferromagnetism is the strongest and most familiar type of magnetism. It is responsible for the behavior of permanent magnets, which produce their own persistent magnetic fields, as well...
, including the development of loudspeaker
Loudspeaker
A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that produces sound in response to an electrical audio signal input. Non-electrical loudspeakers were developed as accessories to telephone systems, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube made loudspeakers more generally useful...
s and telegraphy
Telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages via some form of signalling technology. Telegraphy requires messages to be converted to a code which is known to both sender and receiver...
although he did not research these areas himself.
Controversy
A few months after the 1836 Bristol meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Crosse had been conducting another electrocrystallization experiment when, on the 26th day of the experiment he saw what he described as "the perfect insect, standing erect on a few bristles which formed its tail." More creatures appeared and two days later they moved their legs. Over the next few weeks, hundreds more appeared. They crawled around the table and hid themselves when they could find a shelter. Crosse identified them as being part of genus acarusAcarus
Acarus is a genus of mites in the family Acaridae.-Species:* Acarus ananas * Acarus beschkovi * Acarus bomiensis Wang, 1982* Acarus calcarabellus * Acarus chaetoxysilos Griffiths, 1970...
.
Puzzled by the results, Crosse mentioned the incident to a couple of friends. He also sent the results to the London Electrical Society. A local newspaper learned of the incident and published an article about the "extraordinary experiment" and named the insects Acarus crossii. The article was subsequently picked up elsewhere across the country and in Europe. Some of the readers apparently gained the impression that Crosse had somehow "created" the insects or at least claimed to have done so. He received angry letters in which he was accused of blasphemy
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
and trying to take God's place as a creator. Some of them included death threats. Local farmers blamed him for the blight of the wheat crop and commissioned an exorcism
Exorcism
Exorcism is the religious practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person or place which they are believed to have possessed...
in the nearby hills. Opposition to Crosse was so fanatical and visceral that he had to withdraw to the solitude of his mansion Fyne Court.
Other scientists tried to repeat the experiment. W. H. Weeks took extensive measures to assure a sealed environment for his experiment by placing it inside a bell jar. He obtained the same results as Crosse, but due to the controversy that Crosse's experiment had sparked his work was never published. In February 1837 many newspapers reported that Michael Faraday had also replicated Crosse's results. However, this was not true. Faraday had not even attempted the experiment. Later researchers, such as Henry Noad and Alfred Smee, were unable to replicate Crosse's results. Crosse did not claim that he created the insects; he instead assumed that there were embedded insect eggs in his samples. Later commentators agreed that the insects were probably cheese
Cheese mite
Tyrophagus casei, the cheese mite, is a species of mite which is inoculated into and Altenburger Ziegenkäse cheese during their production...
or dust mites that had contaminated Crosse's instruments.
It has been suggested that this episode was the inspiration for Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
, although this could not have been the case since Crosse's controversial experiments took place almost 20 years after the novel's publication. The idea appears to have originated in the 1979 book The Man Who Was Frankenstein by Peter Haining
Peter Haining
Peter Alexander Haining was a British journalist, author and anthologist who lived and worked in Suffolk...
. Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
did, however, know Crosse, through a common friend, the poet Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin attended a lecture by Crosse in December 1814 in London, in which he explained his experiments with atmospheric electricity. Edward W. Cox wrote a report of their visits to Fyne Court to see Crosse's work in the Taunton Courier in Autumn 1836.
Other interests
Among his other interests Crosse also wrote a great deal of poetry and enjoyed walking on the Quantock HillsQuantock Hills
The Quantock Hills is a range of hills west of Bridgwater in Somerset, England. The Quantock Hills were England’s first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty being designated in 1956 and consists of large amounts of heathland, oak woodlands, ancient parklands and agricultural land.The hills run from...
, in which Fyne Court is set, 'at all hours of day and night, in all seasons'. He also took a keen interest in nature and the local geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
.
Politically, Crosse advocated the benefits of education for the lower classes, argued against emigration, and supported the campaign by local farmers against falling food prices and high taxes during the 1820s. He was also active in party politics, speaking in support of friends at election rallies. Following the Battle of Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
, Crosse boarded a ship at Exeter
Exeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...
and was able to see the captured Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
on the deck of HMS Bellerophon
HMS Bellerophon (1786)
The first HMS Bellerophon of the Royal Navy was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line launched on 6 October 1786 at Frindsbury on the River Medway, near Chatham. She was built at the shipyard of Edward Greaves to the specifications of the Arrogant, designed by Sir Thomas Slade in 1758, the lead ship...
near Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
.
Crosse also served as a local magistrate
Magistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
.
Personal life
Crosse married Mary Anne Hamilton in 1809. They had seven children together, although three died in childhood. Mary died herself in 1846, four days after Andrew's brother, following several years of ill health.On July 22, 1850 Crosse was married again, aged 66, to 23 year old Cornelia Augusta Hewett Berkeley. They went on to have three children together.
Andrew Crosse suffered a stroke while dressing on the morning on May 26, 1855. After a period of illness he died on July 6 in the same room in which he had been born.
Memorial
His laboratory table on which he carried out experiments stands in the aisle of the Church of St. Mary and All Saints in BroomfieldChurch of St Mary & All Saints, Broomfield
The Church of St Mary & All Saints in Broomfield, Somerset, England was built in the 15th and 16th centuries and has been designated as a Grade I listed building....
and an obelisk
Obelisk
An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...
in his memory is in the churchyard.
The majority of Crosse's Fyne Court mansion burned down in 1898, however the garden and the 65 acres (263,045.9 m²) estate are now owned by the National Trust
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
and are open to visitors.
Documents
A number of documents related to Andrew Crosse and his work are held in the Somerset Record Office. In December 2008 Somerset County CouncilSomerset County Council
Somerset County Council is the county council of Somerset in the South West of England, an elected local government authority responsible for the most significant local government services in most of the county.-Area covered:...
acquired a further two letters for the sum of £400 to add to the collection.