ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Overseas markets of W. & S. Jones, mathematical, optical and philosophical instrument makers, London

• In Event: Instruments and Imperialism: Markets, Networks, and Patronage in the World of James Dinwiddie (1746-1815)

English Abstract

The paper examines the work of William Jones (1762-1831) of the partnership W. & S. Jones, operating from Holborn, London, from about 1776, an instrument maker who grasped numerous opportunities for commercial expansion. He capitalised on the demise of the business of Benjamin Martin, and through the failure of the Adams enterprise, the latter a family operation that had a lucrative contract to supply the Ordnance with gunnery instruments. William managed to buy up aspects of both the Martin and Adams outfits, especially the books, to which he attached up-to-date catalogues of the wares of W. & S. Jones.

Abroad, William’s youthful radicalism led him to contact various figures in the North American colonies; in 1799, W. & S. Jones presented a pair of globes to the American Philosophical Society. Selling instruments in the east proved more difficult, because other firms had formed closer ties there; when W. & T. Gilbert were declared bankrupt in 1828 a third of their debts were due to links with the East India Company. Over-extending clearly held huge risks, despite the enormous potential of the Indian market. Nevertheless, after William’s younger brother Samuel died in 1859 and the business was wound up, W. & S. Jones’s establishment was described at the sale as one “which for nearly 100 years has maintained a distinguished European and Colonial reputation for the superiority of its Scientific Instruments.”

Author

• Alison D. Morrison-Low, National Museums Scotland