In organizing the Royal Society, the shrewd Henry Oldenburg had seen the new significance of priority. He sensed that members might be reluctant to send their discoveries to the society for fear that others might steal their claims to be the first. So he proposed “that a proper person might be found out to discover plagiarys, and to assert inventions to their proper authors.” To protect the rights of priority to investigations still in progress, Oldenburg moved that “when any Fellow have any philosophical notion or invention not yet made out, and desired the same, sealed in a box, to be
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