James Bradley (1693-1762) of Balliol College, fellow of the Royal Society, and Astronomer Royal, taught experimental physics in the old Ashmolean (the present building of the Museum of the history of Science) on the first floor from 1729 when he bought instruments belonging to the Museum’s keeper, John Whiteside. These instruments were kept in cabinets along the walls, but the room has since been changed. A Swedish visitor auditing one of his lectures in 1760 noted that he did not prove any conclusions by mathematical evidence, due to the lack of knowledge thereof by the students, but that he showed models and machines. This was also often the case in other books on experimental physics.
The 20 lessons have titles including Attraction and Repulsion, Of central Forces and Motions of the Celestial bodies, Opticks, and Hydrostatics.
The introduction here states that Bradley’s course in experimental philosophy would treat “natural bodies, their effects discoverable by the senses alone, and to their natural properties or qualities which have been constantly found inherent in all Bodies that have fallen under the human observation”.