In this paper I will examine the short history of the Royal Panopticon and evaluate its significance as a science museum in the post-Great Exhibition era. Its existence raises a series of questions for those of us studying the popularization of science in nineteenth century Britain. Why house objects drawn from the world of cutting edge science inside a building that imitated exotic architecture connoting anything but modernity? Why build an institution dedicated to art and science in the middle of the London entertainment district in Leicester Square? What does the Royal Panopticon tell us about the other science museums and their relationship to the history of the popularization science? Ephemeral institutions of science like the Royal Panopticon can tell us a great deal about the role of science in Victorian culture, and how spectacle became an integral component of presenting knowledge to the public, or what was referred to by contemporaries as "rational amusement."

Recent research has shown that the places where people participated in, read about, viewed and consumed popular science were complex social spaces that contributed to defining the evolving image of an industrializing, modernizing British society. Visual images played a large role in defining the cultural meanings of science. Against a backdrop of debate about the nature and intended audience of popular science, illustrated papers came to play an important role in projecting an image of Victorian science as integral to a well-ordered, convivial society. As this essay has argued, newspaper artists could be both useful, and problematic, allies with BAAS agendas for popularizing science to mass audiences. They also supplied Victorian society with enduring images of popular science that circulated well beyond the time and place of BAAS events.

By investigating the Scientific and Literary Societies Act of 1843, this article revisits the conventional thesis that the British state played little part in the institutionalization of science during the Victorian period. The statute was among the earliest instances of comprehensive legislative support for a variety of scientific institutions, ranging from metropolitan learned societies to the Literary and Philosophical Societies and the Mechanics' Institutes in the provinces. In-depth analysis of the law and its implementation provides an insight into the ways in which the legislature, the judiciary and local administrators were all involved with an aspect of science popularization. In particular, this analysis explicates the legal and socio-economic circumstances in which science was practiced and communicated, redefining the role played by the state in enhancing the associational infrastructure of science.