English engineer John Smeaton's experimental method(s): Optimisation, hypothesis testing and exploratory experimentation.

In this paper I provide a detailed account of eighteenth-century engineer John Smeaton's experimental methods, with the aim of bringing our understanding of his work into line with recent research in the history and philosophy of science. Starting from his use of the technique of parameter variation, I identify three distinct methodological aims in the research he carried out on waterwheels, windmills and hydraulic mortars. These aims are: optimisation, hypothesis testing and maxim generation.

Evaluating John Theophilus Desaguliers' Newtonianism: the case of waterwheel knowledge in .

John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683-1744) was a French-born English Huguenot who made his name as a public lecturer in London and a demonstrator at the Royal Society, writing a very popular introduction to Isaac Newton's natural philosophy, the two-volume (1734-1744). This paper looks at the influence of three French natural philosophers, Edme Mariotte (1620-1684), Antoine Parent (1666-1716) and Bernard Forest de Bélidor (1698-1761), on the account of waterwheel functioning in the second volume of that work. The aim of the paper is to show that, although Desaguliers demonstrated a commitment to Newton's work, his own natural philosophical objectives also led him to borrow ideas from natural philosophers outside Newton's direct sphere of influence.

John Smeaton and the vis viva controversy: Measuring waterwheel efficiency and the influence of industry on practical mechanics in Britain 1759-1808.

In this paper, I will examine John Smeaton's contribution to the vis viva controversy in Britain, focusing on how the hybridization of science, technology, and industry helped to establish vis viva, or mechanic power, as a measure of motive force. Smeaton, embodying the 'hybrid expert' who combined theoretical knowledge and practical knowhow, demonstrated that the notion of vis viva possessed a greater explanatory power than momentum, because it could be used to explain the difference in efficiency between overshot and undershot waterwheels. Smeaton's conclusions were correct since waterwheel efficiency was already measured in terms that were proportional to vis viva, not momentum, as a result of the industrial applications of waterwheel technology, which favored measuring efficiency by the product of mass and vertical displacement.