Essays
I write occasional popular-science / analytical essays on antique meteorological instruments — their mechanisms and materials, the slow chemistry of ageing metals and patina, and the craft of conservation and restoration, with the odd detour into collecting itself. These aren’t peer-reviewed papers; they’re the observations of a practising collector and restorer, grounded in instruments from my own collection and, wherever possible, in cited sources.
- MaterialsLubrication in Historical Meteorological Instruments: Tribology, Metrology, and Restoration Practice
Why the one thing a well-meaning collector does to an aneroid — oiling it — is the one thing it cannot survive, and how tribology and conservation practice converge on a single prescription: keep it clean, keep it dry.
- InstrumentsAn Aneroid Aloft: Why old barometers and barographs dislike airmail
Why the safest way to post a 150-year-old barometer is the slowest one — a brief study of what thin air does to an aneroid aloft.
- InstrumentsThe Gunpowder Thermometer: Temperature Control in Powder Magazines, Arsenals, Ammunition Depots, and Artillery Production
Why the temperature of a powder magazine was a question of ballistics and chemical safety, not of housekeeping — and how a plain mercury thermometer, sometimes a metre and a half long, became an instrument of military discipline.