I ran across this document while searching in Harvard’s archives for information on John Gallison’s time there. Its only connection to my topic was his signature at the bottom, but it nevertheless opens a breathtaking view into a corner of his college years. As fun as it can be to dream about changing historical paradigms from the top down, even a master landscaper should take time to smell the roses once in a while. Craftsmanship matters, and we do have it here, on so many levels.
It shows the calculation of a lunar eclipse: a mathematical thesis that would have been part of John Gallison’s undergraduate curriculum, probably as part of his application for graduation honors. It is one of a series of similar documents, made between 1782 and 1839, that Harvard keeps in its increasingly-digitized archives.
(http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hua17004, or http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.ARCH:4880552 .)
Made from ink on a 17 x 22¾” piece of paper (43 x 58 cm), this document would have would have taken hours to prepare even after the math was completed. According to the archivists, many students were insecure enough in their penmanship that they would farm their final draft out to a professional before handing it in. The handwriting on this paper, however, is imperfect enough, and similar enough to Gallison’s other manuscripts, that he likely sweated it out himself.
The math behind the drawing makes its own statement about craft. GPS and inexpensive software packages mean that most people no longer have to make these kinds of calculations. Up into the 20th century, however, many more people than the odd software engineer needed to know how this all worked if they were to think of travelling the world—which they did in great quantities.
The Archives’ web page lists Henry Badger as having led the way in 1888. A longer list—conservators Christina Amato, Bill Hanscom, and Adam Novak (all from the Harvard University Libraries’ Weissman Preservation Center), Colin Lukens, and Jennifer Pelose—all contributed to cleaning, stabilizing, and re-housing all of these documents in 2010. And they cannot have done what they did without considerable institutional support, not to mention the engineers and scientists who make it possible for you to see all this work on your smart phone. The rosters above don’t even start to account for the small, but vital group who still know how to read what is on this page, and write their own history about it.
Enjoy!