The Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers is one of the 108 Livery Companies of the City of London. The Company promotes the craft of scientific instrument-making, the exchange of ideas and information between members and guests, and science generally by offering scholarships to science students.
The organisation was originally formed in 1956 and the City granted it livery status in 1964. It ranks 84th in the order of precedence for the Livery Companies.
Its motto is Sine Nobis Scientia Languet, translated from Latin as Science Languishes Without Us.
The Company's livery hall, the Scientific Instrument Makers' Hall, is located just outside the City, on Montague Close, by the southern end of London Bridge, in the borough of Southwark.
Famous quotes containing the words company, scientific, instrument and/or makers:
“The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“You sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)