Download or read book Kew Observatory and the Evolution of Victorian Science 1840 1910 written by Lee T. Macdonald and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kew Observatory was originally built in 1769 for King George III, a keen amateur astronomer, so that he could observe the transit of Venus. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was a world-leading center for four major sciences: geomagnetism, meteorology, solar physics, and standardization. Long before government cutbacks forced its closure in 1980, the observatory was run by both major bodies responsible for the management of science in Britain: first the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and then, from 1871, the Royal Society. Kew Observatory influenced and was influenced by many of the larger developments in the physical sciences during the second half of the nineteenth century, while many of the major figures involved were in some way affiliated with Kew. Lee T. Macdonald explores the extraordinary story of this important scientific institution as it rose to prominence during the Victorian era. His book offers fresh new insights into key historical issues in nineteenth-century science: the patronage of science; relations between science and government; the evolution of the observatory sciences; and the origins and early years of the National Physical Laboratory, once an extension of Kew and now the largest applied physics organization in the United Kingdom.

Download or read book Victorian Material Culture written by Boris Jardine and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From chatelaines to whale blubber, ice making machines to stained glass, this six-volume collection will be of interest to the scholar, student or general reader alike - anyone who has an urge to learn more about Victorian things. The set brings together a range of primary sources on Victorian material culture and discusses the most significant developments in material history from across the nineteenth century. The collection will demonstrate the significance of objects in the everyday lives of the Victorians and addresses important questions about how we classify and categorise nineteenth-century things. This second volume, ‘Science and Medicine’, will examine objects (from the most significant to the most obscure) that played a part in nineteenth-century scientific developments.

Download or read book Politics Statistics and Weather Forecasting 1840 1910 written by Aitor Anduaga and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-12 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weather forecasting is the most visible branch of meteorology and has its modern roots in the nineteenth century when scientists redefined meteorology in the way weather forecasts were made, developing maps of isobars, or lines of equal atmospheric pressure, as the main forecasting tool. This book is the history of how weather forecasting was moulded and modelled by the processes of nation-state building and statistics in the Western world.

Download or read book Comets Cosmology and the Big Bang written by Allan Chapman and published by Lion Books. This book was released on 2018-11-23 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will take the story of astronomy on from where Allan Chapman left it in Stargazers, and bring it almost up to date, with the developments and discoveries of the last three centuries. He covers the big names - Halley, Hooke, Herschel, Hubble and Hoyle; and includes the women who pushed astronomy forward, from Caroline Herschel to the Victorian women astronomers. He includes the big discoveries and the huge ideas, from the Milky War, to the Big Bang, the mighty atom, and the question of life on other planets. And he brings in the contributions made in the US, culminating in their race with the USSR to get a man on the moon, before turning to the explosion of interest in astronomy that was pioneered by Sir Patrick Moore and The Sky at Night.

Download or read book Henry Enfield Roscoe written by Peter J. T. Morris and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now largely forgotten, Henry Enfield Roscoe was one of the most prominent chemists and educational reformers in Victorian Britain. His contributions include transforming Owens College into Victoria University, now the University of Manchester, campaigning for the reform of technical education, serving as the Liberal MP for South Manchester, and cofounding the Lister Institute of Preventative Medicine. In this detailed biography, authors Morris and Reed provide a timely and original contribution to the history of nineteenth-century British science and its relation to education, industry, and government policy, highlighting Roscoe's significant legacy as one of the leading scientists of his generation.

Download or read book News from Mars written by Joshua Nall and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mass media in the late nineteenth century was full of news from Mars. In the wake of Giovanni Schiaparelli’s 1877 discovery of enigmatic dark, straight lines on the red planet, astronomers and the public at large vigorously debated the possibility that it might be inhabited. As rivalling scientific practitioners looked to marshal allies and sway public opinion—through newspapers, periodicals, popular books, exhibitions, and encyclopaedias—they exposed disagreements over how the discipline of astronomy should be organized and how it should establish acceptable conventions of discourse. News from Mars provides a new account of this extraordinary episode in the history of astronomy, revealing how major transformations in astronomical practice across Britain and America were inextricably tied up with popular scientific culture and a transatlantic news economy that enabled knowledge to travel. As Joshua Nall argues, astronomers were journalists, too, eliding practice with communication in consequential ways. As writers and editors, they played a pivotal role in the emergence of a “new astronomy” dedicated to the study of the physical constitution and life history of celestial objects, blurring harsh distinctions between those who produced esoteric knowledge and those who disseminated it.

Download or read book Oxford Weather and Climate since 1767 written by Stephen Burt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British have always been obsessed by the weather. Thomas Hornsby, who founded the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford in 1772, began weather observations at the site. They continue daily to this day, unbroken since 14 November 1813, the longest continuous series of single-site weather records in the British Isles, and one of the longest in the world. Oxford Weather and Climate since 1767 represents the first full publication of this newly-digitised record of English weather, which will appeal to interested readers and climate researchers alike. The book celebrates this unique and priceless Georgian legacy by describing and explaining how the records were (and still are) made, examines monthly and seasonal weather patterns across two centuries, and considers the context of long-term climate change. Local documentary sources and contemporary photographs bring the statistics to life, from the clouds of 'smoak' from the Great Fire of London in 1666 to the most recent floods. This book explores all the weather extremes, from bitter cold winters to hot, dry summers, bringing to life the painstaking measurements made over the last 250 years.

Download or read book Caves Coprolites and Catastrophes written by ALLAN CHAPMAN and published by SPCK. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1824, William Buckland stood in front of the Royal Geological Society and told them about the bones he had been studying – the bones of an enormous, lizard-like creature, that he called Megalosaurus. This was the first full account of a dinosaur. In this brilliantly entertaining, colourful biography – the first to be written for over a century – Buckland’s fascinating life is explored in full. From his pioneering of geology and agricultural science to becoming Dean of Westminster, this is a captivating story of an exceptional and eccentric scientist whose legacy extends down to this day. William Buckland DD, FRS (1784–1856) was a theologian and a scientist, who is widely regarded as the founder of the science of geology. He was an older contemporary of Charles Darwin and played a central role in the nineteenth-century ferment of ideas about the origins of the earth and of living things. A field geologist of genius, an avid fossil hunter and brilliant interpreter of fossils, landscapes, and earth history, Buckland was also a pioneer of agricultural science and an early ecologist. He demonstrated how the earth’s climate has undergone radical changes over geological time – from carboniferous swamps to ice ages, each with their own flora and fauna. Buckland was also a pioneer of public health reform, who (well before germ theory was established) grasped the centrality of clean drinking water to health, and who waged war on bad drains and slum landlords who exploited the poor.

Download or read book William Herschel Discoverer of the Deep Sky written by Wolfgang Steinicke and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book describes the observational work of William and Caroline Herschel. It focuses on deep-sky objects, observed 1774-1817. Most were discovered by William in the monumental sweep campaign (1783-1802), assisted by his talented sister. 2500 objects were published in three catalogues. The study of the sky from southern England also concerned double stars and the Solar System, yielding the Uranus discovery in 1781. But William Herschel was much more than a mere observer. He built large reflectors, developed new methods and thought about the nature and evolution of cosmic objects and the structure of the Milky Way. He was an extremely influential astronomer and had a worthy successor, his son John.

Download or read book Wiliam Herschel written by Wolfgang Steinicke and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2021-10-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book describes the observational work of William and Caroline Herschel. It focuses on deep-sky objects, observed 1774-1817. Most were discovered by William in the monumental sweep campaign (1783-1802), assisted by his talented sister. 2500 objects were published in three catalogues. The study of the sky from southern England also concerned double stars and the Solar System, yielding the Uranus discovery in 1781. But William Herschel was much more than a mere observer. He built large reflectors, developed new methods and thought about the nature and evolution of cosmic objects and the structure of the Milky Way. He was an extremely influential astronomer and had a worthy successor, his son John.

Download or read book How to Observe the Sun Safely written by Lee Macdonald and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sun is the brightest and most accessible object in the sky, and it has much to offer the amateur astronom er with modest equipment. On most days it shows sunspots and other features that displaya wealth of fine detail and change their appearance strikingly from day to day. But observing the Sun can be dangerous. NEVER look at the Sun through a telescope or other optical aid, even for a brief instant. The Sun's intense radiation, amplified and focused by a telescope, will almost certainly cause eye injury and could weIl lead to complete blindness. Do not attempt any solar observing until you have read and understood the safety precautions and observing advice set out in Chapter 2 of this book - even if you think you have the correct equipment. Be especially wary about using filters to observe the Sun. If you have a filter that makes the Sun look dark, it is not necessarily safe, as it is largely the Sun's invisible radiation that is harmful to the eye. But provided you use the correct techniques, such as projecting the solar image onto a screen or using a specially designed, quality solar filter that fits over the telescope aperture, it is quite easy to observe the Sun safely.

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 Darwin Inspired Learning written by Carolyn J. Boulter and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Darwin has been extensively analysed and written about as a scientist, Victorian, father and husband. However, this is the first book to present a carefully thought out pedagogical approach to learning that is centered on Darwin’s life and scientific practice. The ways in which Darwin developed his scientific ideas, and their far reaching effects, continue to challenge and provoke contemporary teachers and learners, inspiring them to consider both how scientists work and how individual humans ‘read nature’. Darwin-inspired learning, as proposed in this international collection of essays, is an enquiry-based pedagogy, that takes the professional practice of Charles Darwin as its source. Without seeking to idealise the man, Darwin-inspired learning places importance on: • active learning • hands-on enquiry • critical thinking • creativity • argumentation • interdisciplinarity. In an increasingly urbanised world, first-hand observations of living plants and animals are becoming rarer. Indeed, some commentators suggest that such encounters are under threat and children are living in a time of ‘nature-deficit’. Darwin-inspired learning, with its focus on close observation and hands-on enquiry, seeks to re-engage children and young people with the living world through critical and creative thinking modeled on Darwin’s life and science.

Download or read book The Sun the Earth and Near earth Space written by John A. Eddy and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " ... Concise explanations and descriptions - easily read and readily understood - of what we know of the chain of events and processes that connect the Sun to the Earth, with special emphasis on space weather and Sun-Climate."--Dear Reader.

Download or read book A Natural History of Time written by Pascal Richet and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The quest to pinpoint the age of the Earth is nearly as old as humanity itself. For most of history, people trusted mythology or religion to provide the answer, even though nature abounds with clues to the past of the Earth and the stars. In A Natural History of Time, geophysicist Pascal Richet tells the fascinating story of how scientists and philosophers examined those clues and from them built a chronological scale that has made it possible to reconstruct the history of nature itself. Richet begins his story with mythological traditions, which were heavily influenced by the seasons and almost uniformly viewed time cyclically. The linear history promulgated by Judaism, with its story of creation, was an exception, and it was that tradition that drove early Christian attempts to date the Earth. For instance, in 169 CE, the bishop of Antioch, for instance declared that the world had been in existence for “5,698 years and the odd months and days.” Until the mid-eighteenth century, such natural timescales derived from biblical chronologies prevailed, but, Richet demonstrates, with the Scientific Revolution geological and astronomical evidence for much longer timescales began to accumulate. Fossils and the developing science of geology provided compelling evidence for periods of millions and millions of years—a scale that even scientists had difficulty grasping. By the end of the twentieth century, new tools such as radiometric dating had demonstrated that the solar system is four and a half billion years old, and the universe itself about twice that, though controversial questions remain. The quest for time is a story of ingenuity and determination, and like a geologist, Pascal Richet carefully peels back the strata of that history, giving us a chance to marvel at each layer and truly appreciate how far our knowledge—and our planet—have come.

Download or read book Observing by Hand written by Omar W. Nasim and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today we are all familiar with the iconic pictures of the nebulae produced by the Hubble Space Telescope’s digital cameras. But there was a time, before the successful application of photography to the heavens, in which scientists had to rely on handmade drawings of these mysterious phenomena. Observing by Hand sheds entirely new light on the ways in which the production and reception of handdrawn images of the nebulae in the nineteenth century contributed to astronomical observation. Omar W. Nasim investigates hundreds of unpublished observing books and paper records from six nineteenth-century observers of the nebulae: Sir John Herschel; William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse; William Lassell; Ebenezer Porter Mason; Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel; and George Phillips Bond. Nasim focuses on the ways in which these observers created and employed their drawings in data-driven procedures, from their choices of artistic materials and techniques to their practices and scientific observation. He examines the ways in which the act of drawing complemented the acts of seeing and knowing, as well as the ways that making pictures was connected to the production of scientific knowledge. An impeccably researched, carefully crafted, and beautifully illustrated piece of historical work, Observing by Hand will delight historians of science, art, and the book, as well as astronomers and philosophers.

Download or read book Science and Empires written by P. Petitjean and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SCIENCE AND EMPIRES: FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM TO THE BOOK Patrick PETITJEAN, Catherine JAMI and Anne Marie MOULIN The International Colloquium "Science and Empires - Historical Studies about Scientific De velopment and European Expansion" is the product of an International Colloquium, "Sciences and Empires - A Comparative History of Scien tific Exchanges: European Expansion and Scientific Development in Asian, African, American and Oceanian Countries". Organized by the REHSEIS group (Research on Epistemology and History of Exact Sciences and Scientific Institutions) of CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), the colloquium was held from 3 to 6 April 1990 in the UNESCO building in Paris. This colloquium was an idea of Professor Roshdi Rashed who initiated this field of studies in France some years ago, and proposed "Sciences and Empires" as one of the main research programmes for the The project to organize such a colloquium was a bit REHSEIS group. of a gamble. Its subject, reflected in the title "Sciences and Empires", is not a currently-accepted sub-discipline of the history of science; rather, it refers to a set of questions which found autonomy only recently. The terminology was strongly debated by the participants and, as is frequently suggested in this book, awaits fuller clarification.