Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

I have been often thinking of what you suggested, viz., instructing some person in the use of my instruments and engines, but I find these matters so little understood or felt in this country that I know not where to find any one either of fit capacity for it or inclination that way, though my instruments could not but be of considerable value, having within the space of the last ten or twelve years laid out upon Mr Yarwell, while he followed that employment, £10 or more in glasses for telescopes and telescopical sights for different instruments. Yet, should I bestow them all gratis, besides my labour in constructing, I could not engage any person I know, either for want of judgement, inclination, or convenience, to employ them to any good purpose. Therefore must be obliged to wait till some better encouragement be offered.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

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Original

[Letter from Horton to John Flamsteed, 19 October 1715]

I have been often thinking of what you suggested, viz., instructing some person in the use of my instruments and engines, but I find these matters so little understood or felt in this country that I know not where to find any one either of fit capacity for it or inclination that way, though my instruments could not but be of considerable value, having within the space of the last ten or twelve years laid out upon Mr. Yarwell, while he followed that employment, £10 or more in glasses for telescopes and telescopical sights for different instruments. Yet, should I bestow them all gratis, besides my labour in constructing, I could not engage any person I know, either for want of judgement, inclination, or convenience, to employ them to any good purpose. Therefore must be obliged to wait till some better encouragement be offered.

154 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• 📌Bradford (72) ·
• Flamsteed, John (1646-1719) (4), the first Astronomer Royal, prepared a 3,000-star catalogue, Catalogus Britannicus, and a star atlas called Atlas Coelestis, made the first recorded observations of Uranus, laid the foundation stone for the Royal Greenwich Observatory ·
• 📌Little Horton (9) ·
• Owner’s manual (1) ·
• Sharp, Abraham (1653-1742) (6), mathematician and astronomer, assistant of John Flamsteed ·
• Technical documentation (1) ·
• User guide (1) ·

All tags.

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