Adam Johann von Krusenstern (1770–1846), a Baltic German circumnavigator and hydrographer, was instrumental in assisting the preparations of the expeditions of other Baltic German explorers to the Pacific Ocean. While providing scientific instructions, Krusenstern also procured navigational instruments for these expeditions from Britain. In the 1820s, Otto von Kotzebue (1823–1826), Ferdinand von Wrangell (1825–1827) and Friedrich Benjamin von Lütke (1826–1829) all set out to explore the Pacific and navigational instruments were needed.

The lines of communication and procurement of the instruments, however, are still unclear. In some cases, official means were used (i.e. through ministry, admiralty, embassy), but when following Krusenstern’s correspondence with the Hydrographer to the East India Company, James Horsburgh (1762–1836), it becomes evident that Krusenstern also used his personal contacts to procure instruments for the upcoming voyages. In the 1820s, this was a recurring theme in their correspondence next to exchanging hydrographic information and charts, illustrating scientific contacts between the Russian and British empires.

J. A. Deluc had published a work in 1772 in which he described a portable barometer and, taking advantage of Geneva's location surrounded by mountains of known height, had developed a reliable method for measuring their elevation, which took into account not only the height of the barometric column but also the temperatures of the mercury and of the surrounding air. This book sparked a craze for barometric hypsometric measurements. A long way from Geneva, in Nordhausen (Thuringia, Germany), at the foot of the Harz mountains, an original personality, G. E. Rosenthal (1745-1813), Master-Baker by family tradition, read Deluc’s book and developed a rather short-lived passion (1779-1787) for meteorological instruments. Inspired by the work of the savants in Geneva, he built and sold barometers and thermometers that were much appreciated by Goethe. His mercury thermometer, with a single fixed point scale, based on the work of J.H. Lambert, is particularly noteworthy. The only known example is kept in Lausanne. Rosenthal used his instruments to measure the then unknown elevation of the Brocken, the highest summit in the Harz. His estimate is remarkably accurate. All the instruments, as well as the measurements made with them, were published in great detail in a work published in 1782/1784.

This paper investigates evidence concerning the work of a journeyman employed by London instrument makers Ding and Fage, producers of rules and other measuring and gauging instruments, including instruments for the British Excise Office. A surviving ledger held at the Science Museum, London, shows that the artisan, probably named J. Hawkes, undertook piece work for the firm between 1797 and 1818, a period when the products of these workers were being put to use in great numbers in warfare overseas as well is in assessing and controlling internationally traded goods. Through close examination and analysis of this record of work undertaken for Dring and Fage, the paper will seek to shed more light on the role of normally anonymous and largely invisible workers in the output of an instrument making firm with international reach and significance.

The authorship of the anonymous first Italian publication dedicated exclusively to electrical science, Dell’Elettricismo (1746), remains an unsolved issue. The volume has been traditionally attributed to the Venetian physician Eusebio Sguario, but recent research by Paola Bertucci proposed that Christian Xavier Wabst, a physician of the Austro-Hungarian army stationed in Venice, may have played a pivotal role in shaping the book’s content.
This paper provides new elements about the role played by Wabst by examining his correspondence with Giovanni Poleni, first professor of Experimental Philosophy at the University of Padua. In a 1745 letter, Wabst actually described very peculiar instruments that closely resemble those documented in the Dell’Elettricismo text and illustrations. This evidence confirms the collaborative nature of the volume and provides insights into the mechanisms of knowledge dissemination and intellectual exchanges that shaped the development of electrical science in the Enlightenment period.