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Jon Agar

@jonagar.bsky.social
8.1K followers 618 following 994 posts

historian of modern science and technology

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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
National Care Service (double tick). Double lock (one tick). Reheated innovation nation stuff is poor. Nothing positive on universities. Otherwise big winners are the Lib Dems (electoral reform)! And, no, it is not a different kind of speech #burnham
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Some plants in the marshy area by the River Wye, when it is just a stream at Hughenden, Bucks: Blue water-speedwell, Red goosefoot (I think!), Water forget-me-not #wildflowerhour (BSBI met here back in spring last year)
Two spikes of Veronica type flowers with a river behind A red and yellow plant - the seeds are red and the dark almond shaped leaves are yellow with a red fringeclusters of blue flowers with yellow centres among spear shaped thick looking leaves
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This is excellent. Nathan Ensmenger was one of the first historians to call attention to the hidden environmental consequences of computing, back when it was indeed obscure. Now (w/data centres) it is open and politically contested. But, he argues, we need to choose words and targets carefully..
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Fodder vetch (V. villosa), I think, fields north of Romford, for #wildflowerhour #favouritefind was probably the St Dabeoc’s Heath from Galway last week, or the Yellow Vetch from Shoreham-by-Sea back in June
a line of dark purple pea flowers, with some grey, hairy leaves made up of seven+ leaflets, all in a scrubby field with lots of other slightly dry plants
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This goes straight into my course this term, Thinking about Technology
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I am writing about UK environmental politics and science in the 1990s Not sure what to make of this passage in a speech by the Environment minister John Gummer in 1995, in which he remembers fantasising as a small boy about killing the man who killed the last Great Auk, and how it haunted him still
"When I was a small boy I remember learning that some species had disappeared from the earth. I learnt that one of those was the Great Auk. It is a very boring bird the Great Auk. It disappeared largely because it couldn't fly, and if you saw a picture of it you wouldn't find it particularly enticing. But I remember feeling that I had lost something because I would never see a Great Auk. And that thought has lived with me all my adult life. I remember reading of the man who killed the last Great Auk, and I remember as a small boy wanting to kill him because he had removed from me something which was an extension of my experience, my understanding. My world was narrower and less exciting and thrilling"
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This evening’s entertainment…
An empty stage with an orange sun with a face
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
It's (almost) that time of year again: Inaugural Lectures season is nearly upon us. What better way to tip ones toes back in the water that Prof Simon Werrett's 'At Length did Cross an Albatross: Science and Seabirds in the Eighteenth Century'. Free and open to the public, 21 October. #Skystorians
ucl.ac.uk
STS Inaugural Lecture Series: Professor Simon Werrett
“At Length did Cross an Albatross”: Science and Seabirds in the Eighteenth Century
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I missed that it was #SeedHeads for #wildflowerhour on Sunday. But here’s a botanical challenge for you. Anglesey. What is it? @bsbibotany.bsky.social @wildflowerhour.bsky.social
Seedhead. 3-symmetry with 6 capsules. A bunch of six of them, brown and white
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Trefignath chambered tomb. Just found out there’s a thing called #TombTuesday and I passing this one near Holyhead, Anglesey
Two standing rocks on right are entrance to one of three tombs, mostly jumbled stonesThe entrance to the 3rd, east facing tombOne of the big entrance stones, with swirly metamorphic patterns and lichen
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
champion
Sheep being judged at Ougherard agricultural showa sheep wearing a medal
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
where am I now? #histsci location revealed shortly…
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
St Dabeoc’s Heath (Daboecia cantabrica), somewhere a little west of Galway, for #wildflowerhour. Took a little searching
Two bunches of pink bell shaped flowers
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Fossiliferous basalt? Confirmation at last for Neptunism! (at Portrush, NI, site of one of the most momentous geological arguments)
 a wet slab of stone from a shore, with an ammonite
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
The National Museum of Ireland (the Kildare Street, archeological one) is full of wondrous objects, but this one amused me. It’s a 11th century deer antler. Look closer…
a single deer antler. looks a bit like a knobby brown bone
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Also on display at the National Library of Ireland: Yeats’ 1920 manuscript of ‘The second coming’ … in which he crosses out ‘makes’ and puts in ‘slouches’ greatness is in the final edit!
Manuscript of William Butler Yeats’ poem ‘The second coming’. The one that starts ‘turning and turning in the widening gyre. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…’

Ends: ‘And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, makes towards Bethlehem , to be born’

Yeats has crossed out makes and added slouches
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Page of Joyce’s Ulysses, on display at the National Library of Ireland. It’s the Scylla and Charybdis scene. Any Joyce scholars know that what the proto-highlighting meant?
Page from a notebook, Joyce’s handwriting, lines struck through with red, green, blue crayon
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Could we restart this season, please
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Interesting episode of science/environment/health policy from 2003, with a surprise entrance... The topic is fluoridation of water. The policy note is to Tony Blair. All the big beasts of Number 10 are copied in Fluoridation cuts dental decay, its a health inequalities issue. Make it universal?
A policy note to the prime minister, Tony Blair. Others including Jonathan Powell, Pat McFadden, Sally Morgan, and Alastair Campbell are copied in. Fluoridation cuts dental decay, but it is not universal. There's a chance by amending new legislation to make it so. Fluoridation is a health inequalities issue because dental disease correlates to social deprivation. Further text described in next post
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Exhibition, 1859, at the Cornwall Polytechnic Society. Not sure **what** is being exhibited
three Victorian men, one in a tall hat, with exhibits, possibly sculptures in a sepia photograph close up
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Where better to see the eclipse than a WW2 Observation Post looking towards Falmouth
Inside a concrete observation post, with a slit through which you can see the seaThe partial eclipse projected through binoculars Looking across the sea from St Anthony Head towards Falmouth
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I’m intrigued by this device: the ‘scenaidicator’, a ‘silent guide’ to motorcoaching tourists Plus the tagline: “We unravel as you travel”
A blue and yellow poster, with a figure dressed as a medieval herald holding back a curtain revealing St Michael’s Mount. The tagline is t the top. The small device is in the bottom right hand corner
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
An 19th #artsci challenge: who was the better amateur watercolourist? Was it Mary Somerville, author the bestselling On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834)? This is her ‘Bass Rock”
“Bass Rock” a water colour by Mary Somerville. There’s sand and rocks, and a blue sea with a big house-shaped rock on the horizon. A small orange sun is visible through light clouds. Two figures stand on the beach to the left
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
It's the handbrake turn between the second and third paragraphs that gets me... (Blair/Putin/Shell, 2002)
A letter from the Chair of Shell, Philip Watts, and Tony Blair at Number 10 Downing Street. The second paragraph reads 'Your Government's support for our efforts around the world continues to be valuable to us. My meeting with President Putin in December in Chequers has led to a marked increase in support from the Russian Government in pursuit of out Sakhalin interests'

The third paragraph says: 'The reason for my letter, however, is in my capacity as Chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development....'
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UCL Science and Technology Studies (STS) @stsucl.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
STS’s Cristiano Turbil joined a special live episode of Public Health Disrupted as part of UCL200, contributing to an insightful discussion on public health and its future.
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Thwarted by my attempt today to get #ByTheSea (or at least the Thames estuary) by train failure, here’s something inland for #wildflowerhour Field Scabious (Knautia arvensis) amongst the grass at Walthamstow Marshes
 a purply-blue flower with spreading petals and white anthers in the middle amongst grass leaf blades
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Clouded Yellow, yesterday at Walthamstow Wetlands Took lots of pics and finally caught one when it was opening wings
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
As a historian of Jodrell Bank, I agree! And the reason it is important is that it has been made to mean different things to different people at different times. Who's up for a mega thread on how and why? (I'm off for lunch now, but I'll do it after. I'll need the energy...)
Cover of my book Science and Spectacle: the Work of Jodrell Bank in Post-war British Culture
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Among the new file releases in July 2026 at the National Archives: the Home Office extradition of some extraordinary figures, including Pinochet, great train robber Ronnie Biggs, holocaust denier David Irving and Alexander Litvinenko
TNA catalogue entry for Pinochet extradition fileTNA catalogue entry for Ronald Biggs extradition fileTNA catalogue entry for David Irving extradition fileTNA catalogue entry for Alexander Litvinenko extradition file
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Won the Pembury pub quiz in Hackney (yay!) Killer round link: Beatles albums (eg galoshes are made of? Rubber. Rubber Soul) Comes down to: what colour are Mr Blobby’s spots? (I’d you get it wrong you get ZERO points) What’s the right answer?
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Next thing you know, someone will put together programmes that combine subjects such as philosophy, history and science and sociology of knowledge and call it, who knows, science and technology studies. It might even catch on... 3/3
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. And that includes keeping the bloody Leylandii if you are Jimmy Page and your RAF Bomber Command war hero neighbour asks you to cut the trees down because they are blocking the light (important news clipping found in Number 10 file to Blair, 1999)
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Last week I visited La Bouffia Bonneval, the cave in La Chapelle-aux-Saints where the first (nearly) complete Neanderthal skeleton was found in 1908, carefully buried …
La Bouffia Bonneval, the cave at La Chapelle-aux-Saints where a Neanderthal burial was found in 1908Plaque placed in 1968 above La Bouffia Bonneval cave that reads (in part) ‘Par Les Abbes Amédée etc Jean Bouyssonie et Leung Frere Paul Le Soulette d’un Homme Mousterien dit de Neanderthal
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
“knew his anions” was right there seriously, though, as a historian of science and government, I’m looking forward to 2046 to find out from public records whether having (another) scientist as science minister made a difference
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
I don’t mind who wins this, but I would like to see what Spain can actually do if they fall behind
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
A wander through Broxbourne woods, from Wormley Wood to Hoddesdon Park Wood, hoping for a Purple Emperor. All very dry. Here’s Great Willowherb, Fleabane (with a solitary bee visitor) and one desiccated Broad-leaved Helleborine. The weather has clearly been good for germinating oaks #wildflowerhour
Great Willowherb. A big pink/purple four petalled flower with a white cross shaped stigmaFleabane. A yellow daisy type flower. Theres a small black solitary bee in the middleBroad-leaved helleborine. A spike with dark brown dry flowers hanging down A mass of oak seedlings
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
In East London, tagging gangs are organised around allegiances to academic publication repositories. Know your turf
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
a welcome storm over the Dordogne
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
100% Francais
roadside spectators watch as a le Gaulois truck with a giant chicken head on top passes
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Another great goal!
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
My first encounter with Round-headed rampion (Phyteuma obiculare) on Castle Hill, county flower of Sussex #wildflowerhour
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Universities as ‘one of the few sectors that combines local economies and global influence’ is pithy and right It’s also why Burnham and the Manchester model is just a glimmer of a hope that central government might at last pay attention and intervene to help HE to help everyone But…
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
#reading Matthew Cobb, The Idea of the Brain John Crowley, Aegypt M John Harrison, Viriconium George Eliot, Middlemarch Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus John Heywood, In Search of Technological Excellence: Education and Engineering in Post-war Britain
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Talking of which…
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
In my department @stsucl.bsky.social our first year undergrads take a module called STS Perspectives on Big Problems. It’s in the first term so it’s the first course they do The problem is chosen each year, in consultation with students (so it reflects their concerns), keeping it fresh 1/3
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
My cunning plan was to spend the day in the National Archives, with its formidable AC, I mean primary sources. But the Overground is running a reduced service because of heat. Trains were already rammed, standing room only. Decided my basement work office is the least worst option
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Family trip to Shoreham-by-Sea in June meant I could search for the famous rarities in time for #wildflowerhour First, up: Starry Clover (Trifolium stellatum). This took some finding amongst the large patches of Rough Clover. Nearly gave up. But found it! You can see how it got its name
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Jon Agar @jonagar.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
There’s a spectacular thunderstorm across northern France and Belgium right now…
Map of lightning flashes, covering much of Belgium
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