“In the Warehouse”: Privacy, Property and Priority in the Early Royal Society

A learned artisan debates the system of the world: Le Clerc versus Mallemant de Messange

“…Since other artisans were involved in the scientific debates of the time, from the inimitable Robert Hooke to the lens maker Nicolaas Hartsoeker, the focus on writing and publication can serve to show the common problems they faced, as well as the local specificities. 123 This article has sought to enrich the current literature on the relations between artisans and scholars, which foregrounds the role of trading zones and state-sponsored expertise. Most prominently, it signals the instrumental role of writing and publishing in the course of an artisanal career in the seventeenth century, and hence the importance of the literary field as a useful framework for studying the role of artisans in the Scientific Revolution.…”

The Collective Construction of Scientific Memory: The Einstein-Poincaré Connection and its Discontents, 1905–2005

“…5 As we shall see, this is exactly what happened in the case of Poincaré, as scientists, philosophers and historians of science successively entered the fray to establish "who really did what".…”

Picture, Object, Puzzle, Prompter: Devilish Cleverness in Restoration London

“…18 Profi ting from collaboration yet keen to assert priority, depicting his instrument without divulging its essential design, Richard Towneley's representations of his telescopic micrometer register the tectonic pressures impinging upon authorship at the intersections of art, science and technology in the early Enlightenment. 19 In his case, Towneley's bet-hedging precautions were entirely justifi ed. Already pre-empted by Auzout, Towneley found a new claimant upon his micrometer in the person of Robert Hooke (then Curator of Experiments to the Royal Society) who closely shadowed the instrument's development.…”