Download or read book Making Scientific Instruments in the Industrial Revolution written by A.D. Morrison-Low and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the start of the Industrial Revolution, it appeared that most scientific instruments were made and sold in London, but by the time of the Great Exhibition in 1851, a number of provincial firms had the self-confidence to exhibit their products in London to an international audience. How had this change come about, and why? This book looks at the four main, and two lesser, English centres known for instrument production outside the capital: Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield, along with the older population centres in Bristol and York. Making wide use of new sources, Dr Morrison-Low, curator of history of science at the National Museums of Scotland, charts the growth of these centres and provides a characterisation of their products. New information is provided on aspects of the trade, especially marketing techniques, sources of materials, tools and customer relationships. From contemporary evidence, she argues that the principal output of the provincial trade (with some notable exceptions) must have been into the London marketplace, anonymously, and at the cheaper end of the market. She also discusses the structure and organization of the provincial trade, and looks at the impact of new technology imported from other closely-allied trades. By virtue of its approach and subject matter the book considers aspects of economic and business history, gender and the family, the history of science and technology, material culture, and patterns of migration. It contains a myriad of stories of families and firms, of entrepreneurs and customers, and of organizations and arms of government. In bringing together this wide range of interests, Dr Morrison-Low enables us to appreciate how central the making, selling and distribution of scientific instruments was for the Industrial Revolution.
Download or read book Instruments of Science written by Robert Bud and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1998 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With over 300 entries from the ancient abacus to X-ray diffraction, as represented by a ca. 1900 photo of an X- ray machine as well as the latest research into filmless x- ray systems, this tour of the history of scientific instruments in multiple disciplines provides context and a bibliography for each entry. Newer conceptions of "instrument" include organisms widely used in research: e.g. the mouse, drosophila, and E. coli. Bandw photographs and diagrams showcase more traditional instruments from The Science Museum, London, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Enlightened Oxford written by Nigel Aston and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-19 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enlightened Oxford aims to discern, establish, and clarify the multiplicity of connections between the University of Oxford, its members, and the world outside; to offer readers a fresh, contextualised sense of the University's role in the state, in society, and in relation to other institutions between the Williamite Revolution and the first decade of the nineteenth century, the era loosely describable (though not without much qualification) as England's ancien regime. Nigel Aston asks where Oxford fitted in to the broader social and cultural picture of the time, locating the University's importance in Church and state, and pondering its place as an institution that upheld religious entitlement in an ever-shifting intellectual world where national and confessional boundaries were under scrutiny. Enlightened Oxford is less an inside history than a consideration of an institutional presence and its place in the life of the country and further afield. While admitting the degree of corporate inertia to be found in the University, there was internal scope for members so inclined to be creative in their teaching, open new research lines, and be unapologetic Whigs rather than unrepentant Tories. For if Oxford was a seat of learning rooted in its past - and with an increasing antiquarian awareness of its inheritance - yet it had a surprising capacity for adaptation, a scope for intellectual and political pluralism that was not incompatible with enlightened values.
Download or read book Cabinets of Experimental Philosophy in Eighteenth Century Europe written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cabinets of Experimental Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Europe is an ambitious contribution to the growing interest in how science came to engage the attention of a public outside the academic and professional spheres and how collections of instruments played a formative role in this development. Collections of physical instruments for research and demonstration appeared throughout Europe in the eighteenth century and the coverage of the book is correspondingly broad. While collections in different cultural and geographical locations had much in common, there were significant local modifications. The essays in this book illustrate how science, sometimes thought to be monolithic and universal, can maintain core intellectual characteristics and practical techniques while adapting to particular sites and circumstances. Contributors include: Jim Bennett, Sofia Talas, Huib J. Zuidervaart, Hans Hooijmaijers, Ad Maas, Tiemen Cocquyt, Inga Elmqvist Söderlund, Paola Bertucci, Marta C. Lourenço, David Felismino, Ivano Dal Prete, Ewa Wyka, Martin Weiss, and Paolo Brenni.
Download or read book Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe written by Ursula Klein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is often assumed that natural philosophy was the forerunner of early modern natural sciences. But where did these sciences’ systematic observation and experimentation get their starts? In Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe, the laboratories, workshops, and marketplaces emerge as arenas where hands-on experience united with higher learning. In an age when chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and botany intersected with mining, metallurgy, pharmacy, and gardening, materials were objects that crossed disciplines. Here, the contributors tell the stories of metals, clay, gunpowder, pigments, and foods, and thereby demonstrate the innovative practices of technical experts, the development of the consumer market, and the formation of the observational and experimental sciences in the early modern period. Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe showcases a broad variety of forms of knowledge, from ineffable bodily skills and technical competence to articulated know-how and connoisseurship, from methods of measuring, data gathering, and classification to analytical and theoretical knowledge. By exploring the hybrid expertise involved in the making, consumption, and promotion of various materials, and the fluid boundaries they traversed, the book offers an original perspective on important issues in the history of science, medicine, and technology.
Download or read book The Presidential Counts written by and published by . This book was released on 1877 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sextants at Greenwich written by W.F.J. Mörzer Bruyns and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2009-06-25 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the history and development of navigating instruments. Before satellites these were used to measure the altitude of the sun and stars above the horizon, to determine the ship's position at sea. The book also contains a catalogue of 347 mariner's astrolabes, cross-staffs, backstaffs, and octants, sextants and artificial horizons.
Download or read book Astrolabes from Medieval Europe written by David A. King and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-28 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the fourth set of studies in the Variorum series by David King, a leading authority on the history of astronomy in Islamic civilization and on medieval astronomical instruments, European as well as Islamic. The first of the eleven studies collected here deals with medieval instruments in general, as precious historical sources. The following papers focus on individual astrolabes from the European Middle Ages and early Renaissance that are of singular historical importance. Two look at the origins of the simple universal horary quadrant and the complicated universal horary dial (navicula). The collection concludes with a list of all known medieval European astrolabes, ordered chronologically by region. Three "landmark" astrolabes are discussed: (1) the earliest known European astrolabe from 10th-century Catalonia, that milieu in which the astrolabe first became known to Europeans; (2) an astrolabe from 14th-century Picardy bearing numerals written in monastic ciphers as well as a later dedication mentioning two friends of Erasmus; (3) the splendid astrolabe presented in 1462 by the German astronomer Regiomontanus to his patron Cardinal Bessarion, with its enigmatic angel and Latin dedication, here presented in the context of other astrolabes of similar design from 15th-century Vienna.
Download or read book The Case and the Canon written by Alessandra Calanchi and published by V&R unipress GmbH. This book was released on 2011 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of a constant reformulation of the canon due to the notion of singularity or irreducibility of the case can be applied in both scientific and literary fields. In this volume, dynamics of interconnections between the case and the canon are analysed by scholars belonging to different disciplines such as physics, medicine, biology, psychoanalysis, and literature. Particular attention has been given to the science of detection since the techniques of investigation are based on the scientific acquisition of evidence and often imply a scientific (abductive) process. The book is divided into two sections: Part I concentrates mainly on literary contributions and psychological issues, while part II concentrates on scientific enquiries. The contributions have been selected according to two main guidelines: The first covers anomalies, discontinuities, metaphors between science and literature. The second focus lies on the case in crime fiction: The scientist as detective and the detective as scientist.
Download or read book Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes written by Vincent Ilardi and published by American Philosophical Society. This book was released on 2007 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deals with the history of eyeglasses from their invention in Italy ca. 1286 to the appearance of the telescope three cent. later. "By the end of the 16th cent. eyeglasses were as common in western and central Europe as desktop computers are in western developed countries today." Eyeglasses served an important technological function at both the intellectual and practical level, not only easing the textual studies of scholars but also easing the work of craftsmen/small bus. During the 15th cent. two crucial developments occurred: the ability to grind convex lenses for various levels of presbyopia and the ability to grind concave lenses for the correction of myopia. As a result, eyeglasses could be made almost to prescription by the early 17th cent. Illus.
Download or read book An Observer of Observatories written by Peter De Clercq and published by Aarhus Universitetsforlag. This book was released on 2010-12-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Bugge, director of the observatory in Copenhagen, kept a diary during his travels in Germany, Holland and England in 1777. He described his meetings with leading scientists, artists and instrument makers, and the many scientific institutions he visited. The diary is also full of drawings of the buildings, technical devices and instruments he saw. Bugge's diary is now available in an English translation with an introduction and notes by historians of science Kurt Moller Pedersen and Peter de Clercq.
Download or read book Renaissance Astrolabes and their Makers written by Gerard L'E. Turner and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-28 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the archaeology of science, or what can be learnt from the systematic examination of the artefacts made by precision craftsmen for the study of the natural world. An international authority on historical scientific instruments, Gerard Turner has collected here his essays on European astrolabes and related topics. By 1600 the astrolabe had nearly ceased to be made and used in the West, and before that date there was little of the source material for the study of instruments that exists for more modern times. It is necessary to 'read' the instruments themselves, and astrolabes in particular are rich in all sorts of information, mathematical, astronomical, metallurgical, in addition to what they can reveal about craftsmanship, the existence of workshops, and economic and social conditions. There is a strong forensic element in instrument research, and Gerard Turner's achievements include the identification of three astrolabes made by Gerard Mercator, all of whose instruments were thought to have been destroyed. Other essays deal with the discovery of an important late 16th-century Florentine workshop, and of a group of mid-15th-century German astrolabes linked to Regiomontanus.
Download or read book In Synchrony with the Heavens Volume 2 Instruments of Mass Calculation written by David King and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005-06-01 with total page 1142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first investigation of one of the main interests of astronomy in Islamic civilization, namely, timekeeping by the sun and stars and the regulation of the astronomically-defined times of Muslim prayer. The study is based on over 500 medieval astronomical manuscripts first identified by the author, now preserved in libraries all over the world and originally from the entire Islamic world from the Maghrib to Central Asia and the Yemen. The materials presented provide new insights into the early development of the prayer ritual in Islam. They also call into question the popular notion that religion could not inspire serious scientific activity. Only one of the hundreds of astronomical tables discussed here was known in medieval Europe, which is one reason why the entire corpus has remained unknown until the present. A second volume, also to be published by Brill, deals with astronomical instruments for timekeeping and other computing devices.
Download or read book John Pell 1611 1685 and His Correspondence with Sir Charles Cavendish written by Noel Malcolm and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book Robert Recorde written by and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2012-09-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent research has revealed new information about the Welsh Tudor mathematician, Robert Recorde who invented the equals sign (=) – what inspired his work and what was its influence on the development of mathematics education in the English-speaking world. The findings of that research, presented at a commemorative conference in 2008, form the core of this publication. The book begins with an account of Recorde’s life and an overview of his work in mathematics, medicine and cosmography. Individual chapters concentrate on each of his books in turn, taken chronologically, and are supplemented by chapters that present historical perspectives of Recorde’s work and its wider European links and one that sets Recorde’s work within the general knowledge economy.
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.
