
Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711 - gruseom
http://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2019/01/15/meeting-sloane/
======
benbreen
This is great news. I'm a historian and have gone to the Royal Society
archives to read these draft minutes in the past (I was looking for references
to experiments involving psychoactive drugs on one research trip, and on
another I was researching the Royal Society's run-in with the infamous
impostor George Psalmanazar).

Happy to answer questions about the meeting minutes or their historical
significance if anyone is interested. Hans Sloane is pretty fascinating in his
own right and was recently the subject of a biography:
[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737334](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737334)

~~~
tamebadger
Does any of the meeting minutes contain a reference to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz)
that you know of ?

~~~
justcorrect
First page of the 1707-1711 editions, I found this sentence, sure there's
likely more ...

"A proposall was read by Dr. Papin concerning

a new invented [deleted] to be row'd with oars mov'd

by heat. The farther consideration of It was also referred to ye. next
meeting.

A letter was read from Mr. Leibnitz concerning

Mr. Papin & this new boat."

~~~
ian0
Some context around Papin and his boat from wikipedia[1] for those interested:

> In 1705 he developed a second steam engine with the help of Gottfried
> Leibniz, based on an invention by Thomas Savery, but this used steam
> pressure rather than atmospheric pressure. Details of the engine were
> published in 1707.

> Papin returned to London in 1707, leaving his wife in Germany. Several of
> his papers were put before the Royal Society between 1707 and 1712 without
> acknowledging or paying him, about which he complained bitterly. Papin's
> ideas included a description of his 1690 atmospheric steam engine, similar
> to that built and put into use by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, thought to be the
> year of Papin's death.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Papin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Papin)

------
gerdesj
This is absolutely fascinating. There is a handy transliteration available by
clicking on the sheet of paper icon. Some bloke called Mr Hook gets around a
bit in the 1680s at least:

 _Mr Hook gave an account of the book recommended to him affirming that the
Author had well determined the problem of the pressure of a body upon an
enclined plain; the second part about the separation of the gall in the Liver
to which he could not so readily asset Mr Hook affirmed that the manner of
evacuating Damps at Leige is after the manner of the engine for consuming
smoke_ (17 Nov 1686) At that time (~November 1686) body preservation is a
pretty hot topic, interspersed with say _Mr Hook Shewed to the Satisfaction of
the Company the Shells in & on the Nautilus_

This is a window on the past that is absolutely priceless. The minutes are
terse and have the feel of being hastily scribbled at times but that adds to
their charm. You keep on finding gems:

 _the Magnitudes et cet of London and Paris;_ \- so et cet is perhaps the
original abbreviation of et cetera, before the modern etc. etc is very much a
feature in modern English usage and to see it in use back in the 1680s shows a
pretty deep continuity within some aspects of English (yes, I know it is
really Latin).

Smashing.

~~~
jetrink
I bet that was Robert Hooke[1]. They were less exacting about spelling back
then.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke#Royal_Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke#Royal_Society)

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hypochondria
Is there a version that lets you look at the pages without forcing you to use
that disastrously slow Turning the Pages application? The page turning
animates like a tortoise crawling through molasses under a strobe light.

~~~
pan69
For me the page turning itself doesn't seem to be slow but choosing this
gimmicky mechanism as a delivery vehicle for this kind of content is, well, a
silly choice.

I can't zoom in enough and when I do zoom in I can't pan around when the page
doesn't fit my browser window. Both left and right click turn the page.

Aaaargh...!

Whom ever is behind this, can we just have images please? Thank you.

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webaholic
Is it only me? I think I lost the ability to read cursive handwriting. I tried
reading a few pages, and it is really hard for me to follow what is written.

~~~
jandrese
The handwriting is pretty sloppy on at least the first few pages from what I
see. A lot of the letters become so small that they're little more than bumps
on a line. Being in cursive certainly doesn't help either. Some of the words
use alternate spellings which makes them a little more difficult to recognize.

But really, cursive is optimized for reducing the possibility of failure
(inkblots) on primitive quill pens, not for readability. Even the best most
precise cursive tends to be more difficult to read than modestly competent
print.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Even the best most precise cursive tends to be more difficult to read than
> modestly competent print.

That's purely a practice effect, like the fake finding that lowercase text is
easier to read than all-caps text. (People you pull off the street do indeed
read lowercase text faster. After a minor amount of practice, this advantage
disappears.)

There are a lot of cases here where a series of letters appears to have been
reduced to just a wave pattern. But the biggest problems I have at first
glance are

\- You can't zoom in far enough

\- Some letters are written in an unexpected (consistent, but not modern) way.
Look at how e is always written like you'd expect a cursive o or a σ to look.
This difficulty will be easily overcome if you spend any time reading the
text, but as of now I have a lot more trouble identifying what letters have
been written than identifying what word a sequence of known letters is
supposed to represent.

On the other hand, a lot of it looks perfectly fine. "This occasioned much
discourse of the cause of Fountaines, and Dr Robinson was of opinion that
(stormes?) occasiond by a subterraneall heat, either of fire or" (eighth
bullet point at the beginning of 1686).

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kakkun
For those that are interested in what else the Royal Society archives hold, I
wholly recommend the Objectivity YouTube Channel
([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtwKon9qMt5YLVgQt1tvJKg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtwKon9qMt5YLVgQt1tvJKg))
created by Brady Haran (of Periodic Videos, Numberphile, Computerphile, etc.)

~~~
sohkamyung
I second that recommendation. I've watched a number of Objectivity videos and
the content is amazing and fascinating for those interested in the history of
science and people at the Royal Society (and occasionally other scientifically
historical places).

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corey_moncure
It looks like even the brightest scientific minds of the past forgot to
increment the year after January 1. Even as late as March and April in some
years.

~~~
keithpeter
Might be using the 'official' 25th March date for new year? [1]

The will probably be a 'readme' somewhere on the site about old style dates.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar#Beginning_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar#Beginning_of_the_year)

~~~
lawlorino
> In common usage, 1 January was regarded as New Year's Day and celebrated as
> such,[40] but from the 12th century until 1751 the legal year in England
> began on 25 March (Lady Day).[41] So, for example, the Parliamentary record
> lists the execution of Charles I on 30 January as occurring in 1648 (as the
> year did not end until 24 March),[42] although later histories adjust the
> start of the year to 1 January and record the execution as occurring in
> 1649.[43]

Super interesting, thanks!

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jonmc12
The book, "The Fellowship", references these meeting minutes, along with other
research from this period in time: [https://www.amazon.com/Fellowship-Gilbert-
Newton-Scientific-...](https://www.amazon.com/Fellowship-Gilbert-Newton-
Scientific-Revolution/dp/1590200268)

~~~
beastcoast
Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle also covers the Royal Society at this time in
history.

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_emacsomancer_
Unfortunately not early enough to have covered Margaret 'Mad Madge'
Cavendish's
[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Cavendish,_Duchess_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Cavendish,_Duchess_of_Newcastle-
upon-Tyne)] attendance in 1667.

