JOHN A. POPPLESTONE, Akron/ USA

 

The Influence of the Apparatus of the Leipzig Laboratory in the United States: 1880 - 1910

The framework of the new science as formulated at Leipzig was eagerly received abroad, in fact visitors hurried here to absorb it, and the patterns they learned have been developed and enlarged up to the present time, and there are no convincing indications of any cessation of growth. The endorsement of laboratory experimentation has been both consistent and fervent in the United States. Historians have, with commendable scholarly zeal, assessed and re-assessed the intellectual content of this success story as well as the cognitive characteristics of the individuals who shaped the field. The result is a body of literature on the history of psychology, but - strangely - much of this neglects the research tools and practices even though the use of apparatus - whether created, adapted or adopted - was the symbol of departure from the past. Because history has devoted more attention to research outcome than to research process many present day psychologists, even those who are sophisticated about most aspects of the past, have merely an informal knowledge of "brass instruments".

The purpose of this paper is to call attention to the research tools that were in use between 1880 and 1910, the era during which laboratory psychology reached a definitive form and also the one during which WUNDT prepared the five editions of the Grundzüge (1880, 1887, 1895, 1908-11). These volumes constitute a lode of information about the pioneer laboratory. DIAMOND (1976) has observed that "successive revisions of the Grundzüge ... provided more and more information, including detailed illustrations of experimental apparatus, constituting virtual manuals" (p. 528).

The figures in these books are not restricted to individual appliances but include experimental set-ups that show various units required for special tasks. In the last edition, the most mature, there are nearly 50 engravings of apparatus, with accompanying explanations of their construction and use. This collection can be interpreted as the sine qua non of equipment and all of it must have been in Leipzig, but it appears that for only six pieces can WUNDT be considered the sole designer.

Implements become old, out-of-date, or out-of-fashion before they gain the status of antiquity. Because degradation antedates approbation attempts to retrieve information about historic apparatus have to contend with the effects of negligence, disposal, and even the obliteration that is intrinsic to war. In spite of numerous and varied assaults some instruments have survived and those that are still extant speak strongly, even through depreciation, of the beginnings of the discipline. The pieces are decorative, elegant, massive, of sturdy construction and stand not merely as tools but as affirmations of the importance of the work being done.

Today we are, perhaps, so confident of our discipline that we may not appreciate the tentative nature of the nineteenth century psychology laboratory. Research was perceived as the means of gaining acceptance as a science, but conducting it demanded reliance on utensils of well established fields such as biology, chemistry, and physics. This borrowed equipment was honored and evidence is accumulating that in early investigations precision was concentrated around its use. Other procedures - for example, subject treatment, stimulus exposure, and intertrial intervals - were inconsistent and, at times, capricious, but the instruments were handled with care, conscientiously calibrated, and the mechanical regulation was maximal for the technology of the era.

Let us look at some of these objects:

Instruments were exported to America from various places but those that originated in Leipzig were most prized. The aura is illustrated in TITCHENER's qualification of his recommendation of education in psychology in the United States. In this he conveyed the impression that instruments in situ were somehow superior. Specifically he said, "A large percentage of students will doubtless continue to spend a year in Germany for the sake of acquiring the language and seeing the German equipment." (TITCHENER, 1898, p. 330) (Italics mine).

An anecdote of only a decade ago provides a second illustration of the importance of apparatus from the WUNDT laboratory. As late as 1968, the laboratory of the University of Nebraska housed a tall oak-cased clock with a pendulum. There was an oral tradition at the University of Nebraska that this time piece was a duplicate of one in the Leipzig laboratory and that it had been brought to America in 1886 by HARRY KIRKE WOLFE when, after completing a doctorate under WUNDT, he returned to America to found the laboratory at Nebraska. Following accession at the Archives of the History of American Psychology at Akron the clock was cleaned and during this process the label "Waterbury" was found inside the clock. This implied that the device may have actually been manufactured in Waterbury, Connecticut, and this turned out to be the case. The Company Catalog of 1908-1909 (p. 154) lists this model as "Regulator No. 70" and gives the price as $133.50. In other words, the glamour of the German laboratory had extended the actual age of this clock and enhanced it with a fictitious provenance.

German instruments were not however always practical and discrepancies between the ideal and the real are apparent in inventories of laboratory equipment. The listing for Harvard University in 1893 (MÜNSTERBERG) consists of appliances that were obtained from 75 different manufacturers or distributors. Of these, 25 or one-third of the total were German, 18 American, 12 English, 10 French, and the remaining 10 were scattered among various locales. Although the modal number was from Germany, at least two thirds of the pieces came from different countries.

A Cornell University Inventory published in 1900 (TITCHENER), seven years after the Harvard listing, included 372 varieties of equipment. A breakdown of the national origin of the instruments in this laboratory discloses that the modal number, 189, was from American suppliers. The remainder of the equipment had, in descending order, been purchased in France, England, and the Netherlands.

In 1901 TITCHENER listed 29 "Firms Recommended for the Supply of Psychological Instruments." Of these, 12 were American and nine German and the remaining eight were distributed among four other nations. In 1905, TITCHENER brought this ledger up to date and again the pattern was one of dominance of American and German suppliers with the former in the lead.

The raw figures suggest that within twenty years after the founding of the Leipzig laboratory the German apparatus was being overtaken by American objects, but these quantitative data conceal an important qualitative difference. An examination of specific instruments reveals that German, and in a much smaller amount other European firms, were responsible for expensive, complicated tools whereas American firms were apt to be producing appurtenances, such as needles, papers, and other consumables.

TITCHENER was aware of this and in 1898 he wrote, "the research apparatus is preponderantly German in origin" (p. 321) whereas the equipment used in the introductory laboratory course was almost wholly American. That is to say that the education of beginners could be carried out by means of local, inexpensive and expendable materials but scholarly, innovative research required imported, and most probably German, apparatus.

There did develop after the turn of the century a decline of the hegemony of the German manufactured apparatus. This was due to several variables other than the level of sophistication of the customers and one of these contributors was CHRISTIAN STOELTING, the founder of a company that for many years dominated American psychological apparatus. STOELTING (1943) is reputed to have spent long periods of time working with TITCHENER while he was writing the four volume Experimental Psychology. STOELTING was involved with the designing, suggesting, and modeling of equipment and TITCHENER, in the edition of 1901, refers the reader to the Chicago Laboratory Supply and Scale Company (later to be known as the STOELTING Company) for "certain of the instruments recommended in the text." (p. 434) By 1905 TITCHENER speaks of STOELTING, "This firm has now undertaken to furnish complete sets of the apparatus required for the present Course." (p. 423)

Similarly the dominant Manual of Tests by WHIPPLE (1914) was coordinated with STOELTING. No European manufacturer supplied such a wide range of products for use in a psychology laboratory and this product development facilitated dominance of the market.

Local enterprise was further advanced by the youth experimental psychology and the unique needs of the laboratory. In 1898, TITCHENER recommended the employment of a mechanic in the laboratory since "I suppose that in all original work, in whatever science, is likely to require newly constructed apparatus. But the older sciences are at this advantage, that they have a large store of designs to draw upon; so that the new appliance may take shape, at least in large measure, from the recombination and readjustment of older devices. Experimental psychology is still so young that each new problem must be faced independently, and instruments contrived to meet its peculiar exigencies." (p. 320).

An imported science in infancy would be served by imported apparatus, but as it grew, matured, and at the same time became indigenous it came to require indigenous instruments.

 

Reference list

 

CHRISTIAN H. STOELTING: American Journal of Psychology, 1943, 56, 450.

DIAMOND, S. WILHELM WUNDT: In C. C. GILLISPIE (Ed.) Dictionary of Scientific Biography (No. XIV). New York: Scribner. 1976.

MÜNSTERBERG, H.: Psychological Laboratory at Harvard University, Cambridge,    Massachusetts: 1893.

TITCHENER, E. B.: A psychological laboratory. Mind, 1898, 7, 311 - 551.

TITCHENER, E. B.: The equipment of a psychological laboratory. American Journal of Psychology, 1900, 11, 251 - 265.

TITCHENER, E. B.: The psychological laboratory of Cornell University. Worcester, Massachusetts: Oliver B. Wood, 1900. (b)

TITCHENER, E. B.: Experimental psychology, Vol. I. Qualitative experiments, Part II. Instructor's manual. New York: Macmillan, 1901.

TITCHENER, E. B.: Experimental psychology, Vol. II. Quantitative experiments, Part II. Instructor's manual. New York: Macmillan, 1905.

WHIPPLE, G. M.: Manual of mental and physical tests. Part I:

            Simpler processes. Baltimore: Warwick and York, 1914.

WUNDT, W.: Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie.

(3 vols.) Leipzig: Engelmann, 1908 - 1911. (6th and final ed.)