Description

When the Reverend Henry Carmichael opened the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts in 1833, he introduced a bold directive: for Australia to advance on the scale of nations, it needed to develop a science of its own. Prominent scientists in the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria answered this call by participating in popular exhibitions far and near, from London s Crystal Place in 1851 to Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane during the final decades of the nineteenth century–