Download or read book Fran ois Arago written by James Lequeux and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: François Arago, the first to show in 1810 that the surface of the Sun and stars is made of incandescent gas and not solid or liquid, was a prominent physicist of the 19th century. He used his considerable influence to help Fresnel, Ampere and others develop their ideas and make themselves known. This book covers his personal contributions to physics, astronomy, geodesy and oceanography, which are far from negligible, but insufficiently known. Arago was also an important and influential political man who, for example, abolished slavery in the French colonies. One of the last humanists, he had a very broad culture and range of interests. In parallel to his biography, this title also covers the spectacular progresses of science at the time of Arago, especially in France: the birth of physical optics, electromagnetism and thermodynamics. Francois Arago’s life is a fascinating epic tale that reads as a novel.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Photography written by John Hannavy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 1629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography is the first comprehensive encyclopedia of world photography up to the beginning of the twentieth century. It sets out to be the standard, definitive reference work on the subject for years to come. Its coverage is global – an important ‘first’ in that authorities from all over the world have contributed their expertise and scholarship towards making this a truly comprehensive publication. The Encyclopedia presents new and ground-breaking research alongside accounts of the major established figures in the nineteenth century arena. Coverage includes all the key people, processes, equipment, movements, styles, debates and groupings which helped photography develop from being ‘a solution in search of a problem’ when first invented, to the essential communication tool, creative medium, and recorder of everyday life which it had become by the dawn of the twentieth century. The sheer breadth of coverage in the 1200 essays makes the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography an essential reference source for academics, students, researchers and libraries worldwide.
Download or read book Library of the World s Best Literature Ancient and Modern A Z written by Charles Dudley Warner and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Short Bright Flash Augustin Fresnel and the Birth of the Modern Lighthouse written by Theresa Levitt and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-07-29 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Combin[es] matters of biography, science, engineering, technology, art, history, economics and politics seemingly effortlessly and definitely seamlessly. An excellent book and a joy to read.”—Henry Petroski, Wall Street Journal Augustin Fresnel (1788–1827) shocked the scientific elite with his unique understanding of the physics of light. The lens he invented was a brilliant feat of engineering that made lighthouses blaze many times brighter, farther, and more efficiently. Battling the establishment, his own poor health, and the limited technology of the time, Fresnel was able to achieve his goal of illuminating the entire French coast. At first, the British sought to outdo the new Fresnel-equipped lighthouses as a matter of national pride. Americans, too, resisted abandoning their primitive lamps, but the superiority of the Fresnel lens could not be denied for long. Soon, from Dunkirk to Saigon, shores were brightened with it. The Fresnel legacy played an important role in geopolitical events, including the American Civil War. No sooner were Fresnel lenses finally installed along U.S. shores than they were drafted: the Union blockaded the Confederate coast; the Confederacy set about thwarting it by dismantling and hiding or destroying the powerful new lights. Levitt’s scientific and historical account, rich in anecdote and personality, brings to life the fascinating untold story of Augustin Fresnel and his powerful invention.
Download or read book Full Meridian of Glory written by Paul Murdin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-12-25 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [the text below needs editing and we must be careful not to say things about Dan Brown's book that could get Springer in legal trouble] Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code, was first published in 2003; its sales have reached 40 million worldwide. The book mixes a small spice of fact into a large dollop of fiction to create an entertaining novel of intrigue, adventure, romance, danger and conspiracy, which have been imaginatively worked together to cook up the successful bestseller. Most interest in the book’s origins has centred on the sensational religious aspects. Dan Brown has written: ‘All of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies, all of that is historical fact.’ This gives an air of authenticity to the book. Brown has, however, made up the religious doctrines, or based them on questionable accounts by others. The locations of the actions of The Da Vinci Code are not, however, made up. The present book is the scientific story behind the scene of several of the book’s actions that take place on the axis of France that passes through Paris. The Paris Meridian is the name of this location. It is the line running north-south through the astronomical observatory in Paris. One of the original intentions behind the founding of the Paris Observatory was to determine and measure this line. The French government financed the Paris Academy of Sciences to do so in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. It employed both astronomers – people who study and measure the stars – and geodesists – people who study and measure the Earth. This book is about what they did and why. It is a true story behind Dan Brown’s fiction. This is the first English language presentation of this historical material. It is attractively written and it features the story of the community of scientists who created the Paris Meridian. They knew each other well – some were members of the same families, in one case of four generations. Like scientists everywhere they collaborated and formed alliances; they also split into warring factions and squabbled. They travelled to foreign countries, somehow transcending the national and political disputes, as scientists do now, their eyes fixed on ideas of accuracy, truth and objective, enduring values – save where the reception given to their own work is concerned, when some became blind to high ideals and descended into petty politics. To establish the Paris Meridian, the scientists endured hardship, survived danger and gloried in amazing adventures during a time of turmoil in Europe, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic War between France and Spain. Some were accused of witchcraft. Some of their associates lost their heads on the guillotine. Some died of disease. Some won honour and fame. One became the Head of State in France, albeit for no more than a few weeks. Some found dangerous love in foreign countries. One scientist killed in self defence when attacked by a jealous lover, another was himself killed by a jealous lover, a third brought back a woman to France and then jilted her, whereupon she joined a convent. The scientists worked on practical problems of interest to the government and to the people. They also worked on one of the important intellectual problems of the time, a problem of great interest to their fellow scientists all over the world, nothing less than the theory of universal gravitation. They succeeded in their intellectual work, while touching politics and the affairs of state. Their endeavours have left their marks on the landscape, in art and in literature.
Download or read book Munsey s Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hawaiian National Bibliography 1780 1900 written by David W. Forbes and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2000-08-01 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of the Hawaiian National Bibliography records the transformation of Hawai'i from a feudal system of government to a constitutional monarchy whose autonomy was recognized by the United States and the great powers of Europe. Here are referenced the formation of laws, a constitution, a bill of rights, and government reports. Political entanglements with Great Britain and France, the Provisional Cession of Hawai'i to Great Britain, and the restoration of sovereignty in 1843 are documented. Publications resulting from the United States Exploring Expedition under Captain Charles Wilkes are included. Also listed and described are theater bills, broadsides, and other ephemera, which illuminate the everyday life of the period.
Download or read book Canadian Journal of Science Literature and History written by and published by . This book was released on 1854 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Canadian Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1853 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Popular Astronomy written by François Arago and published by . This book was released on 1858 with total page 916 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Stellar Polarimetry written by David Clarke and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-10-30 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an experienced teacher and author, this must-have source for work with polarimetric equipment and polarimetry in astronomy conveys the knowledge of the technology and techniques needed to measure and interpret polarizations. As such, this monograph offers a brief introduction and refresher, while also covering in detail statistics and data treatment as well as telescope optics. For astronomers, physicists and those working in the optical industry.
Download or read book Official Commercial Directory of Cuba Porto Rico and the Entire West Indies with Bermuda for 1901 written by Spanish-American Directories Co., New York and published by . This book was released on 1901 with total page 1082 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Truth About Tesla written by Christopher Cooper and published by Quarto Publishing Group USA. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A myth-busting biography of Nikola Tesla, the “enigmatic figure whose life and achievements appeal to historians, engineers, scientists, and many others” (Library Journal). Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest electrical inventors who ever lived, was rescued from obscurity in recent years, restored to his rightful place among historical luminaries. We’ve been told that his contributions to humanity were obscured by a number of nineteenth-century inventors and industrialists who took credit for his work or stole his patents outright. Most biographies repeat this familiar account of Tesla’s life, including his invention of alternating current, his falling out with Thomas Edison, how he lost billions in patent royalties to George Westinghouse, and his fight to prove that Guglielmo Marconi stole thirteen of his patents to “invent” radio. But what really happened? Newly uncovered information, however, proves that the popular account of Tesla’s life is itself very flawed. In The Truth About Tesla, Christopher Cooper sets out to prove that the conventional story not only oversimplifies history, it denies credit to some of the true inventors behind many of the groundbreaking technologies now attributed to Tesla, and perpetuates a misunderstanding about the process of innovation itself. Are you positive that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone? Are you sure the Wright Brothers were the first in flight? Think again! With a provocative foreword by Tesla biographer Marc J. Seifer, The Truth About Tesla is one of the first books to set the record straight, tracing the origin of some of the greatest electrical inventions to a coterie of colorful characters that conventional history has all but forgotten. Includes photographs
Download or read book The Babylonian Planet written by Sonja Neef and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is astro-culture? In The Babylonian Planet it is unfolded as an aesthetic, an idea, a field of study, a position, and a practice. It helps to engineer the shift from a world view that is segregated to one that is integrated – from global to planetary; from distance to intimacy and where closeness and cosmic distance live side-by-side. In this tour de force, Sonja Neef takes her cue from Edouard Glissant's vision of multilingualism and reignites the myth of the Tower of Babel to anticipate new forms of cultural encounter. For her, Babel is an organic construction site at which she fuses theoretical analysis and case studies of artists, writers and thinkers like William Kentridge, Orhan Pamuk and Immanuel Kant. Her skilful interrogations then allow her to paint a portrait of art and culture that abolishes the horizon as a barrier to vision and reclaims it as a place of contact and relation. By combining the Babylonian concept of the encounter and the planetary concept of the whole-earth, Neef creates a space – an astro-culture – in which she can examine topics as varied as language, translation, media, modernity, migration and the moon. In doing so, she instigates a renewed cultural understanding receptive to the kinder forms of cultural encounter and globalisation she hopes will come.
Download or read book How Invention Begins written by John H. Lienhard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-07-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In How Invention Begins, Lienhard reconciles the ends of invention with the individual leaps upon which they are built, illuminating the vast web of individual inspirations that lie behind whole technologies. He traces, for instance, the way in which thousands of people applied their combined inventive genius to airplanes, railroad engines, and automobiles. As he does so, it becomes clear that a collective desire, an upwelling of fascination, a spirit of the times--a Zeitgeist--laid its hold upon inventors. The thing they all sought to create was speed itself. Likewise, Lienhard shows that when we trace the astonishingly complex technology of printing books, we come at last to that which we desire from books--the knowledge, the learning, that they provide. Can we speak of speed or education as inventions? To do so, he concludes, is certainly no greater a stretch than it is to call radio or the telephone an "invention." Throughout this marvelous volume, Lienhard illuminates these webs of insight or inspiration by weaving a fabric of anecdote, history, and technical detail--all of which come together to provide a full and satisfying portrait of the true nature of invention.
Download or read book The Romantic Machine written by John Tresch and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: Mechanical Romanticism -- DEVICES OF COSMIC UNITY -- Ampère's Experiments: Contours of a Cosmic Cubstance -- Humboldt's Instruments: Even the Tools Will Be Free -- Arago's Daguerreotype: The Labor Theory of Knowledge -- SPECTACLES OF CREATION AND METAMORPHOSIS -- The Devil's Opera: Fantastic Physiospiritualism -- Monsters, Machine-Men, Magicians: The Automaton in the Garden -- ENGINEERS OF ARTIFICIAL PARADISES -- Saint-Simonian Engines: Love and Conversions -- Leroux's Pianotype: The Organogenesis of Humanity -- Comte's Calendar: From Infinite Universe to Closed World -- Conclusion: Afterlives of the Romantic Machine.
Download or read book Why the Sky is Blue written by Götz Hoeppe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-08 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Delightful and intriguing, 'Why the Sky is Blue' shows how the attempt to answer this age-old and deceptively simple question only enhances the magic of the blue sky we see above us.
