Download or read book Proceedings written by Alan D. Fiala and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Proceedings written by Nautical Almanac Office (United States) and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Proceedings of the Nautical Almanac Office Sesquicentennial Symposium Held in Washington The District of Columbia on March 3 4 1999 written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the United States Nautical Almanac Office, the U.S. Naval Observatory hosted a three-day Symposium and associated activities beginning March 3, 1999. The choice of date was in itself an historical exercise, and March 3, marking the passage of legislation appropriating funds for an American almanac, was the first of several dates that might have been chosen. The Nautical Almanac Office actually came into existence when the funds became available July 1, 1849, and the first Superintendent of the office was appointed July 11. Work commenced still later that year, and the first volume was published in 1852. Still, March 3, when the Congressional appropriation set all these events in motion, it's traditionally observed as our anniversary date. The details of this history can be found within this volume of Proceedings. The Nautical Almanac Office was established as an independent entity, and became part of the older Naval Observatory only a half century later. Part of the rationale for establishing an American office was to remove dependence upon foreign almanacs, especially the British Almanac, and to join the ranks of the few major powers producing almanacs at the time: Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. Somewhat over a century later, the almanac offices of the United Kingdom and the United States became equal partners co-producing these major publications. Thus, it was symbolically appropriate that the Symposium and a banquet were held at the British Embassy, next door to the Naval Observatory. Attending the event were representatives from the almanac offices of the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Japan, and greetings were sent from Russia.
Download or read book Nautical Almanac Office written by Alan D. Fiala and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nautical Almanac Office Sesquicentennal Symposium U S Naval Observatory March 3 4 1999 written by Alan D. Fiala and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book When Computers Were Human written by David Alan Grier and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term "computer" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, "I wish I'd used my calculus," hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.
Download or read book Sky and Ocean Joined written by Steven J. Dick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As one of the oldest scientific institutions in the United States, the US Naval Observatory has a rich and colourful history. This volume is, first and foremost, a story of the relations between space, time and navigation, from the rise of the chronometer in the United States to the Global Positioning System of satellites, for which the Naval Observatory provides the time to a billionth of a second per day. It is a story of the history of technology, in the form of telescopes, lenses, detectors, calculators, clocks and computers over 170 years. It describes how one scientific institution under government and military patronage has contributed, through all the vagaries of history, to almost two centuries of unparalleled progress in astronomy. Sky and Ocean Joined will appeal to historians of science, technology, scientific institutions and American science, as well as astronomers, meteorologists and physicists.
Download or read book Nautical Almanac Office Sesquicentennial Symposium written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Celestial Shadows written by John Westfall and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-11-19 with total page 727 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of what is known about the universe came from the study of celestial shadows. This book looks in detail at the way eclipses and other celestial shadows have given us amazing insights into the nature of the objects in our solar system and how they are even helping us discover and analyze planets that orbit stars other than our Sun. A variety of eclipses, transits, and occultations of the mooons of Jupiter and Saturn, Pluto and its satellite Charon, asteroids and stars have helped astronomers to work out their dimensions, structures, and shapes - even the existence of atmospheres and structures of exoplanets. Long before Columbus set out to reach the Far East by sailing West, the curved shadow of the Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse revealed that we inhabit a round world, a globe. More recently, comparisons of the sunlit and Earthlit parts of the Moon have been used to determine changes in the Earth's brightness as a way of monitoring possible effects in cloud coverage which may be related to global warming. Shadows were used by the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes to work out the first estimate of the circumference of the Earth, by Galileo to measure the heights of the lunar mountains and by eighteenth century astronomers to determine the scale of the Solar System itself. Some of the rarest and most wonderful shadows of all are those cast onto Earth by the lovely "Evening Star" Venus as it goes between the Earth and the Sun. These majestic transits of Venus occur at most two in a century; after the 2012 transit, there is not a chance to observe this phenomenon until 2117, while the more common sweep of a total solar eclipse creates one of the most dramatic and awe-inspiring events of nature. Though it may have once been a source of consternation or dread, solar eclipses now lead thousands of amateur astronomers and "eclipse-chasers" to travel the globe in order to experience the dramatic view under "totality." These phenomena are among the most spectacular available to observers and are given their full due in Westfall and Sheehan's comprehensive study.
Download or read book Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Proceedings written by Nautical Almanac Office (Washington, DC) and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The History of Celestial Navigation written by P. Kenneth Seidelmann and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-06-29 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume charts the history of celestial navigation over the course of five centuries. Written by a group of historians and scientists, it analyzes how competing navigation systems, technologies, and institutions emerged and developed, with a focus on the major players in the US and the UK. The history covers the founding of the Royal Observatory; the first printing of a Nautical Almanac; the founding of the US and UK Nautical Almanac Offices; the creation of international standards for reference systems and astronomical constants; and the impact of 20th century technology on the field, among other topics. Additionally, the volume analyzes the present role and status of celestial navigation, particularly with respect to modern radio and satellite navigation systems. With its diverse authorship and nontechnical language, this book will appeal to any reader interested in the history of science, technology, astronomy, and navigation over the ages.
Download or read book The Mariner s Mirror written by Leonard George Carr Laughton and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Nautical Almanac for the Year written by and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nautical Almanac Office Sesquicentennial 1849 1999 written by Alan D. Fiala and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The History of Mathematical Tables written by Martin Campbell-Kelly and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains a series of articles summarizing the technical, institutional and intellectual history of mathematical tables from earliest times until the late 20th century when the electronic spreadsheet changed the way information is processed.
Download or read book Mathematics at the Meridian written by Raymond Flood and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2019-11-11 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greenwich has been a centre for scientific computing since the foundation of the Royal Observatory in 1675. Early Astronomers Royal gathered astronomical data with the purpose of enabling navigators to compute their longitude at sea. Nevil Maskelyne in the 18th century organised the work of computing tables for the Nautical Almanac, anticipating later methods used in safety-critical computing systems. The 19th century saw influential critiques of Charles Babbage’s mechanical calculating engines, and in the 20th century Leslie Comrie and others pioneered the automation of computation. The arrival of the Royal Naval College in 1873 and the University of Greenwich in 1999 has brought more mathematicians and different kinds of mathematics to Greenwich. In the 21st century computational mathematics has found many new applications. This book presents an account of the mathematicians who worked at Greenwich and their achievements. Features A scholarly but accessible history of mathematics at Greenwich, from the seventeenth century to the present day, with each chapter written by an expert in the field The book will appeal to astronomical and naval historians as well as historians of mathematics and scientific computing.
