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John Flamsteed (Gemälde)
John Flamsteed (19 August 1646 – 31 December 1719) was an English astronomer and the first Astronomer Royal. His main achievements were the preparation of a 3,000-star catalogue, ''Catalogus Britannicus'', and a star atlas called ''Atlas Coelestis'', both published posthumously. He also made the first recorded observations of Uranus, although he mistakenly catalogued it as a star, and he laid the foundation stone for the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Life Flamsteed was born in Denby, Derbyshire, England, the only son of Stephen Flamsteed and his first wife, Mary Spadman. He was educated at the free school of Derby and at Derby School, in St Peter's Churchyard, Derby, near where his father carried on a malting business. At that time, most masters of the school were Puritans. Flamsteed had a solid knowledge of Latin, essential for reading the scientific literature of the day, and a love of history, leaving the school in May 1662.Birks, John L. (1999) ''John Flamsteed, the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Gibson (artist)
Thomas Gibson (born London, c. 1680; died London, 28 April 1751) was an English portrait painter and copyist, notable as master of George Vertue. Life Nothing known of Gibson's life before c. 1711, when he was already established as portrait painter, appointed a founding director of Godfrey Kneller's Academy in London at Great Queen Street. According to the painter Thomas Highmore, Sir James Thornhill applied to Gibson to sketch for him in his large pictures figures in action. among his pupils there was George Vertue. Gibson's sitters included a number of important public figures: Dr Henry Sacheverell (1710; Oxford, Magdalen Coll.), John Flamsteed (1712; Oxford, Bodleian Lib.), Sir Robert Walpole (untraced; engr. G. Bockman), Archbishop William Wake (Oxford, Christ Church Pict. Gal.) and Archbishop John Potter (London, Lambeth Pal.). His most constant patron was John Poulett, 1st Earl Poulett John Poulett, 1st Earl Poulett KG (c. 1668 – 28 May 1743) was an English p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malt
Malt is germinated cereal grain that has been dried in a process known as " malting". The grain is made to germinate by soaking in water and is then halted from germinating further by drying with hot air. Malted grain is used to make beer, whisky, malted milk, malt vinegar, confections such as Maltesers and Whoppers, flavored drinks such as Horlicks, Ovaltine, and Milo, and some baked goods, such as malt loaf, bagels, and Rich Tea biscuits. Malted grain that has been ground into a coarse meal is known as "sweet meal". Malting grain develops the enzymes (α-amylase, β-amylase) required for modifying the grains' starches into various types of sugar, including monosaccharide glucose, disaccharide maltose, trisaccharide maltotriose, and higher sugars called maltodextrines. It also develops other enzymes, such as proteases, that break down the proteins in the grain into forms that can be used by yeast. The point at which the malting process is stopped affects the starch-to-enz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Oughtred
William Oughtred ( ; 5 March 1574 – 30 June 1660), also Owtred, Uhtred, etc., was an Kingdom of England, English mathematician and Anglican ministry, Anglican clergyman.'Oughtred (William)', in P. Bayle, translated and revised by J.P. Bernard, T. Birch and J. Lockman, ''A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical'', (James Bettenham, for G. Strachan and J. Clarke, London 1734/1739), Vol. VIIIpp. 77-86(Google). After John Napier invented logarithms and Edmund Gunter created the logarithmic scales (lines, or rules) upon which slide rules are based, Oughtred was the first to use two such scales sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division (mathematics), division. He is credited with inventing the Slide rule scale, slide rule in about 1622. He also introduced the "×" multiplication sign, symbol for multiplication and the abbreviations "sin" and "cos" for the sine and cosine functions. Clerical life Education The son of Benjamin Oughtred of Eton, Berkshi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sundial
A sundial is a horological device that tells the time of day (referred to as civil time in modern usage) when direct sunlight shines by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word, it consists of a flat plate (the ''dial'') and a gnomon, which casts a shadow onto the dial. As the Sun appears to move through the sky, the shadow aligns with different hour-lines, which are marked on the dial to indicate the time of day. The ''style'' is the time-telling edge of the gnomon, though a single point or ''nodus'' may be used. The gnomon casts a broad shadow; the shadow of the style shows the time. The gnomon may be a rod, wire, or elaborately decorated metal casting. The style must be parallel to the axis of the Earth's rotation for the sundial to be accurate throughout the year. The style's angle from horizontal is equal to the sundial's geographical latitude. The term ''sundial'' can refer to any device that uses the Sun's altitude or azimut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Fale
Thomas Fale (; fl. 1604) was an English mathematician. Life Fale matriculated as a sizar of Caius College, Cambridge, in November 1578, removed to Corpus Christi College in 1582, went out B.A. in 1582–3, commenced M.A. in 1586, proceeded B.D. in 1597, and in 1604 had a license from the university to practise medicine. Publications His only known publication is ''Horologiographia'' (1593).''Horologiographia. The Art of Dialling: teaching an easie and perfect way to make all kinds of Dials vpon any plaine Plat howsouer placed: VVith the drawing of the Twelue Signes, and Houres vnequall in them all. Whereunto is annexed the making and vse of other Dials and Instruments, whereby the houre of the day and night is knowe. Of speciall vse and delight not onely for Students of the Arts Mathematicall, but also for diuers Artificers, Architects, Surueyours of buildings, free-Masons, Saylors, and others'', London, 1593 (other editions appeared in 1626 and 1652). It is dedicated in Latin t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Eclipse
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of the Earth, totally or partially. Such an alignment occurs during an eclipse season, approximately every six months, during the new moon phase, when the Moon's orbital plane is closest to the plane of the Earth's orbit. In a total eclipse, the disk of the Sun is fully obscured by the Moon. In partial and annular eclipses, only part of the Sun is obscured. Unlike a lunar eclipse, which may be viewed from anywhere on the night side of Earth, a solar eclipse can only be viewed from a relatively small area of the world. As such, although total solar eclipses occur somewhere on Earth every 18 months on average, they recur at any given place only once every 360 to 410 years. If the Moon were in a perfectly circular orbit and in the same orbital plane as Earth, there would be total solar eclipses once a month, at every new moon. Instead, because the Moon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De Sphaera Mundi
''De sphaera mundi'' (Latin title meaning ''On the Sphere of the World'', sometimes rendered ''The Sphere of the Cosmos''; the Latin title is also given as ''Tractatus de sphaera'', ''Textus de sphaera'', or simply ''De sphaera'') is a medieval introduction to the basic elements of astronomy written by Johannes de Sacrobosco (John of Holywood) c. 1230. Based heavily on Ptolemy's ''Almagest'', and drawing additional ideas from Islamic astronomy, it was one of the most influential works of pre- Copernican astronomy in Europe. Reception Sacrobosco's ''De sphaera mundi'' was the most successful of several competing thirteenth-century textbooks on this topic. It was used in universities for hundreds of years and the manuscript copied many times before the invention of the printing press; hundreds of manuscript copies have survived. The first printed edition appeared in 1472 in Ferrara, and at least 84 editions were printed in the next two hundred years. The work was frequently supplem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johannes De Sacrobosco
Johannes de Sacrobosco, also written Ioannes de Sacro Bosco, later called John of Holywood or John of Holybush ( 1195 – 1256), was a scholar, monk, and astronomer who taught at the University of Paris. He wrote a short introduction to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. Judging from the number of manuscript copies that survive today, for the next 400 years it became the most widely read book on that subject. He also wrote a short textbook which was widely read and influential in Europe during the later medieval centuries as an introduction to astronomy. In his longest book, on the computation of the date of Easter, Sacrobosco correctly described the defects of the then-used Julian calendar, and recommended a solution similar to the modern Gregorian calendar three centuries before its implementation. Very little is known about the education and biography of Sacrobosco. For one thing, his year of death has been guessed at 1236, 1244, and 1256, each of which is plausible and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astronomy
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest include planets, natural satellite, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxy, galaxies, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole. Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history made methodical observations of the night sky. These include the Babylonian astronomy, Babylonians, Greek astronomy, Greeks, Indian astronomy, Indians, Egyptian astronomy, Egyptians, Chinese astronomy, Chinese, Maya civilization, Maya, and many anc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics with the major subdisciplines of number theory, algebra, geometry, and analysis, respectively. There is no general consensus among mathematicians about a common definition for their academic discipline. Most mathematical activity involves the discovery of properties of abstract objects and the use of pure reason to prove them. These objects consist of either abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicsentities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. A ''proof'' consists of a succession of applications of deductive rules to already established results. These results include previously proved theorems, axioms, andin case of abstraction from naturesome basic properties that are considered true starting points of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fraction (mathematics)
A fraction (from la, fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight-fifths, three-quarters. A ''common'', ''vulgar'', or ''simple'' fraction (examples: \tfrac and \tfrac) consists of a numerator, displayed above a line (or before a slash like ), and a non-zero denominator, displayed below (or after) that line. Numerators and denominators are also used in fractions that are not ''common'', including compound fractions, complex fractions, and mixed numerals. In positive common fractions, the numerator and denominator are natural numbers. The numerator represents a number of equal parts, and the denominator indicates how many of those parts make up a unit or a whole. The denominator cannot be zero, because zero parts can never make up a whole. For example, in the fraction , the numerator 3 indicates that the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arithmetic
Arithmetic () is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers— addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th century, Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano formalized arithmetic with his Peano axioms, which are highly important to the field of mathematical logic today. History The prehistory of arithmetic is limited to a small number of artifacts, which may indicate the conception of addition and subtraction, the best-known being the Ishango bone from central Africa, dating from somewhere between 20,000 and 18,000 BC, although its interpretation is disputed. The earliest written records indicate the Egyptians and Babylonians used all the elementary arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as early as 2000 BC. These artifacts do not always reveal the specific process used for solving problems, but t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
