The Royal Society is famous for doing science, publishing science
recognizing science, storing and archiving science.
Obviously.
But it's also really famous for, sort of, exhibiting it. And showing it to the public.
And one of the most famous things the Royal Society does are exhibitions.
You may know at the moment and for many, many years now
the Royal Society has something called its Summer Science Exhibition.
Keith:
That's right.
Brady:
Which is an amazing thing.
Basically all these rooms here at the Royal Society fill up with people and scientists and exhibits and
All the public come. It's a really great thing to come to.
But this isn't just a recent thing, Keith, this has been going for a long time.
Keith: It has been going on for a long time.
In the Victorian period the Royal Society was in Burlington House with the Royal Academy.
And it held matching exhibitions of science.
Alright, and you don't just have to take Keith's word for it we've got a little bit of evidence for you here.
This is a very famous image here at the Royal Society.
Keith: Yeah. So this is one of the Royal Society's soirées.
Now, in the Victorian period they would call the Summer Science Exhibition a "conversazioni".
And the evening parties would be called "soirées".
And here we have the gentlemen of the Royal Society
looking at the exhibits laid out on the table for them.
This is a bunch of basically old men in suits.
Whereas you get all sorts these days, don't you?
Keith: And notice it is all men. So this was the men-only night.
There was a lady's night as well.
But this is, as you see, the gents of the period.
Okay. We have something else interesting here. I'll move this picture out of the way.
I'll do it very carefully.
And like all good exhibitions they had catalogues of what was on display.
And so here are 10 years worth of the Royal Society's display exhibits.
So there we go. This is the programs from 1890 to 1900.
There's one in particular that we're interested in, and this is 1896.
That's right, yes. So let's find the year.
Brady:
I am curious about what other things you could have gone to look at.
Lots of electrical things. Lots of things to do with resistance.
So electricity was obviously --
Keith:
New technology, yeah, absolutely.
Brady:
The meteorological council had a whole bunch of exhibits going on to do with sea surface temperature.
Instantaneous photographs of splashes.
Which I know is something you find interesting.
We were just talking about that before, weren't we?
Brady:
This person is clearly not very good at marketing their work. We have here number 24.
"Specimens of Boring Marine Animals"
By the Marine Biological Association.
I assume we mean boring into stuff.
That's right.
Not dull.
This is the kind of creatures that would damage ships and piers and so on.
So here we go, Keith. The Royal Society.
The president at the time was Sir Joseph Lister.
Keith: Very famous name of course.
Probably most famous for...
Antiseptic surgery.
Ah yeah, okay. Listerine.
That's right, yeah.
Ah okay. Alright. There we go.
May 6, 1896.
Basically the number one exhibit was one demonstration in particular.
Keith: 
"Practical demonstration of Röntgen's New Photography"
"With experiments and exhibition of results."
As difficult to pronounce as his name is-
Roach-en?
Run-gen?
Runt-gen?
He's an incredibly famous scientist and he's most famous for pioneering work with x-rays.
Discovered x-rays, yeah.
He discovered x-rays.
And he was showing off his work and everyone was coming to see it.
What is it-
He wasn't here, but the exhibitor
was a very interesting fellow of the Royal Society.
He wasn't a fellow at this stage. You can see he's Mr. A. A. C. Swinton.
One of the things he's famous for is writing a paper which pretty much predicted something called television.
Brady:
Oh, okay.
We see here up in the right up there talking about
"Since bone is more opaque to these rays than tissue,
it is possible by their means to obtain shadow pictures of the bones in the living body."
But we can go one better than just showing you the program. We can show you... some stuff.
Some objects.
'Cause Keith's got some. Let's get those.
So these are photographs taken at those 1896 soirées.
By A. A. Campbell-Swinton.
Look at that.
And this is the hand - looks like it's the left hand - of someone called Armstrong?
That's Lord Armstrong, yes. W. G. Armstrong.
Lord Armstrong's hand. You can do better than that though.
Because look at this hand here.
Brady:
That is the hand of Lord Salisbury.
Who was the prime minister at the time!
Keith:
Yeah, but he was a fellow of the Royal Society which is way more important.
Well I mean, that's important too. But that's amazing!
The prime minister was coming and thinking: "I want to see these bone shadows."
"Here, here's my hand. I'll stick it in the machine" Or whatever it was they were doing it with.
Here are some more.
I mean, to us this is sort of just pretty standard, isn't it? But this must've just blown their minds.
It did. And Campbell-Swinton, interestingly, quite soon after this was
beginning to be approached by medical men who realized the possibilities of this kind of technology.
He was employed for a while in taking this kind of image for physicians.
"Exposed for 4 minutes through a sheet of black, vulcanized fiber, .0212 inches thick."
"On January the 18th, 1896."
So that was slightly before the soirée.
So they must've taken that and had it printed as a demonstration piece.
Brady:
Yeah they must've had that up behind the table going "Do you want one of these done?"
"Stick your hand in there. Come on, prime minister. You want one of them don't you?"
What have we got in here, Keith?
Well, these are photographs by the Swan Electric Engraving Company.
Brady:
And again, around 1896.
Keith:
Yeah, and we can see immediately what's going on here.
Brady:
What is it with scientists? As soon as they invent anything they can't wait to throw a frog in there.
Yeah, and you can see the structure of the creature's bones there which is rather great.
Brady:
So there's an x-ray- a very early x-ray of a frog.
But here look, we've got things.
And this is the idea that you could have hidden objects and the x-rays would reveal what they were.
Ok so that could be, like, someone's pocket or something.
And we seem to have a key, and a corkscrew, and a-
There's a coin there and I don't quite know what this is, but yeah.
Was that like a shaving blade?
Looks like a straight razor, there.
But again, the idea is that you're revealing hidden objects through x-rays.
And I'm sure, just like you, people wanted to know what was in the box.
Exactly, you don't even have to open the box.
Yeah. There were various versions of these because people got them done quite regularly.
But, you know, it's fascinating to have a thing that you can date to a particular event in the way of that particular soirée.
But what I love about these more than anything I think.
Here we have people taking x-rays of objects in boxes and purses. Just personal effects.
So here you have airline security, before the aeroplane took off.
And a frog.
And a frog.
[Laughing]
Keith:
Now these date from the 1890's.
So they're pretty early ones and you might just be able to read that.
Brady:
Can I hold one, Keith?
Keith:
Yes, do.
It's probably clearer on the pink one here. Can you read that?
It says, "The Edison-Swan".
That's right. So Joseph Swan's company merged with Thomas Edison's
and they pretty much sewed up the market for these things.
