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 Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The care of a house, the conduct of a home, the management of children, the instruction and government of servants, are as deserving of scientific treatment and scientific professors and lectureships as are the care of farms, the management of manure and crops, and the raising and care of stock.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)
“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)