Download or read book Microforms for Historians written by Donald James Munro and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Correspondence and Papers of Edmond Halley written by Edmond Halley and published by . This book was released on 1932 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Histories of Scientific Observation written by Lorraine Daston and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Observation is the most pervasive and fundamental practice of all the modern sciences, both natural and human. Its instruments include not only the naked senses but also tools such as the telescope and microscope, the questionnaire, the photographic plate, the notebook, the glassed-in beehive, and myriad other ingenious inventions designed to make the invisible visible, the evanescent permanent, the abstract concrete. Yet observation has almost never been considered as an object of historical inquiry in itself. This wide-ranging collection offers the first examination of the history of scientific observation in its own right, as both epistemic category and scientific practice. Histories of Scientific Observation features engaging episodes drawn from across the spectrum of the natural and human sciences, ranging from meteorology, medicine, and natural history to economics, astronomy, and psychology. The contributions spotlight how observers have scrutinized everything—from seaweed to X-ray radiation, household budgets to the emotions—with ingenuity, curiosity, and perseverance verging on obsession. This book makes a compelling case for the significance of the long, surprising, and epistemologically significant history of scientific observation, a history full of innovations that have enlarged the possibilities of perception, judgment, and reason.

Download or read book Guide to Microforms in Print 1977 written by Albert James Diaz and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Lenses and Waves written by Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-01-20 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1690, Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) published Traité de la Lumière, containing his renowned wave theory of light. It is considered a landmark in seventeenth-century science, for the way Huygens mathematized the corpuscular nature of light and his probabilistic conception of natural knowledge. This book discusses the development of Huygens' wave theory, reconstructing the winding road that eventually led to Traité de la Lumière. For the first time, the full range of manuscript sources is taken into account. In addition, the development of Huygens' thinking on the nature of light is put in the context of his optics as a whole, which was dominated by his lifelong pursuit of theoretical and practical dioptrics. In so doing, this book offers the first account of the development of Huygens' mathematical analysis of lenses and telescopes and its significance for the origin of the wave theory of light. As Huygens applied his mathematical proficiency to practical issues pertaining to telescopes – including trying to design a perfect telescope by means of mathematical theory – his dioptrics is significant for our understanding of seventeenth-century relations between theory and practice. With this full account of Huygens' optics, this book sheds new light on the history of seventeenth-century optics and the rise of the new mathematical sciences, as well as Huygens' oeuvre as a whole. Students of the history of optics, of early mathematical physics, and the Scientific Revolution, will find this book enlightening.

Download or read book The Dictionary of National Biography written by Leslie Stephen and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 1362 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 Dictionary Catalog of the Research Libraries of the New York Public Library 1911 1971 written by New York Public Library. Research Libraries and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The History of the Telescope written by Henry C. King and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable history encompasses not only the achievements of the early inventors and astronomers but also the less frequently recounted stories of the instrument makers and of the actual instruments. A model of unsurpassed, comprehensive scholarship, this volume covers many fields, including professional and amateur astronomy. 196 black-and-white illustrations.

Download or read book American Book Publishing Record written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 1044 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Handbook of Descriptive and Practical Astronomy The sun planets and comets written by George Frederick Chambers and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Subject Guide to Microforms in Print written by Albert James Diaz and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book National Register of Microform Masters written by and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 1172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Time and Time Again written by Richard de Grijs and published by . This book was released on 2018-01-17 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Determination of one's longitude at sea has perplexed sailors for many centuries. The significant uptake of world trade in the 17th and 18th Centuries rendered the increasingly urgent need to solve the 'longitude problem' an issue of strategic national importance. Historical accounts of these efforts often focus almost exclusively on John Harrison's role in 18th Century Britain. This book starts instead from Galileo Galilei's late16th Century development of an accurate pendulum clock, which was first achieved in practice in the mid17th Century by Christiaan Huygens in the Dutch Republic. It is primarily based on collections of letters that have not been combined into a single volume before. Extensive introductory chapters on the history of mapmaking, the establishment of the world's reference meridian at Greenwich Observatory, and the rise of the scientific enterprise provide the appropriate context for nonexpert readers to fully engage with the book's main subject matter.

Download or read book A Short History of Mathematical Population Dynamics written by Nicolas Bacaër and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Eugene Wigner stressed, mathematics has proven unreasonably effective in the physical sciences and their technological applications. The role of mathematics in the biological, medical and social sciences has been much more modest but has recently grown thanks to the simulation capacity offered by modern computers. This book traces the history of population dynamics---a theoretical subject closely connected to genetics, ecology, epidemiology and demography---where mathematics has brought significant insights. It presents an overview of the genesis of several important themes: exponential growth, from Euler and Malthus to the Chinese one-child policy; the development of stochastic models, from Mendel's laws and the question of extinction of family names to percolation theory for the spread of epidemics, and chaotic populations, where determinism and randomness intertwine. The reader of this book will see, from a different perspective, the problems that scientists face when governments ask for reliable predictions to help control epidemics (AIDS, SARS, swine flu), manage renewable resources (fishing quotas, spread of genetically modified organisms) or anticipate demographic evolutions such as aging.

Download or read book Bibliography of Map Projections written by Geological Survey (U.S.) and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Lost Constellations written by John C. Barentine and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-10-23 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Casual stargazers are familiar with many classical figures and asterisms composed of bright stars (e.g., Orion and the Plough), but this book reveals not just the constellations of today but those of yesteryear. The history of the human identification of constellations among the stars is explored through the stories of some influential celestial cartographers whose works determined whether new inventions survived. The history of how the modern set of 88 constellations was defined by the professional astronomy community is recounted, explaining how the constellations described in the book became permanently “extinct.” Dr. Barentine addresses why some figures were tried and discarded, and also directs observers to how those figures can still be picked out on a clear night if one knows where to look. These lost constellations are described in great detail using historical references, enabling observers to rediscover them on their own surveys of the sky. Treatment of the obsolete constellations as extant features of the night sky adds a new dimension to stargazing that merges history with the accessibility and immediacy of the night sky.