#2. Collaboration, Competition and Serendipity in Science
What can the 1851 Great Exhibition teach us about how to conduct research in the modern-day?
“Luck is the residue of design” - John Milton
Scientific folklore is full of tales of serendipitous discovery. From the stray Petri dish that led Fleming to discover penicillin, to Röntgen’s chance detection of X-rays while tinkering with a cathode-ray tube, Nobel happening upon dynamite, Spencer inadvertently discovering microwave ovens, and an apple happening to fall on Newton’s head.1
Although it’s difficult to know how many of these tales are academic urban legends and how many genuinely happened, the fact that we’ve heard them and repeated them persistently over the years, perhaps indicates that serendipity is an important, but neglected, part of science. But, where are today’s tales of serendipitous discovery?2 And, if serendipity is important in making scientific progress, how can we integrate it into how we do science in the 21st Century?
Louis Pasteur famously said, “Chance favours only prepared minds”, but can we create an environment where prepared minds are more commonplace and interact with each other more frequently? This is something Michael Nielsen calls ‘designed serendipity’ and is what this article is focussed on. In doing so, we go back to 19th Century Britain to see how they created an environment for serendipitous discoveries to come about.
Architecture for Serendipitous Collaboration
Opened by Queen Victoria in 1851, the Great Exhibition has been retrospectively portrayed as a symbol of decadence and prestige. However, this is far from the case.3 Similar to how ARPA was America’s response to the growing advancement of Sputnik and the relative decline of American technological advancement, the Great Exhibition came about because Britain felt like it was losing its place on the world stage.4 Organised by Henry Cole and Prince Albert, it was a desperate attempt designed to reclaim Britain’s status as the foremost world power.
Queen Victoria authorised a commission to run the event, and they decided to run a competition to design a new, purpose-built home to display the latest technologies and artefacts. The building had to be temporary, simple, and as cheap as possible to build. After the commission had rejected all initial proposals, they decided on the Duke of Devonshire’s gardener, Joseph Paxton and his Crystal Palace design.
The palace he designed was grand. At the time it was the largest glass structure ever made. Standing at 1851 feet long and using 1,000,000 square feet of glass, it would house 14,000 exhibitors and 100,000 objects from countries all around the world.5
In total, six million people would come and visit over the 6 months the exhibition was running, and, because it was such a large, international affair, it was jam-packed with great minds. Darwin, Marx, Faraday, Eliot, Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and William Morris, all made their way to see ‘every conceivable invention’.6 The historian Anton Howes argues that it was this concentration of people and great minds that helped to make the Exhibition a success: it was like a vibrant mini-city that benefited from the agglomeration effects of experts interacting closely together:
“By having such a vast variety of industries and discoveries presented at the same event, exhibitions greatly raised the chances of serendipitous discovery. A manufacturer exhibiting textiles might come across a new material from an unfamiliar region, prompting them to import it for the first time. An inventor working on a niche problem might see the scientific demonstration of a concept that had not occurred to them, providing a solution.
Producers, by seeing their competitors’ products physically alongside their own, would see how things could be done better. They could learn from their competitors, with the laggards being embarrassed into improving their products for next time. And this could take place at a much broader, country-wide level, revealing the places that were outperforming others and giving would-be reformers the evidence they needed to discover and adopt policies from elsewhere.”
One of the most famous examples of these encounters involves the upmarket British locksmith, Bramah. Since 1790, they had proudly displayed a seemingly impenetrable challenge lock in their shop window alongside a sign reading: “The artist who can make an instrument that will pick or open this lock shall receive 200 guineas the moment it is produced.” For around 60 years nobody had succeeded in picking it. That is, until the Great Exhibition of 1851, when, Alfred Charles Hobbs, a representative of Day and Newell locksmiths, would travel from America, attend the Exhibition, and decided to take up the challenge.7
Hobbs was known in America for travelling from bank to bank exposing flaws in their locks in order to sell them Day and Newell’s locks in return. After spending 52 hours spread over 16 days, Hobbs finally picked Bramah’s challenge lock. Boldly, he would go on to claim to have uncovered vulnerabilities in the best English patent locks, publicly alleging that the country’s most celebrated manufacturers had kept this knowledge from consumers, in effect putting them at risk. The locksmiths obviously strenuously denied such charges.
There was a back-and-forth between the lock companies and Hobbs, but Hobbs successfully claimed his bounty (200 guineas- approximately £17,000 in today’s money). The London Times would go on to call the scandal and the fallout ‘The Great Lock Controversy’. The public’s imagination of the possibilities and vulnerabilities of locks had been sparked.
Alongside the challenge lock was one of Queen Victoria's most precious diamonds, the Koh-i-Noor. Valued at £2,000,000, it drew large crowds, but due to its dull appearance, it failed to impress most people. One man who was impressed, though, was Simon Sparks. Who, perhaps inspired by the challenge locks or the Great Lock Controversy, kept attending the exhibition to look at the stand. However, he too was more interested in the lock than the jewel:
“One thing did impress me deeply […] and always excited my imagination for some time after my departure;
I went several times to the Exposition […] I confess that my chief inducement in these repeated visits, was the strange attraction of these precautions for the preservation of the gem—far greater, I repeat, than the attraction of its equivocal beauty. The precautions and devices seemed to defy the ingenuity of man. I was fascinated by them. I could not help speculating how they could be defeated. Why not? The world was full of clever people—some of them rogues—and what the fine skill of one man could construct, the equally fine skill of another man might circumvent—the treasure that one acute locksmith might secure, an equally acute picklock might carry away.”
This analogy of a picker and a locksmith going up against one another is exactly what made the Exhibition a success. As one thought they had the upper hand, the other would advance their technology. Then, when the other thought their tools were superior, the other negated them. As time progressed, the end product was far better than when it started.8
This all took place at a time when the demand for high-quality locks had never been higher: the establishing middle-class urban population had for the first time in Britain’s history outnumbered the rural population, were particularly fearful of burglaries and were particularly keen to protect their possessions and properties. This demand would precipitate a resurgence in lock research.
There were just 70 government-issued patents from the beginning of the 19th century until 1851. By 1865, this number had exceeded 120, and within the next 55 years, would climb to over 3,000.
In reaction to the controversy, the Bank of England promptly swapped out their locks, replacing them with Day and Newell’s, and after noticing that the Koh-i-noor failed to impress, Prince Albert decided to get the gemstone polished and made more symmetrical.
Today, the challenge lock is displayed at the Science Museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington. This and the surrounding area are colloquially known as Albertopolis because, following the advice of Prince Albert, the area was purchased by the Royal Commission with the profits made from the Great Exhibition. Albert encouraged the area to be developed as a centre for educational and cultural institutions and the commission obliged.
Today, Imperial College, the Natural History Museum, the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal College of Art, the Royal College of Music, the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum all sit on this land, bought by the success of the Great Exhibition.
The Koh-i-noor is held in a secure location known by the Monarch, and a shiny crystal replica is displayed in the Tower of London 5 miles away from Bramah’s challenge lock. It is protected by 22 Tower Guardsmen, 100 hidden CCTV cameras, and bombproof glass.
Further Reading
Blueprint for a New Great Exhibition by Anton Howes. Anton’s a fantastic historical researcher whose blog Age of Invention I would highly recommend reading if you’re interested in Britain’s Industrial Revolution.
Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science by Michael Nielsen. The magnum opus of metascience. If you’re interested in designed serendipity or how we can improve science, I would strongly recommend reading Michael’s work. He also blogs here.
Lets Bring Back the World’s Fair by Zach.dev. An interview with Cameron Wiese (founder of the World’s Fair Company- an organisation looking at designing a World’s Fair for the 21st Century). Another article detailing Cameron’s vision can be read here.
Under Lock and Key: Securing Privacy and Property in Victorian Fiction and Culture by David L. Smith. A PhD dissertation that details more of the historical facts about locks in the 19th Century. Much of the information for this article was taken from this paper.
“The seeds of great discovery are constantly floating around us, but they only take root in minds well prepared to receive them.”
Innovation is not linear by Jason Crawford. A very interesting article looking into the historical relationship between science and invention.
It’s possible serendipitous discoveries were easier in the past because the low-hanging fruit were still available. Paul Dirac once described the early 20th century as the time when even second-rate physicists could do first-rate work.
Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen have written a very good article about this here: Is Science Stagnant? This is also something I’ve written about previously: #1. Agglomeration Effects and Emergent Clusters.
Research published in 2012 found that approximately 24% of all drugs currently on the market were discovered with the aid of serendipity.
“Like most people, I had once assumed that the exhibition was just a big celebration of Victorian technological superiority— a brash excuse to rub the British Industrial Revolution in the rest of the world’s faces. But my research into the origins of the event revealed that it was almost the opposite. Far from being a jingoistic expression of superiority, it was actually motivated by a worry that Britain was rapidly losing its place. It was an attempt to prevent decline by learning from other countries. It was largely about not falling behind.” - Anton Howes
Earlier this year, Anton Howes advocated for a new Great Exhibition based on the successes of the last one. Over in America, the World’s Fair Company is doing the same thing.
Impressively, it was designed and built on schedule and within budget in less than 8 months!
This is a quotation from Queen Victoria’s personal diary.
Hobbs apparently carried with him a case packed with his lockpicking tools, alongside a letter from the Mayor of New York, George Matsell vouching for his character. Considering he was an American travelling abroad with a suitcase full of lockpicking equipment, it was probably a good idea.
There is a great deal of symbolism in the story: an uninspiring gem representing the previous might of the British Empire was displayed behind a seemingly impenetrable lock, but which an American man could presumably easily pick and potentially steal with ease.