Calculating Machine

2017 ◽  
pp. 508-525
Author(s):  
Matthew L. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Practical Knowledge

This chapter sketches the challenges Leibniz faced in building a calculating machine for arithmetic, especially his struggle to coordinate with skilled artisans, surveys his philosophical remarks about such machines and the practical knowledge needed to make them, and recounts the eighteenth-century legacy of his failure to produce a machine understood to be adequately functional.

scholarly journals Eighteenth-Century Garden Manuals: Old Practice, New Professions

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-78
Author(s):  
Elena Butoescu
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Original Type

AbstractThis article sketches the cultural significance that garden manuals had in England, from exemplifying a pleasurable and an aesthetic activity to encouraging the setting up of a profitable business. By investigating gardening manuals and treatises from the period, this study argues that eighteenth-century gardening manuals played an important role in shaping the cultural meanings of English gardens, in conveying “a practical knowledge of gardening, to gentlemen and young professors, who delight in that useful and agreeable study” (Abercrombie, The Preface, 1767) and in producing an original type of discourse which was employed to describe and represent the newly created professions.

Redesigning an Enigmatic River

2019 ◽  
pp. 202-246
Author(s):  
Arupjyoti Saikia
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter recounts how the East India Company (EIC) officials embarked on their journey to Assam in the late eighteenth century and how they realized that the river could become a trusted ally of the British Empire. Knowing the river became an utmost necessity. The task of assembling practical knowledge about the river was put in place. As the imperial juggernaut gathered steam over the latter half of the eighteenth century, the needed to optimize economic and political benefits from the Brahmaputra. This led to an intensification of interest in the upper reaches of the river. The British colonialists saw the river’s eastern course as a big window to a wider world of trade and commerce. This chapter further tells one how several eventful journeys and surveys were undertaken in a bid to find the source as well as the course of the river to further British economic and political interests.

The incidence of scurvy in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century voyages to the Canadian Arctic

Polar Record ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 32 (182) ◽  
pp. 229-236
Author(s):  
Robert Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Canadian Arctic ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Northwest Passage ◽  
Therapeutic Value ◽  
Arctic Exploration ◽  
Early Exploration

ABSTRACTScurvy was a long-recognised problem amongst sailors, the cure and prevention ofwhich is sometimes incorrectly accredited to James Lind in the mid-eighteenth century. However, the therapeutic value of many antiscorbutic foods was discovered long before Lind's treatise on the scurvy was published in 1753, and problems with the deficiency continued well into the twentieth century. Through an examination of early Arctic exploration (1585–1632), the incidence and practical knowledge of this much-feared condition are analyzed. During this half century, knowledge of scurvy was far from complete, as is revealed in the journals of a number of voyages that set out in search of the Northwest Passage. From the careful reading of these journals many questions about the incidence of scurvy in the early exploration of the Canadian Arctic can be addressed.

scholarly journals Necessary, Not Sufficient

Nuncius ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-360
Author(s):  
Marieke M.A. Hendriksen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Technical Knowledge ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
Knowledge And Skills ◽  
Craft Knowledge ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

The craft of making stained glass all but disappeared from the northern Netherlands in the long eighteenth century, but craft knowledge continued to circulate in texts and rare attempts at revival. This paper studies the role of artisans, natural historians and apothecaries and their use of texts in attempts to maintain and revive the knowledge of and techniques for the production of stained glass in the northern Netherlands between 1650 and 1821. I argue that their efforts contributed to the preservation of existing stained glass, and raised awareness about the cultural and historical value of stained glass and the knowledge and skills required to produce it. Although much tacit, practical knowledge was lost, basic technical knowledge circulated in a small number of texts. Combined with preserved stained glass, these texts served as the basis for reconstructive experiments that would lead to a revival of the art in the nineteenth century.

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