By Emmeline Ledgerwood ‘We lost a type of job for a type of person in this country’: changing expectations of working in the UK scientific civil service By Kylea Little, Felicity McWilliams and Ellie Swinbank ‘South Kensington is practically as far away as Paris or Munich’: the making of industrial collections in Edinburgh, Newcastle and Birmingham By Sara Stradal Book review: The Visualization of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe edited by Marcia Kupfer, Adam S Cohen and J H Chajes, Volume 16 in the Studies in the Visual Culture of the Middles Ages (Brepols Publishers: Tunhout, Belgium, 2020) By Abi Wilson Philanthropy, industry and the city of Manchester: the impact of Sir Joseph Whitworth’s philanthropy on Manchester’s built environment By Alexandra Rose Seismographs at Eskdalemuir Observatory, 1908–1925: tools for rethinking the origins of international cooperation in seismology By David Bryden Science and the City: Valentine Gottlieb, immigrant engineer of Lambeth: his trade card of c. 1810 unpacked By Alexandra Rose Science and the City: Introduction By Rebekah Higgitt, Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin and Noah Moxham Science and the City: Spaces and geographies of Metropolitan Science By Emily Rees Koerner Inventor, devoted daughter, or lover? Uncovering the life and work of Victorian naval engineer Henrietta Vansittart (1833–1883) By Ian Blatchford Lyon Playfair: chemist and commissioner, 1818–1858