Celestial Machines: Caroline Herschel Astronomical Notebooks and the material culture of predigital communication systems

该项目是一个合作博士项目，博士研究生身份被设想为基于档案的努力，学生参与皇家学会收藏的现场研究。因此，该学生将被视为图书馆和档案馆团队的一员，并将接受适当技能和职责的培训。该项目的重点是卡罗琳·赫歇尔(Caroline Herschel，1750-1848)的科学手稿，她是第一批在皇家学会哲学会刊上发表文章并成为专业天文学家的女性之一。尽管她的手稿中的信息长期以来因其准确性、精确度和对19世纪天文学和天体力学基础的中心地位而得到认可，但她手稿中的信息仍然是一个相对未被开发的互动科学交流、合作和创新的宝库。学生将研究赫歇尔如何将天文笔记本用作纸机；也就是，作为帮助她与其他形式的前数字通信媒体接口的交互式信息管理工具。她的笔记本的材料和信息的这一共同方面将被用来探索当时天文图像制作和笔记实践所固有的优势和障碍。目标是双重的。首先，识别和记录她在笔记本中使用的主要手稿信息管理技术，以驯服欧洲天文学家提供给她的视觉和文本数据，并通过大量的便条、碎片、床单、目录、分类账、日记簿和信件向她提供殖民背景下的数据。其次，为了考察她如何将笔记本作为个人观察工具，帮助她与望远镜和其他相关形式的物质文化进行交互。该项目不是简单地将赫歇尔的数字化前数据管理设备的起源归因于精英和著名的男性、大学和学术团体，而是试图强调她的方法是如何源自她自己的独创性、她早期的音乐家生涯，以及她作为赫歇尔家庭管理者的角色。通过遵循这条道路，该项目将扩大我们对她如何在开发用于天文学和天体力学手稿世界的实时数据管理技术方面发挥关键作用的理解。总体而言，该项目将展示，当被视为实时设备时，每个笔记本都将成为一个互动的艺术品，一个等待了两个多世纪被重新发现的媒体界面的档案。通过关注卡罗琳·赫歇尔并探索她作为首批受薪女科学家之一的角色，该项目将允许这位成功的博士生和指导团队推进皇家学会和达勒姆大学的承诺，增加STEM的多样性，纳入未被充分代表的群体，并发展一个科学知识对所有人开放的世界。由于没有卡罗琳·赫歇尔的学术传记，这个项目是及时的，将引起历史学家、更广泛的学术界和公众的兴趣。

The project is a Collaborative Doctoral Project with a PhD studentship envisaged as an archive-based endeavour, with the student engaged in on-site research within the Royal Society's collections. Therefore, the student will be considered as a member of the Library and Archive team and will receive training in the appropriate skills and duties. The project focuses on the scientific manuscripts of Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), one of the first women to publish articles in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and to be a professional astronomer. Though long recognised for their accuracy, precision and centrality to the foundations of nineteenth-century astronomy and celestial mechanics, the information in her manuscripts has remained a relatively untapped treasure trove of interactive scientific communication, collaboration and innovation.The student will investigate how Herschel used astronomical notebooks as paper machines; that is, as interactive information management devices that helped her interface with other forms of predigital communications media. This jointly material and informatic aspect of her notebooks will be used to explore the advantages and obstacles inherent to the astronomical image-making and note-keeping practices of the time. The aims are twofold. First, to identify and historicise the main manuscript information management techniques she used within her notebooks to tame the visual and textual data supplied to her by astronomers based in Europe and colonial settings via a plethora of slips, scraps, sheets, catalogues, ledgers, daybooks and letters. Second, to examine how she used her notebooks as personal observation tools that helped her interface with telescopes and other associated forms of material culture.Rather than solely attributing the origins of Herschel's predigital data management devices to elite, and eminently male, universities and scholarly societies, the project seeks to highlight how her methods originated from her own ingenuity, her early years as a musician, and her role as manager of the Herschel household. In following this path, the project will extend our understanding of how she played an essential role in developing the realtime data management techniques that were used in the manuscript world of astronomy and celestial mechanics. Overall, the project will show that, when treated as a realtime device, each notebook becomes an interactive artefact, an archive of media interface that has been waiting over two centuries to be rediscovered.By focusing on Caroline Herschel and exploring her role as one of the first salaried female scientists, the project will allow the successful PhD student and the supervisory team to advance the commitment of the Royal Society and Durham University to increase diversity in STEM, to include underrepresented groups, and to develop a world in which scientific knowledge is open to all. Since there is no academic biography of Caroline Herschel, the project is timely and will be of interest to historians and the wider academy and public.