Carolyn's Blog

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Time Machine!

Today I took the opportunity to check out the online archives of the Royal Society of London which has been publishing continuously since 1665. That's 341 years. Until December, the archives are free and open to the public. Subscriptions are thereafter astronomic, but they hint that individual articles can be downloaded at some supposedly modest price. Let's hope. But between now and December, I'll be looking around and downloading as much as possible. It looks to be in conjunction with JSTOR, so I think their pricing structure is geared toward academia. Herschel published a lot during the Regency. There were several articles on shipbuilding, lots of astronomy, calculus and chemistry. And, I was thrilled to see, they published meteorlogical observations of the London weather.

So, for example, I can now report to you that on January 7, 1812,at 9:00 am, the recorded temperature at the Society apartments was 33 degrees outside and (if I'm reading this right) 45 degrees inside. (Does that make you appreciate central heating?) The barometer was 29, 63 with winds from the west. The weather was reported as "Snow. Much snow in the night" Total inches of rain for the month was 0,779 inches. That is a freaking lot of rain. These weather reports looked to have been regularly published. Oh joy!

Writing is going OK. I'm not churning out the pages just now, but I'm making progress, and given my tender state of recent days, that's OK. It's late but I think I can get a few more words out before I risk starting out my week sleep deprived.

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