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The science historian Charles Singer might seem to have shared with positivists a widely held commitment to observation as the foundation of knowledge. Yet in fact Singer's historiography was peculiarly unconcerned with instruments, models and other artefacts. Such tools might have been expected to present crucial empirical evidence for the historical arguments and ideal material for the didactics which pioneers such as Singer associated with their mission of a ‘scientific humanism’. In their hands, physical things did not translate into epistemic things. This was deliberate. Yet while the configuration of science history which would distance it from material objects seems to speak of a shift from the visual to texts, the ocular technologies deployed in Singer's histories rather point to a co-existence of different kinds of visuality in that period's scholarship. As the academic and the museological aspects of science history pulled apart, the visuality of the museum came to be complemented by texts that vitally relied on images. The function of such images was to create proximity with the cognitive desires around whose traffic these histories became paper theatres of knowing. In bypassing material theatres and crafting realities that he understood to be empirically undemonstrable, Singer purposefully developed a non-authoritarian approach to the legacy of the scientific enterprise. He presented the story of understanding nature not as entailing obedience to its established results, but instead as embodying an attitude of continuing enquiry.

Charles Singer’s retrospective diagnosis of Hildegard of Bingen as a migraine sufferer, first made in 1913, has become commonly accepted. This article uses Hildegard as a case study to shift our focus from a polarised debate about the merits or otherwise of retrospective diagnosis, to examine instead what happens when diagnoses take on lives of their own. It argues that simply championing or rejecting retrospective diagnosis is not enough; that we need instead to appreciate how, at the moment of creation, a diagnosis reflects the significance of particular medical signs and theories in historical context and how, when and why such diagnoses can come to do meaningful work when subsequently mobilised as scientific ‘fact’. This article first traces the emergence of a new formulation of migraine in the nineteenth century, then shows how this context enabled Singer to retrospectively diagnose Hildegard’s migraine and finally examines some of the ways in which this idea has gained popular and academic currency in the second half of the twentieth century. The case of Hildegard’s migraine reminds us of the need to historicise scientific evidence just as rigorously as we historicise our other material and it exposes the cumulative methodological problems that can occur when historians use science, and scientists use history on a casual basis.

Cantor offers an account of the role of the first president, Charles Singer, in the founding of the British Society for the History of Science.

The American-built Singer car was manufactured in Mount Vernon, N.Y., from 1914 to 1918, and then in New York City from 1918 to 1920 by the Singer Motor Company, under the stewardship of Charles A. Singer, scion of the sewing machine family. In 1926, the Singer Junior was introduced with an 848-cubic- centimetre overhead cam four-cylinder engine, setting an overhead cam pattern that Singer would use in many of its cars for some 30 years. While the performance of the MG and the Singer was comparable, the Singer lacked the style and panache of the MG. They both had cut-down doors, a fold-down windshield, clamshell fenders and free-standing headlamps, but in the two-seater MG they came out looking low and sleek, whereas the four-passenger Singer looked high and ungainly. Also, the Singer lacked a tachometer, an inexcusable omission for a sports car.

TORONTO - The Singer name is associated more with sewing machines than with cars in North America, although there was a Singer car made in New York and it was built by a descendent of the sewing machine enterprise. While the performance of the MG and the Singer was comparable, the Singer lacked the style and panache of the MG. They both had cut-down doors, a fold-down windshield, clamshell fenders and free-standing headlamps, but in the two-seater MG they came out looking low and sleek, whereas the four-passenger Singer looked high and ungainly. Also, the Singer lacked a tachometer, an inexcusable omission for a sports car. Photo: CanWest News Service / The Singer Roadster had similar features to the MGTD, but it was outsold by a wide margin despite having the same $2,200 price tag. The Singer lacked the style and panache of the MG. They both had cut-down doors, a fold-down windshield, clamshell fenders and free-standing headlamps, but in the two-seater MG they came out looking low and sleek, whereas the four-passenger Singer looked high and ungainly. Also, the Singer lacked a tachometer, an inexcusable omission for a sports car.

Singer eventually abandoned sewing machines for the bicycle industry, and by 1895 was able to form the Singer Cycle Company. After several years building a variety of two- and three-wheelers, some of them motorized, Singer entered the automobile industry in 1905 as Singer & Company Ltd. making Lea-Francis cars under licence. Others were added, and Singer prospered to the point that by the mid-1920s it was Britain's third largest auto manufacturer behind Morris and Austin. In 1926 Singer introduced the Singer Junior with an 848-cc, overhead-cam four, setting an overhead cam pattern that Singer would use in many of its cars for some 30 years. While the performance of the MG and the Singer was comparable, the Singer lacked the style and panache of the MG. They both had cut down doors, a fold-down windshield, clamshell fenders and free-standing headlamps, but in the two-seater MG they came out looking low and sleek, whereas the four-passenger Singer looked high and ungainly. Also, the Singer lacked a tachometer, an inexcusable omission for a sports car.

[Singer Charles Haddon], 22, frontman for Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, had just played at the gig in Belgium on Friday.