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James Short and John Harrison: personal genius and public knowledge
This is a study of the positive relationship between James Short and John Harrison, set in two eighteenth-century contexts: the notion of individual aptitude or ‘genius’ unspoilt by education or training; and the problem of how individual ability might be captured and formulated as public knowledge.
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Made real: artifice and accuracy in nineteenth-century scientific illustration
This essay draws on the Science Museum’s pictorial collections, in particular the excellent holdings of astronomical and meteorological images, in order to look again at the construction of objectivity, this time from the point of view of making and reproducing images.
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Review: Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth Century, by Omar W Nasim
Nasim investigates the process, back in the pre-1880 era before the introduction of the sensitive photographic plate, that converts what an observer sees through a telescope eyepiece, to the drawing the observer makes on a piece of paper, and then to the engraving or lithograph that is finally published.