It almost seemed as if Lomonosov’s inventions had the bad habit of malfunctioning. Another apparatus, the so-called "thunder machine" (громовая машина) I am going here along with the literal translation as most literature on the event does, although "lightning machine" might seem more fitting as its purpose was the study of atmospheric electricity; however, the Russian term for lightning rod, громоотвод ("thunder-deflector"), follows a similar semantic logic., built in a joint project with the physicist Georg Wilhelm Richmann, caused what is arguably the first casualty in the history of meteorological research. In a letter to his patronLomonosov to Ivan I. Shuvalov, 31. 3. 1753, LPSS X: 480-483., Lomonosov describes how the thunder machine, while a rain cloud was passing by, suddenly discharged bright sparks and produced loud bangs. Rather than being alarmed because of the intensity, Lomonosov felt that the reaction was confirming his theory of electricity, and he appeared to be genuinely thrilled to exploit those effects in a public demonstration of the machine scheduled in a few weeks’ time.«[...] в 28 число того же месяца, при прохождении дождевого облака, без всякого чувствительного грому и молнии происходили от громовой машины сильные удары с ясными искрами и с треском, издалека слышным, что еще нигде не примечено и с моею давною теориею о теплоте и с нынешнею о электрической силе весьма согласно и мне к будущему публичному акту весьма прилично.» (LPSS X: 482) In the next letter, again addressed to his political and financial sponsor, he reports the death of Georg Richmann by electrocution during an experiment with the thunder machine.Lomonosov to Shuvalov, 26. 7. 1753, LPSS X: 484f According to Lomonov, both he and Richmann had a machine in their respective homes, and wanted to use the opportunity of a thunderstorm over St.Petersburg to conduct experiments. When Lomonosov’s machine emitted sparks, his wife asked him to cease the experiment which he did. Shortly after, Richmann’s servant came running with the notice that Richmann was badly injured by a strike while working with the thunder machine. Arriving at Richmann’s home, Lomonosov found his colleague dead. Although Lomonosov expressed in the letter his concern that the accident could be used as an argument against science,LPSS X: 485; according to the editors’ notes, his worry was not completely unjustified as there were already rumours circulating about Lomonosov’s "blasphemous" experiments and "cursed" devices (LPSS X: 816f)., he was also seeing the scientific achievement coming with the tragic event. In a way, Lomonosov muses, Richmann did prove, albeit by a dreadful experience, that it would be possible to divert the electrical force of a strike with an iron rod—provided that nobody should stand close to the metal (which turned out to be Richmann’s fatal error).«Итак, он плачевным опытом уверил, что электрическую громовую силу отвратить можно, однако на шест с железом, который должен стоять на пустом месте, в которое бы гром бил сколько хочет.» (LPSS X: 485) Eventually Lomonosov arrived at a comforting conclusion to be drawn from the incident: «Между тем умер г. Рихман прекрасною смертию, исполняя по своей профессии должность.» ("Meanwhile Mr. Richmann died a beautiful death, carrying out his professional duty")LPSS X: 485

The worldwide scientific community echoed Lomonosov’s reaction: Benjamin Franklin who learned about the accident through a letter from the Russian academy of science, explained in an anonymously published article in the Pennsylvania Gazette how Richmann’s death would be a life-saver for others: The new Doctrine of Lightning is, however, confirm’d by this unhappy Accident; and many Lives may hereafter be sav’d by the Practice it teaches.Franklin 1962: 201 Joseph Priestley called Richmann "a martyr to electricity"Priestley 1966: 415 and virtually celebrated his way of dying: [...] it is not given to every electrician to die in so glorious a manner as the justly envied Richman.Priestley 1966: 415 Are these quotations—and they are not the only ones in this vein—indicative of a certain habitus (to put it in Bourdieu’s terminology), characteristic for science and scientists in the EnlightenmentAnd even beyond that period: Some elements, the heroic posture, for instance, or the modus operandi of novel devices as black box to tinker around with, still sound familiar.? In order to avoid digressing even further, I will leave this question unanswered here. There is, however, another detail in Lomonosov’s account of Richmann’s death that makes a good segue into a facet of Lomonosov’s scientific activities I would like to address in brief. A central figure in his report is Richmann’s servant who was apparently present at the experiment and rushed to Lomonosov to tell him about the accident. The reason we learn about the nameless servant and him taking somehow part in carrying out the experiment, is that something went wrong. In the narrations of scientific studies and inventions, by contrast, Lomonosov—as well as many other scientists at the time—tends to leave such a kind of collaborators unmentioned. This aspect of knowledge production is not a new avenue of research – feminist and decolonial approaches, for instance, have highlighted the unacknowledged contributions of women and colonial subjects to science which could range from providing and maintaining the infrastructure to giving vital input or being the actual intellectual creators of novel knowledge. These are also pertinent questions when it comes to long-term endeavors as the early meteorological observational series and their continuous measurements (Who is doing the daily chores of meteorological research, say, reading the barometrical measurements in the freezing cold, cleaning the instruments, etc.?). The projects that had been, at least for a while, successful in producing long-lasting data collections, were either substantially funded (such as the SMP project, see below) or took place in institutional environments that could ensure compliance with the requirements of regular and reliable instrumental observations: which is why early observational records were produced by monasteriesThe observations at the observatory Hohenpeißenberg, for instance, were conducted by Canons regulars of St. Augustine (see below, chapter [Mannheim] and Schwaiger 1799). At the Kremsmünster Abbey (https://www.stift-kremsmuenster.at/kultur-tourismus/sternwarte-naturhistorisches-museum) in Austria, have recorded instrumental data since 1762, see https://www.zamg.ac.at/cms/de/images/topmenu/medien/wetterstationen/kremsmuenster-temperaturreihe/view and http://www.specula.at/adv/adgloriam.htm; their museum holds exhibits of historical scientific instruments, including barometers: http://www.specula.at/adv/monat_0302.htm and the militarySee the aforementioned observatory of the Spanish Armada; a well-known example is the U.S. Army Signal Service, a predecessor of the Weather Bureau (now National Weather Service/NWS): The administrative history of the Weather Bureau—from its early beginnings as Smithsonian meteorological research project, the assignment to the Secretary of War, then the transfer to the Department of Agriculture in the 1890s and eventually to the Department of Commerce—are evidence of the changing relationship between policy making and meteorology (see the records of the Weather Bureau in the National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/027.html. In the case of Lomonosov, we can find plenty of information in his correspondence and in official documents. In a letter to EulerSt. Petersburg 12/23.2.1754 (he provides both the Julian and Gregorian date), LPSS X: 500-502, for instance, he gives an account of the progress of his projects involving the establishment of a glass manufacturing factory and the building of an observatory with automated recording of meteorological data. The whole endeavor would be supported by the Russian senate and funded by a grant from Empress Elizabeth:

The "peasants" (rustici) are, of course, serfs, which means that he had a cheap and disenfranchised workforce at his disposal. Perhaps not so much with respect to scientific practices in the stricter sense, but these resources enabled him to establish and maintain the infrastructure and logistics of laboratory, observatory, and factory. Needless to say, this makes a great difference in terms of productivity compared to someone who has fewer resources available. Instead of regard Lomonosov as a multitasking polymath (as he is frequently depicted in the literature), we should perhaps think of him as a kind of 18th century "research manager" who was extraordinarily good at securing resources. For this purpose, he had to successfully maneuver the difficult and precarious terrain of court politics and its volatile trajectory (and to hope that his patron Shuvalov would not fall out of favorWhen Elizaveta Petrovna seized power in a palace revolution in 1741 to become empress Elizabeth of Russia, this did not only end the short reign of her cousin, the toddler tsar Ivan VI.: The coup had ripple effects throughout the ruling elite, including the Academy of Science with acrimonious altercations, brawls, and arrests of some members associated with the former regime (Menshutkin 1970: 38f). Lomonosov—who, at an early stage of his career, was once sentenced to home detention for "incorrect conduct" and slandering senior staff (Menshutkin 1970: 39f)—did immensely benefit from his alignment with Shuvalov, the confidant of Empress Elizabeth.. His situation shares some features with the environments other early modern scientists operated inFor example, Tycho Brahe and Kepler at the court of Rudolph II., or Galilei as protégé of the Medici (see Mario Biagioli’s study of Galilei and the patronage system of Florentine court culture in Biagioli 1993), Lomonosov, however, established himself also as court poet and historian. In both capacities he was frequently (and strategically, it seems to me) paying deference to Elizabeth, Shuvalov, and other members of the ruling elite.Explicit dedications and panegyrics aside, such tributes are not always apparent to present-day readers. See, as an example, Marcus Levitt’s analysis of Lomonosov’s odes: at first glance, poems about Greek mythology are actually riddled with allusions to Russian politics and national history (Levitt 2011: 28-63)

Elizabeth’s politics of modernization and the patronage system created an environment that favored a certain form of public performance of science, not unlike the public display of science in other European countries at the time.Historians of science have shown that the public demonstration of science became popular in many European countries of the Enlightenment. Quite frequently, this involved theatrical elements: As Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Christine Blondel put it in the introduction to their volume Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment, it was "a science full of shocks, sparks and smells" (Bensaude-Vincent/Blondel 2016: 1). However, the reasons for putting science on stage could differ, depending on the discipline and the political and cultural environment. Particularly in the early Enlightenment, public display was a strategy to lend respectability to contested methods like experimenting (Bensaude-Vincent/Blondel 2016: 12). Jan Golinski, in his study of chemistry in Enlightenment Britain, makes the connection between "science as public culture" in the late 18th century and the formation of disciplines, concomitant with the novel notion of the scientist as "expert" with specific skills (Golinski 1992: 284-286). Steven Usitalo places Lomonosov’s displays of his electricity research in the wider context of knowledge circulation in the Enlightentment: "I would also argue that electrical experimentation provided a crucial early site for the theatrical mediation of knowledge (natural philosophical or naturalistic) from a specific group to an ever wider audience via demonstrations." (Usitalo 2013: 48) The "public", I should add, was in this case the political and intellectual elite with the court as the epicenter.Only some occasions, such as commemorations, were intended for a broader audience. Those events, called "celebration days" («торжественный день»), were always associated with the monarch (e.g., the anniversary of the coronation day, and the like) and were political spectacles with pyrotechnic displays, public speeches, reading of poetry, etc. Lomonosov was heavily involved in the organization, e.g., contributing to the orchestration of the fireworks and composing the poetry (LPSS VIII: 288-291, 487-495, 527-537; see furthermore Menshutkin 1970: 174f and Usitalo 2013: 90,fn33) To prevail in such an environment meant for a scientist to have a clear advantage in the competition for career prospects and financial resources—and the latter was increasingly important as by then the access to expensive equipment had become indispensable in many disciplines. Those who did excel at the required political skills were more likely to get access to the infrastructure necessary for their research, to have the opportunity to publish—and even to receive the generous present of 226 peasants.

In context of this environment, we may look differently at the error-prone instruments designed by Lomonosov. In his public talks and the academy sessions, they served as both scientific devices and theatrical devices. The aircraft model hoisted with rope lines or the sparks emitted from the thunder machine: stage props in a theater of science, chosen for the visual effects and the spectacle they would deliver. Quite similarly, the instruments in his books often appear to be rather outlines conveying the idea of the novel device and its future potential than engineering drawings of working prototypes. In order to get the indispensable support for his research, Lomonosov, the scientist had to become Lomonosov, the illusionist.

(Jürgen Stowasser)