Part of what I’m doing with my maker shtick rn is sort of recapitulating/larping the scientific revolution starting with Galileo. He gets credit for both the pendulum and the first telescope design good enough for astronomy (though Hans Lippeershey gets first build credit)
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The clock I built is a pretty mature design compared to the first one built ~1657. I’d guess 1750s level sophistication. The telescope I’m working on is roughly Keplerian (convex eyepiece over galileo’s concave), but if I use a modern composite eyepiece, I’d be in 1680s I think.
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Vague intent is to try and incept a 1600s-1700s mindset in myself where scientists were also necessarily instrument makers and mechanism designers. But not a faithful, pure recreation. I want to use modern techniques wherever it makes sense. Mind meld, not cargo cult.
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Feels kinda like historical detective work to trace the course of evolution of the scientific sensibility. I have this sense that something important changed with each specialized fork — instrument makers, artisan-technicians, engineers...
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Benjamin Franklin's writings would probably be helpful on this point. You can read a lot of scientific texts from the 1700s on archive.org. I haven't gone back that far, but even in the late 1800s, many doctors invented their own instruments.
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I support this.
I’ve begun reading about artisan collective communities from across centuries (like the guilds of the City of London) to understand how communities were managed.
We need to hire more historians and historian-makers.
Pic of a guild for context.
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