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History Of Longitude
The history of longitude describes the centuries-long effort by astronomers, cartographers and navigators to discover a means of determining the longitude of any given place on Earth. The measurement of longitude is important to both cartography and navigation. In particular, for safe ocean navigation, knowledge of both latitude and longitude is required. Finding an accurate and practical method of determining longitude took centuries of study and invention by some of the greatest scientists and engineers. After increasingly accurate methods based on astronomical observations and chronometers, today the problem of longitude has been solved to centimeter accuracy through satellite navigation. Longitude before the telescope Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BCE first proposed a system of latitude and longitude for a map of the world. His prime meridian (line of longitude) passed through Alexandria and Rhodes, while his parallels (lines of latitude) were not regularly spaced, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monuments Of International Longitude Determination
A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, historical, political, technical or architectural importance. Some of the first monuments were dolmens or menhirs, megalithic constructions built for religious or funerary purposes. Examples of monuments include statues, (war) memorials, historical buildings, archaeological sites, and cultural assets. If there is a public interest in its preservation, a monument can for example be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Etymology It is believed that the origin of the word "monument" comes from the Greek ''mnemosynon'' and the Latin ''moneo'', ''monere'', which means 'to remind', 'to advise' or 'to warn', however, it is also believed that the word monument originates from an Albanian word 'mani men' which in Albanian language means 'remember ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al-Battani
Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Jābir ibn Sinān al-Raqqī al-Ḥarrānī aṣ-Ṣābiʾ al-Battānī ( ar, محمد بن جابر بن سنان البتاني) ( Latinized as Albategnius, Albategni or Albatenius) (c. 858 – 929) was an astronomer and mathematician from Harran. He introduced a number of trigonometric relations, and his ''Kitāb az-Zīj'' was frequently quoted by many medieval astronomers, including Copernicus. Often called the "Ptolemy of the Arabs", al-Battani is perhaps one of the greatest and best known astronomer of the medieval Islamic world. Life Little of al-Battānī's life is known other than his birthplace in Harran near Urfa, in Upper Mesopotamia, (today in Turkey) and his father's fame as a maker of scientific instruments. Jabir ibn Sinan al-Harrani was likely this famous instrument maker, although this is not something that has been proven. His epithet ''aṣ-Ṣabi’'' suggests that his family belonged to the Sabian religion of Harran, an obscur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toledo, Spain
Toledo ( , ) is a city and municipality of Spain, capital of the province of Toledo and the ''de jure'' seat of the government and parliament of the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Castilla–La Mancha. Toledo was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986 for its extensive monumental and cultural heritage. Located on the banks of the Tagus in central Iberian Peninsula, Iberia, Toledo is known as the "City of the Three Cultures" for the cultural influences of Christians, Muslims, and Jews throughout its history. It was the capital, from 542 to 725 CE, of the Visigothic kingdom, which followed the fall of the Roman Empire. Toledo was also the location of historic events such as the Councils of Toledo and was labelled the "Imperial City" due to the fact that it was the main venue of the court of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in Spain. The city, seat of a powerful archdiocese for much of its history, has a Gothic Cathedral, the ''Cathedral of Toledo, Ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walcher Of Malvern
Walcher of Malvern (died 1135) (also known as Walcher of Lorraine) was the second Prior of Great Malvern Priory in Worcestershire, England, and a noted astronomer, astrologer and mathematician. He has been described as an important transitional figure, whose observations and writings reflected the transformation of the astronomy of the Latin West from its traditional focus on computing dates in the ecclesiastical calendar and studying the rudiments of Roman astronomy to the use of ancient astronomical computational methods learned from Arabic '' zijes'' and other Islamic sources. Life and Work Walcher was from Lotharingia, a region influenced by the new scientific ideas coming from Spain, and arrived in England around 1091. Using an astrolabe to measure the time of several solar and lunar eclipses with an accuracy of about fifteen minutes, he computed a set of tables giving the time of the new moons from 1036 through 1111, which were considered important for medical astrolo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pliny The Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ''Naturalis Historia'' (''Natural History''), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote of him in a letter to the historian Tacitus: Among Pliny's greatest works was the twenty-volume work ''Bella Germaniae'' ("The History of the German Wars"), which is no longer extant. ''Bella Germaniae'', which began where Aufidius Bassus' ''Libri Belli Germanici'' ("The War with the Germans") left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus and Suetonius. Tacitus—who many scholars agree had never travelled in Germania—used ''Bella Germani ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy within the Lyceum and the wider Aristotelian tradition. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, meteorology, geology, and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. It was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion. Little is known about his life. Aristotle was born in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom of Northumbria of the Angles (contemporarily Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey in Tyne and Wear, England). Born on lands belonging to the twin monastery of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow in present-day Tyne and Wear, Bede was sent to Monkwearmouth at the age of seven and later joined Abbot Ceolfrith at Jarrow. Both of them survived a plague that struck in 686 and killed a majority of the population there. While Bede spent most of his life in the monastery, he travelled to several abbeys and monasteries across the British Isles, even visiting the archbishop of York and King Ceolwulf of Northumbria. He was an author, teacher (Alcuin was a student of one of his pupils), and scholar, and his most famous work, ''Ecclesiastical History of the English People ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Kirtland Wright
John Kirtland Wright (1891–1969) was an American geographer, notable for his cartography, geosophy, and study of the history of geographical thought. He was the son of classical scholar John Henry Wright and novelist Mary Tappan Wright, and the brother of legal scholar and utopian novelist Austin Tappan Wright. He married Katharine McGiffert Jan. 21, 1921 in New York, N.Y. They had three children: Austin WAustin McGiffert Wright, Gertrude Huntington McPherson, and Mary Wolcott Toynbee. Having completed a PhD in history at Harvard University, in 1920 Wright was employed as librarian by the American Geographical Society; between the years of 1920 and 1956 he also served as an AGS editor, personal academic contributor, and eventually director. As a result of his prolific academic and professional life, three main themes have emerged in John K. Wright’s published works. These include: the overlapping of academic disciplines (mainly history) with geography, the power of the mind and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ghazni
Ghazni ( prs, غزنی, ps, غزني), historically known as Ghaznain () or Ghazna (), also transliterated as Ghuznee, and anciently known as Alexandria in Opiana ( gr, Αλεξάνδρεια Ωπιανή), is a city in southeastern Afghanistan with a population of around 190,000 people. The city is strategically located along Highway 1, which has served as the main road between Kabul and Kandahar for thousands of years. Situated on a plateau at 2,219 metres (7,280 ft) above sea level, the city is south of Kabul and is the capital of Ghazni Province. Ghazni Citadel, the Minarets of Ghazni, the Palace of Sultan Mas'ud III, and several other cultural heritage sites have brought travelers and archeologists to the city for centuries. During the pre-Islamic period, the area was inhabited by various tribes who practiced different religions including Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Hinduism. Arab Muslims introduced Islam to Ghazni in the 7th century and were followed in the 9th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. In 762 CE, Baghdad was chosen as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, and became its most notable major development project. Within a short time, the city evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center of the Muslim world. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as a multiethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered it a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning". Baghdad was the largest city in the world for much of the Abbasid era during the Islamic Golden Age, peaking at a population of more than a million. The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al-Biruni
Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (973 – after 1050) commonly known as al-Biruni, was a Khwarazmian Iranian in scholar and polymath during the Islamic Golden Age. He has been called variously the "founder of Indology", "Father of Comparative Religion", "Father of modern geodesy", and the first anthropologist. Al-Biruni was well versed in physics, mathematics, astronomy, and natural sciences, and also distinguished himself as a historian, chronologist, and linguist. He studied almost all the sciences of his day and was rewarded abundantly for his tireless research in many fields of knowledge. Royalty and other powerful elements in society funded Al-Biruni's research and sought him out with specific projects in mind. Influential in his own right, Al-Biruni was himself influenced by the scholars of other nations, such as the Greeks, from whom he took inspiration when he turned to the study of philosophy. A gifted linguist, he was conversant in Khwarezmian, Persian, Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
