ABSTRACT
In this chapter, sealing wax and string, as a composite “thing,” is analysed in terms of its gendered, sociomaterial transit from the realms of everyday use in letter-writing and policy-making, to that of laboratories in the physical sciences. The focus here is on late-nineteenth century, male-dominated British sites like the old Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, where wax served as both sealant and conductor. Contrary to prior historians’ characterization of “sealing wax and string” as a myth about the paucity of scientific resources prior to the era of “Big Science,” this chapter argues for a renewed evaluation of sealing wax and string as materials that relied on, and reinforced, gendered divisions of labour and the realities of masculinity in physics. Ironically, despite the ubiquity of these items in households and public offices, and women’s integral agency in those realms, the rare instance of an investigation by a woman physicist, Nellie Nancy Hornor, of sealing wax as an object of study underlined the ongoing gendered disparity in physical science laboratories. The analysis here attends to class dynamics in addition to the gendered ones.
