Ethnicity, Expertise and Authority: the cases of Lewis Howard Latimer, William Preece and John Tyndall

To become an authority figure in late nineteenth century electricity, neither a higher education nor mainstream ethnic identity were necessary. This paper examines three diverse examples of Anglo-American experts/authorities who succeeded during their lifetime in at least some level of major recognition by performing publicly in the role of expert or authority figure: the African American Lewis Howard Latimer; the Welshman William Preece, and the Irishman John Tyndall. In the USA the outstanding example Latimer was the first son of a former African-American slave to become an expert witness in patent litigation for both Bell and Edison: through his command of the subject both in the draughtsman's office and the witness book, Latimer was a great economic asset to his employers - his capacity to make money for them utlimately trumped any considerations of ethnic prejudice. For Preece and Tyndall, there were fewer visible markers of non-English identity, but their verbal performances needed to manage audible markers of cultural difference with some care in order to maintain their strong relationship with their audiences. In this regard, Tyndall's final lecture in 1886 disastrously revealed his inability in later life ill-health to maintain the respect of his audience. Indeed the importance of the audience as tribunal is a key theme analogous to the jury or judge in a court of law: their credence and acquiescence is important in deciding who really was an expert or authority. Nevertheless, performativity was a transient platform for authority: once the living memory of performance was gone, their status as authority was diminished: hence Latimer, Tyndall and Preece were little remembered a generation after their deaths, except among their own ethnic constituencies. Overall, however, we can see that what it is to be an expert/authority is not self evident – not just a matter of social class, heritage or education, nor is it a matter of permanence. Most importantly the path to becoming an expert was a matter of getting strong institutional patrons, choosing circumscribed domains in which to be an expert, and constructing positive relationship with audiences in those domains. With technical skill assured, such socio-political aspects of being an expert could overcome some of the deeper boundaries of arbitrarily contrived racial ‘difference’.