The academy was set up to find useful knowledge, and to write about it in Swedish. The academy was meant to be different from the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, which had been started in 1719 and published in Latin. It was built near the main business centre in Stockholm, (which unlike Uppsala did not have a university at this time). The Swedish scientists wanted it to be like the Royal Society in London and Academie Royale des Sciences in Paris, France.