Age of Invention: More the Merrier
Today I’m making good on a promise. A few months ago I said that I would start practising what I preach, and “begin to upload to somewhere freely accessible the transcripts and notes that I use or cite in the work that I publish”. Well, today I begin, kicking off with my transcripts and notes from the travel diaries of Samuel More — secretary for almost thirty years to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, widely considered by his contemporaries to have been one of the leading experts on the inventions and industries of the late eighteenth century.
I’ve cited these diaries a few times this year: for More’s vivid descriptions of iron foundries and early railways, for his romantic impressions of the Staffordshire Potteries, and for his first-hand account of the mountain of the Welsh copper king. It has informed many of my other pieces this year too. And having helped to publicise them, even just the snippets I’d shared started to generate some new knowledge among specialists: new technical details about some 1760s Cornish Newcomen engines, for example, and about 1770s railway construction. It’s especially rich in details about ironmaking, because More was best friends with John “Iron Mad” Wilkinson. But the only way to have gone and checked the source for yourself would have been to either visit the British Library to view the manuscript yourself, or write to me to ask for more extracts or photographs.
Until now, that is, because I have just made my full transcripts, summaries, and notes from the diaries — over 100,000 words of everything and anything in them relating to industry, manufactures, inventions, agriculture, economic conditions, and infrastructure, with a great deal more besides — available for all to freely view online. You can read it here. My Christmas present, if you will, to all researchers.
I’m aiming to publish one last piece this year, but in the meantime if you’re stuck for reading while digesting some festive treats, here are what I personally consider my best pieces this year:
On the risks and responsibilities of writing history for the public (with some reflections on a still-unresolved academic controversy)
On the eighteenth-century mania for improving animals
On the rise of London and its lost county feasts
On how Boulton & Watt did not sell steam engines, but power
And as a Christmas bonus, here’s a piece from a few years ago that used to be behind a paywall, but which I was recently reminded of and I’ve now made free for all to read:
On the most surprising would-be colonial powers
If you’d like to support my work, you can upgrade to a paid subscription here:
I use Scrivener for writing, very happily, and Devonthink and Zotero to keep track of research and notes. But DT is almost too powerful, and Obsidian’s text-based simplicity is appealing. In any case, when historians talk about historical “methods” we usually mean “social history” or “cultural history”, ie methods of analysis, but not the crucial earthy stuff like “how to take and organize your notes”. If you get around to writing about your practices, will look forward to reading them.
Interesting. Really. I feel a little unnerved that I’ve not heard of any of these tools. Old I am these days, but at least I thought I knew what people were using to keep notes. Since it’s Christmas, the end of the year, how about a tale (or two)? These begin in the analogue world.
I used to use cards. Have a mountain of them. Careful notes, often in English and other languages (mostly Chinese and Japanese). And indexes to these cards. That’s what I did for my PhD at ANU and MA at HKU. I also used ProCite, a precursor to EndNote. I was introduced to it in the second half of the 1980s when I was an editor on the Far Eastern Economic Review. Our librarian used it to organize the FEER’s output. I wrote a bit of code that enabled we editors to call it from our primitive consoles (Swords - ran a global correspondent network on a system with a 16kb memory!). And continued to use it until late 1990s.
I also kept notebooks, many notebooks, that have been a lifesaver when stuck for something - a quick flick through some of these from the early 1980s can generate a year or more of fruitful research, some of which was not possible back then.
What do I do these days? A throw back to the dark ages. That’s for sure. I write notes with headings Note author-name year. In Word. I tell myself there has to be a more efficient way. And I’m sure there is, even without reading Anton’s post and your responses. But it’s a bit like statistics software. I was trained on SSPS before it was on a microcomputer (read PC) and though I like the graphics on Stata and the power of R I have so many syntax scripts (DO files for Stata people) that as long as the data set is set up the way I specify I can code Chinese provinces, periods, occupations, etc, in a few minutes however big the file is. When I use Stata I’ll waste a week getting it to square! Path dependency, uh?
So, my learned younger correspondents, any suggested go-to site for the good oil on Obsidian or Scrivener? Thank you for your patience. I really need to get my note taking better organized as these past few months trying to maintain in my head dozens of references in several languages on Southeast Asia, China and the maritime silk roads c.900-1800 has challenged me. And frustrated my usual confidence in handling such a brief.