In 1667, the Royal Society's first historian described the early Restoration as 'this Age of Experiments'. He was advertising the society's new scientific programme and he was making a joke. One of the society's most prominent members had designed and built a new sort of ship - a 'Double-Bottomed' vessel, a kind of catamaran - intended to require less draught, to sail faster and with a smaller crew than anything then at sea. It was meant to be a world-changing technology, revolutionising trade and naval warfare. The designer was the polymathic William Petty (1623-87) - mathematician, mechanic, physician, cartographer and statistician - and one of his prototypes was called the Experiment.

LRB 20 January 2011 | PDF Download