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Thomas Godfrey (inventor)
Thomas Godfrey (January 10, 1704 – December 1749) was a glazier and self-taught mathematician and astronomer in the Pennsylvania Colony, who invented the octant in 1730. A similar octant was also independently invented about the same time by John Hadley in London with Hadley receiving the greater share of the credit for development. He published almanacs and contributed essays on mathematics, astronomy and general topics to the ''Pennsylvania Gazette'' and ''Pennsylvania Journal''. He assisted the Welsh surveyor Lewis Evans in conducting astronomical observations to correct the longitude of Philadelphia on maps published by Evans. He was friends with Benjamin Franklin and a founding member of the Junto club, which was the precursor of the American Philosophical Society. He served as a director of the Library Company of Philadelphia and was a member of American Philosophical Society with the title "mathematician". Early life Godfrey was born January 10, 1704, to Joseph and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bristol Township, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania
Bristol Township is a defunct township that was located in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. The township ceased to exist and was incorporated into the City of Philadelphia following the passage of the Act of Consolidation, 1854. It is the modern day Olney-Oak Lane Planning Analysis Section, though with a slight difference in the southern border. It is in present-day North Philadelphia, although Olney-Oak Lane is sometimes considered to be separate from North Philadelphia entirely because of their unique architecture, culture and differing patterns of development. History Bristol Township was located at the north end of Philadelphia County, at the intersection of the angle which runs down from the extreme point between Philadelphia and Montgomery counties. It was of irregular form, and was bounded on the northwest by a portion of Springfield Township, Montgomery County; on the northeast by Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County. It extended along the latter to Oxford Township, b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deism
Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin '' deus'', meaning "god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe. More simply stated, Deism is the belief in the existence of God solely based on rational thought without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority. Deism emphasizes the concept of natural theology (that is, God's existence is revealed through nature). Since the 17th century and during the Age of Enlightenment (especially in 18th-century England, France, and North America), various Western philosophers and theologians formulated a critical rejection of the several religious texts belonging to the many organized religions, and began to appeal only to truths that they felt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Fanning Watson
John Fanning Watson (June 13, 1779 - December 23, 1860) was an Philadelphia antiquarian, a chronicler and an historian who became a professional writer. He is best known as the author of ''Annals of Philadelphia'' (1830). Life A bookseller, then a bank cashier by trade, he worked for the Bank of Germantown, and Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railroad. As a young man he began gathering the reminiscences of elderly people, and collected them in the first major history of the city. ''Annals of Philadelphia'' was published in 1830, with expanded editions in 1844 (two volumes) and 1857. A third volume by Willis P. Hazard was added in 1879, and the set continued to be published into the early 20th century. Watson hired a British immigrant, William L. Breton, to illustrate the 1830 ''Annals''. Based on Watson's own sketches, Breton's lithographed illustrations included the first published images of George Washington's President's House (demolished two years later), of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Godfrey (inventor) Tombstone In Laurel Hill Cemetery (1916–1984), English actor
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Thomas Godfrey may refer to: *Thomas Godfrey (footballer) (1904–1983), Scottish footballer *Thomas Godfrey (inventor) (1704–1749), inventor of an octant *Thomas Godfrey (writer), poet and author of ''The Prince of Parthia'', son of the inventor * Thomas J. Godfrey, legislator in the U.S. state of Ohio *Tommy Godfrey Thomas Frederick Godfrey (20 June 1916 – 24 June 1984) was an English comedian and actor who mostly played working-class Cockney characters. Variety performer He was born in London, and started his career as a tap dancer in variety shows, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dover Publications
Dover Publications, also known as Dover Books, is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward and Blanche Cirker. It primarily reissues books that are out of print from their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be scarce or historically significant. Dover republishes these books, making them available at a significantly reduced cost. Classic reprints Dover reprints classic works of literature, classical sheet music, and public-domain images from the 18th and 19th centuries. Dover also publishes an extensive collection of mathematical, scientific, and engineering texts. It often targets its reprints at a niche market, such as woodworking. Starting in 2015, the company branched out into graphic novel reprints, overseen by Dover acquisitions editor and former comics writer and editor Drew Ford. Most Dover reprints are photo facsimiles of the originals, retaining the original pagination an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Autobiography Of Benjamin Franklin
''The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin'' is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have called the work his ''Memoirs''. Although it had a tortuous publication history after Franklin's death, this work has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written. Franklin's account of his life is divided into four parts, reflecting the different periods at which he wrote them. There are actual breaks in the narrative between the first three parts, but Part Three's narrative continues into Part Four without an authorial break. In the "Introduction" of the 1916 publication of the ''Autobiography'', editor F. W. Pine wrote that Franklin's biography provided the "most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men" with Franklin as the greatest exemplar. Summary Part One Part One of the ''Autobiography'' is addressed to Fra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmund Woolley
Edmund Woolley (16951771) was an English-born American architect and master carpenter, best known for building Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Biography Woolley was born in England around 1695, and emigrated to the Thirteen Colonies as a child, around 1705. It is not known with whom he apprenticed or where he learned his trade. He was one of the first members of The Carpenters' Company of the City and County of Philadelphia. Independence Hall, 1732–1748 and 1750–1753 He began construction of the Pennsylvania State House (better known today as Independence Hall) in 1732. Traditionally, credit for the building's design has been given to Andrew Hamilton, but modern scholarship argues that he contributed little to the project. A surviving 1735 receipt lists a £5 payment to Woolley for "drawing drafts," "fronts" (elevations) and "Plans of the first and Second floors of the State House." The building took 16 years for Woolley and his worker ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society
''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society'' is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society. In its earliest days, it was a private venture of the Royal Society's secretary. It was established in 1665, making it the first journal in the world exclusively devoted to science, and therefore also the world's longest-running scientific journal. It became an official society publication in 1752. The use of the word ''philosophical'' in the title refers to natural philosophy, which was the equivalent of what would now be generally called ''science''. Current publication In 1887 the journal expanded and divided into two separate publications, one serving the physical sciences ('' Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences'') and the other focusing on the life sciences ('' Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences''). Both journals now publish themed issues and issues resulting from pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astronomer Royal
Astronomer Royal is a senior post in the Royal Households of the United Kingdom. There are two officers, the senior being the Astronomer Royal dating from 22 June 1675; the junior is the Astronomer Royal for Scotland dating from 1834. The post was created by King Charles II in 1675, at the same time as he founded the Royal Observatory Greenwich. He appointed John Flamsteed, instructing him "." The Astronomer Royal was director of the Royal Observatory Greenwich from the establishment of the post in 1675 until 1972. The Astronomer Royal became an honorary title in 1972 without executive responsibilities and a separate post of Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory was created to manage the institution. The Astronomer Royal today receives a stipend of 100 GBP per year and is a member of the Royal Household, under the general authority of the Lord Chamberlain. After the separation of the two offices, the position of Astronomer Royal has been largely honorary, though th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmond Halley
Edmond (or Edmund) Halley (; – ) was an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720. From an observatory he constructed on Saint Helena in 1676–77, Halley catalogued the southern celestial hemisphere and recorded a transit of Mercury across the Sun. He realised that a similar transit of Venus could be used to determine the distances between Earth, Venus, and the Sun. Upon his return to England, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society, and with the help of King Charles II of England, Charles II, was granted a master's degree from University of Oxford, Oxford. Halley encouraged and helped fund the publication of Isaac Newton's influential ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (1687). From observations Halley made in September 1682, he used Newton's laws of motion to compute the periodicity of Halley's Comet in his 1705 ''Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets''. It was named afte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latitude
In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pole, with 0° at the Equator. Lines of constant latitude, or ''parallels'', run east–west as circles parallel to the equator. Latitude and ''longitude'' are used together as a coordinate pair to specify a location on the surface of the Earth. On its own, the term "latitude" normally refers to the ''geodetic latitude'' as defined below. Briefly, the geodetic latitude of a point is the angle formed between the vector perpendicular (or '' normal'') to the ellipsoidal surface from the point, and the plane of the equator. Background Two levels of abstraction are employed in the definitions of latitude and longitude. In the first step the physical surface is modeled by the geoid, a surface which approximates the mean sea level over the oce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quadrant (instrument)
A quadrant is an instrument used to measure angles up to 90°. Different versions of this instrument could be used to calculate various readings, such as longitude, latitude, and time of day. Its earliest recorded usage was in ancient India in Rigvedic times by Rishi Atri to observe a solar eclipse. It was then proposed by Ptolemy as a better kind of astrolabe. Several different variations of the instrument were later produced by medieval Muslim astronomers. Mural quadrants were important astronomical instruments in 18th-century European observatories, establishing a use for positional astronomy. Etymology The term ''quadrant'', meaning one fourth, refers to the fact that early versions of the instrument were derived from astrolabes. The quadrant condensed the workings of the astrolabe into an area one fourth the size of the astrolabe face; it was essentially a quarter of an astrolabe. History During Rigvedic times in ancient India, quadrants called 'Tureeyam's were use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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