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Physical Laboratories
A friend of mine was playing Assassin's Creed: Syndicate earlier this evening. We were critiquing the historical accuracy of the depiction of London in 1868 (as you do), and moved on to consider the accuracy of the word "lab" when applied to a physical sciences workshop thingy at that time.
Obviously we turned straight to the OED, (Subscriber access only, sadly.) Lab, as an abbreviation for laboratory, has a first citation from 1895, so it seems a little early for that to appear in 1868. We found that laboratory itself dates from 1592, but that laboratories for different branches of science were often explicitly described in the 19th century e.g. a chemical laboratory, or a physical laboratory. The first citation the OED has for a physical laboratory is from 1881.
This piqued my interest (and caused me to leave the question of historical accuracy in computer games temporarily), because I was pretty sure that the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge was founded before 1881. However, I wasn't at all sure that it was called that from its opening. I wandered off to the History section of the Physics website, and found a handy article on the early years of the Cavendish, in which it noted that the Lab was described in an edition of Nature. Since I have a subscription to Nature, off I went to see whether they've got online archives going back to the 1870s. It turns out that they do.* And I duly found a fantastic description of "The New Physical Laboratory of the University of Cambridge", which dates from June 25th, 1874, over six years earlier than the occurrence noted by the OED. (I also found a description of a laboratory devoted to Faraday's experiments, which was clearly a physical laboratory, but not actually described as such, from Feb 6, 1873.)
So there you go. Cambridge seems to be the cause of the earliest occurrence of the phrase "physical laboratory".
* Unlike the University, whose publication of record only has online archives going back to 1997-98. Since the Syndicate had to agree construction some time before this, I would expect to find an earlier citation, if only I could be bothered to go to the library and look it up.
Obviously we turned straight to the OED, (Subscriber access only, sadly.) Lab, as an abbreviation for laboratory, has a first citation from 1895, so it seems a little early for that to appear in 1868. We found that laboratory itself dates from 1592, but that laboratories for different branches of science were often explicitly described in the 19th century e.g. a chemical laboratory, or a physical laboratory. The first citation the OED has for a physical laboratory is from 1881.
This piqued my interest (and caused me to leave the question of historical accuracy in computer games temporarily), because I was pretty sure that the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge was founded before 1881. However, I wasn't at all sure that it was called that from its opening. I wandered off to the History section of the Physics website, and found a handy article on the early years of the Cavendish, in which it noted that the Lab was described in an edition of Nature. Since I have a subscription to Nature, off I went to see whether they've got online archives going back to the 1870s. It turns out that they do.* And I duly found a fantastic description of "The New Physical Laboratory of the University of Cambridge", which dates from June 25th, 1874, over six years earlier than the occurrence noted by the OED. (I also found a description of a laboratory devoted to Faraday's experiments, which was clearly a physical laboratory, but not actually described as such, from Feb 6, 1873.)
So there you go. Cambridge seems to be the cause of the earliest occurrence of the phrase "physical laboratory".
* Unlike the University, whose publication of record only has online archives going back to 1997-98. Since the Syndicate had to agree construction some time before this, I would expect to find an earlier citation, if only I could be bothered to go to the library and look it up.