Memories of the Wunderkammer IV — A Record of Scientifica
日本語版はこちら →ヴンダーカンマーの記憶④ Scientificaの記録
Today I am cross-checking the collection records for the scientific instruments.
Things made to observe and to measure the world—Scientifica.
In this museum, instruments used for science and observation are still called by that old category name.
Telescopes, instruments for measuring angles, clocks.
The shelves also hold charts of the positions of the stars.
Even among the instruments made of brass, each one has a different shape.
A slender tube.
A scale that traces a circle.
A small screw, and a knob for turning it.
What was this particular shape needed to measure?
I check the accession numbers and compare each instrument with its record.
On the worktable lies a telescope.
Over the years, the surface of the tube has taken on a muted colour.
Only near the eyepiece is there a slightly brighter patch.
Perhaps it is where hands touched it again and again.
The same mark appears in the earlier inspection photographs as well.
It is not something that formed recently.
I shine a light onto the lens at an angle.
Near the edge there is a slight clouding.
This, too, was noted in the records.
I add a note on its present condition and turn my attention to the mount that supports the tube.
A fine scale is engraved along the arc.
Between the numbers there are short lines as well.
From a distance it looks like a pattern, but close up each line can be distinguished.
Why would a tube for looking at distant things need a scale as fine as this?
Perhaps simply seeing it was not enough.
Where had it appeared?
How much had it moved?
To put it into a form that others could understand.
I open the documents that had been kept with the instrument.
They are records of observations.
Dates.
Times.
What looks like the name of a celestial object.
Beside it are several numbers.
From the first page alone I cannot really tell which number shows what.
I look up the words written at the head of each column and compare them with the notes in the collection records.
Little by little, I can tell the column of times from the columns that record position.
Some of the old numbers have shapes I am not used to reading.
A seven, or a one?
I compare it with the same handwriting on another page.
Even a single line takes a great deal of time to read.
I turn the page.
The same name is there again.
And on the next page as well.
The dates are different.
The times, and the numbers beside them, differ a little each time.
This person was looking at the same object again and again.
In some places there are records every few days; in others a long gap opens up.
On some pages something about the weather is written in the margin.
It was not as though this person could look whenever they wished.
Turning pages at a desk, I pass through several months in a moment.
In that same span, this person must have been waiting for the night.
There must have been days of setting the instrument in order, looking at the state of the sky, and waiting again.
As I follow the dates, the year changes.
Still the same name appears.
I go back to an earlier page and compare the two records.
I can see that the numbers are different.
But how great that difference is, and what it means, I still cannot tell.
What was it that this person could see?
It is not something you learn by looking through a telescope once.
Remembering what you saw before is not enough either.
There were differences that could only be compared and confirmed by writing them down.
Slipped in among the documents are sheets of calculations.
The edges are bent, and the colour has darkened along the folds.
Small numbers continue down towards the bottom of the sheet.
One number has been struck out with a single line.
A smaller number is written above it.
The calculation below is struck out partway as well, and begun again in the margin.
What was the mistake, I wonder.
Was a number copied down wrongly?
Or did this person notice, partway through, that something was not right?
I cannot follow the working through to the end.
Even so, I can see that the answer once written was not left as it was.
Another sheet holds several very similar calculations.
I had thought these were sheets where only the answers were set down.
But what remains here is what came before the answer.
Writing, striking out, calculating again.
Going back to the observation records to check the numbers.
Using even the narrow margins of one sheet, then taking out the next.
I leave the sheets laid out and look at them for a while.
Did this person want to know so much that they would go that far?
According to the notes in the collection records, these papers also include calculations that used an observed position to work out where the object would appear later.
Writing down numbers in advance for a sky not yet seen.
And then, when the time came, comparing them with the sky itself.
The predicted numbers, and the observed numbers.
In places they are close; in places they differ.
If the numbers did not agree, I suppose this person would have looked into it again.
Was it how the instrument had been set?
The time?
The calculation?
Or was something missing from the way they were thinking?
I cannot tell which of these led to the corrections on this sheet.
Even a single correction must have had its reason.
I go back to the page with the number I could not read.
When I compare it with the other pages, the character I first took for a one could just as well be a seven.
I follow the numbers in the same column and check the shape of the character once more.
And there I notice that I, too, am finding it hard to stop.
Today I am cross-checking the instruments against the documents.
This is not the day to work through all these calculations.
Even so, once there is something I cannot make out, it bothers me.
Once I can read one number, I want to know the one beside it.
Once I understand what a column means, the differences between the numbers begin to bother me.
And I had only just wondered whether this person wanted to know so much that they would go that far.
I look back at the eyepiece of the telescope.
Perhaps the person who leaned in here also, at first, simply wanted to see.
Things the naked eye cannot see well.
Things too far away for their shape to be made out.
I would think that simply being able to see it would be enough.
But once you have seen it, you want to know how it moves.
Once you know how it moves, you want to know why.
I feel I understand a little of why the gentleman gathered instruments and records like these.
A new instrument lets people know what could not be known before.
And if collecting such instruments and records also let him learn what those who used them had discovered, perhaps that was part of why he wanted to gather them.
I look at the sheets spread out on the desk.
There are more places I want to look into than when I began.
I check the time.
More of it has passed than I thought.
I decide to write down the parts I could not decipher, just as they are.
Rather than guess at an unclear number, I note the page and the line.
Someone who knows more about this will need to check them.
As for who wrote the records, the notes we have are not enough to tell.
Could it be the handwriting of someone invited to this museum?
Or did these records come here with an instrument that had been used somewhere else?
Just because the instrument and the records are kept together does not mean that every observation was made with this telescope.
There is still checking to be done.
As I put the sheets of calculations back in their original order, I look at the column of dates once more.
Night after night from nearly two hundred years ago appears in the entries.
I have not seen the sky of those nights.
Was there wind?
Was it cold?
After a long wait, did it finally come into view?
Whether the person who wrote the numbers was glad, I do not know either.
What remains is the record that, at that time, this person looked at that part of the sky.
I still cannot fully decipher it, but enough remains to trace the observations.
If the telescope alone had survived, I would still have known what it was for.
But I would not have known that this person had looked at the same thing again and again.
These sheets are why, today, I know that this person returned to the same thing again and again.
The struck-out numbers and the rewritten calculations—I will include them in the record as well.
There are things that do not survive if only the neatly ordered answers are kept.
I put the papers away and close the record of the telescope's condition.
On the worktable, a thin band of light from the window still lingers.
When I put out the lamp I have been using, the brass scale becomes harder to see.
I check tomorrow's schedule.
Next is the camera.
Along with the records of the instrument, a photographic ledger is to be prepared as well.
I check the relevant box of documents on the shelf and note down its number.
On the sheets I looked at today, numbers had been left behind.
Tomorrow I will examine something made to leave an image behind.
Previous Record ◇ Next Record — Memories of the Wunderkammer V — A Record of Artificialia: The Camera (Coming Friday)
This story has a musical companion.
