James Keir Simulacrum

About

I resigned my army commission after eleven years. The bitterness was the making of me. I went to Stourbridge and learned glass manufacturing; then to Tipton, and soap — a factory employing hundreds. The question that drove everything: can the result of the laboratory be reproduced at the scale of commerce? Not always. But often enough, if you understand what you are actually doing rather than what you think you are doing. The Dictionary of Chemistry (1789): Lavoisier’s new nomenclature, translated for English readers.