This essay follows recent work in environmental history to explore the history of recycling in physical sciences in Britain and North America since the seventeenth century. The term ‘recycling’ is here used broadly to refer to a variety of practices that extended the life of material resources for doing science in the early modern period. These included practices associated with maintenance, repair, exchange and the adaptation or reuse of material culture. The essay argues that such practices were common in early (...) modern science, and informed experimental spaces and techniques and the ideas that they generated. The essay considers some of the varied motivations that led to such practices, and concludes by examining the endurance of recycling in science since the end of the eighteenth century, particularly in recent efforts to create sustainable scientific research practices. (shrink)

Le but de cet article est d'interroger les transformations culturelles qui accompagnent la commercialisation des inventions, phénomène majeur de l'essor marchand et consumériste au XVIIIe siècle. Les stratégies commerciales des inventeurs sont fondées sur une médiatisation croissante, mêlant rhétoriques visuelles (démonstrations, spectacles, expositions) et recours à l'imprimé: annonces de presse, affiches, prospectus, modes d'emploi, livrets d'utilisation. L'information et le savoir techniques jouent un rôle clef dans la construction de marchés pour les inventions. Cette dimension a rarement été prise en compte (...) dans l'histoire de la consommation et dans l'histoire des techniques. Pourtant, la littérature d'usage, qui postule l'autonomie et la capacité participative de l'acheteur comme argument de vente, exprime la montée en puissance des savoirs d'action, opératoires, prescriptifs, où priment le verbe et le geste, l'intention et le projet. Si la technologie des Lumières se déploie dans les traités et les dictionnaires, elle se manifeste aussi dans cette littérature éphémère, pratique et commerciale, source d'appropriations. (shrink)

Built in Greenwich in 1675–1676, the Royal Observatory was situated outside the capital but was deeply enmeshed within its knowledge networks and communities of practice. Scholars have tended to focus on the links cultivated by the Astronomers Royal within scholarly communities in England and Europe but the observatory was also deeply reliant on and engaged with London's institutions and practical mathematical community. It was a royal foundation, situated within one government board, taking a leading role on another, and overseen by (...) Visitors selected by the Royal Society of London. These links helped develop institutional continuity, while instrument-makers, assistants and other collaborators, who were often active in the city as mathematical authors and teachers, formed an extended community with interest in the observatory's continued existence. After outlining the often highly contingent institutional and personal connections that shaped and supported the observatory, this article considers the role of two early assistants, James Hodgson and Thomas Weston. By championing John Flamsteed's legacy and sharing observatory knowledge and practice beyond its walls, they ensured awareness of and potential users for its outputs. They and their successors helped to develop a particular, and ultimately influential, approach to astronomical and mathematical practice and teaching. (shrink)