Rebekah Higgitt
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rhiggitt.bsky.social
Rebekah Higgitt
@rhiggitt.bsky.social
16K followers 1K following 3.3K posts
Historian of science; Principal Curator of Science at National Museums Scotland & Hon Fellow, STIS, Uni of Edinburgh. VP British Society for the History of Science #histSTM. Views own.

Formerly known as @beckyfh
https://teleskopos.wordpress.com/profile
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rhiggitt.bsky.social
Very good work from Scottish Ballet here (from their Facebook account)
Photo of McTominay's balletic overhead kick from Scotland's match against Denmark Photograph of a male dancer, with a leg outstretched, body leaning back, with a football photoshopped in (he is performing as Lord Darnley in Scottish Ballet's recent production of Mary Queen of Scots).
November 19, 2025 at 5:50 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Hadrian's Wall walk today, from Housesteads Fort to the Sycamore Gap gap
grey stone wall winding over greenish moorland; sky with clouds, some pinkish
November 15, 2025 at 4:21 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Online lecture, open to all: 2 Dec 18:30 (GMT)

Renée Bergland on her book 'Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science'

Winner of @bshsnews.bsky.social Hughes Prize, for the best #histSTM book accessible to a broad audience

www.bshs.org.uk/online-lectu...
Poster advertising the event
November 12, 2025 at 4:18 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Last morning in Tallinn, with views over and under the city walls (as I wandered the long corridors of the subterranean bastion, I began to wonder where/when/if I'd come out!).
View through a stone arch onto parts of the city walls, gardens and the orthodox cathedral. View down a long corridor with a series of doorways, lit in spooky green and red. A mannequin is perched on a bench, dressed as a woman sheltering from the 1944 bombing.
November 9, 2025 at 1:28 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
I finally paid a visit to Tartu Old Observatory today, and saw Struve's Fraunhofer telescope (lovingly conserved but Paolo Brenni)
Early 19thC classical building with a drum-shaped 'dome' or tower, with trees in foreground. Early 20thC equatorially mounted telescope inside a rotatable drum. The glorious 1824 Fraunhofer telescope with a German equatorial mount - all brass and mahogany - with two windows in the background.
November 8, 2025 at 3:20 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
A bus, a plane, a train, a tram, a ferry and a taxi later, I have made it to Tallinn!
Cobbled street at night - the 19thC(?) buildings are well lit and it all looks very pretty.
November 4, 2025 at 5:42 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Oh, good - as I wait to board
A moderate wind warning has popped up on my phone.
November 4, 2025 at 1:44 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Helsinki! It's been brief...!
View down a street with Christmas(?) decorations, looking toward a white church with some and portico. Statue of some 19thC dude in a city garden square with bare trees and classicalish building surrounding. An impressive amount of colour has been generated, on this gloomy days by the planting of different kinds of heather around the statue. View of a ferry turning at a ferry terminal. I think it's my ride.
November 4, 2025 at 1:33 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Just passing through Helsinki en route to the ferry to Tallinn (my first time in either Finland or Estonia). Time to have a Runeberg torte, though! Named after the national poet: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runeber...
Plate with a small round cake with icing and jam on top, next to coffee cup and water glass.
November 4, 2025 at 12:11 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Get to Made in Ancient Egypt at the Fitzwilliam Museum, if you can. Reveals the makers, techniques, mistakes, trials and gorgeous successes 📜
Flaked fragment of stone with writing on it. See next image for description. Museum label describing a 1550-1069 BCE limestone fragment and its text about absences from work, to attend a funeral, receiving a bite, being sick and 'did not work'. It is from the Louvre. Close-up detail from a stone shrine belonging to the Fitzwilliam. It shows figures and hieroglyphs and right in the centre you can just see a faint inscription from the person who made it.
October 30, 2025 at 2:04 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Gulliver's Travels is 300 this year. Have there been any celebrations, events, articles or podcasts to mark its tercentenary?
'Author' portrait fontispiece and title page for the 1726 Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver.
October 27, 2025 at 8:38 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Pretty skies out there
Pink clouds against the fading blue of the evening sky, above stone houses and slate roofs.
October 21, 2025 at 5:09 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
#OTD Wheatstone was also a pioneer of the telegraph, inventor of the Wheatstone concertina and more. NMS's Communicate gallery has several items on display, and there's more in store (search Wheatstone here www.nms.ac.uk/search-our-c...) #histSTM
Brass mechanism inside a mahogany case (1840 Wheatstone telegraph alarm)
October 19, 2025 at 4:24 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Oslo Observatory visit!
Photo of a building with a round room on top, against a blue sky, surrounded by autumn foliage.
October 14, 2025 at 4:30 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
The actual Fram
Bow of a sailing ship, photographed from below, that is within a covered museumspace, with blue lighting.
October 12, 2025 at 8:10 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Top marks for this diorama from The Fram Museum. it has a theodolite and huskies (two dogs are toppled, which merely hints at their fates).
diorama with a model of a ship stuck in ice with models of people and dogs, supplies, instruments etc around it.
October 12, 2025 at 7:36 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Artefacts XXX is kicking off at the Teknisk Museum, Oslo, with a welcome from Fridge Weium. Last time the group was here was 2007. Spot the curator! #histSTM 📜
Man next to a lectern and in front of a large screen showing a group picture taken in front of the Museum.
October 12, 2025 at 2:28 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Looking out my pictures of war-ravaged Portland. This was two years ago, when the stores still had glass in their windows
View over a city from a high storey, with lots of autumn colour.
October 8, 2025 at 9:39 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
This morning at the museum - just me, the clock and someone welding a vacuum cleaner on the stairs (11 seconds in for the half hour strike)
September 29, 2025 at 6:35 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Visited the National Maritime Museum's Pirates exhibition yesterday, and snapped a quick view of the Royal Observatory Greenwich. This is the first time I've properly seen the reconstructed 'steps' on the hill.
Photograph view across green grass with blue sky and buildings of the Royal Observatory on the skyline. Two people sitting on a bench in the foreground.
September 19, 2025 at 11:36 AM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
What ship do we reckon? Date is 1851
Snip of text - HMS something
September 11, 2025 at 4:39 PM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Your last saved pic is your philosophy

(Genuinely this, depending how you define "saved" - polystefanus rationisest archeus)
Photograph of a Roman mosaic with two female centaurs crowning Venus, with Latin phrase above.
September 6, 2025 at 9:14 AM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
John Bull responds (see alt text)
Detail of John Bull's smiling face beneath the moon and text: "What going to revolutionize the Moon Bonny - that's a good one however to be sure you talk'd of paying a visit to my little Island and one would certainly be as easily accomplished as the other."
September 1, 2025 at 10:06 AM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Napoleon's speech caption mentions the balloonist "Garner", which should be Garnerin en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3...

(see alt text for transcription of the whole)
Detail showing Napoleon's head at the eye end of the telescope, and caption: "I wonder the Idea never struck me before - the place would easily be taken, and has undoubtedly great capabilities - besides they would make me Emperor, and then the sound of the Title, Emeror [sic] of the Full Moon - oh delightfull - I'll send for Garner and his Balloon's, and set about the scheme immediately."
September 1, 2025 at 10:06 AM
rhiggitt.bsky.social
Napoleon considering the possibilities of lunar invasion and becoming Emperor of the Full Moon (Lunar Speculations by S.W. Fores, 1803, Science Museum) - nice example of the genre of astronomy-political caricature collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co66...
Coloured print showing Napoleon in uniform looking through a telescope at the full moon, beneath which a John Bull figure holds his very round belly and scoffs at the idea.
September 1, 2025 at 10:06 AM