Halley's Quest A Selfless Genius and His Troubled Paramore (2005) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
11 Queen Anne’s Patronage
11 Queen Anne’s Patronage
Pages 158-167
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 158... ...
The conflict, sometimes referred to as Queen Anne's War, was fought over Europe's balance of power and domination of trade. Louis XIV had aspired to control Spanish possessions in northern Europe and America.
|
From page 159... ...
He now talks, swears, and drinks brandy like a sea captain, so that I much fear his own ill-behavior will deprive him of the vacancy,"was the searing gossip Flamsteed sent to his assistant Abraham Sharpe in December 1703. But despite Flamsteed's unsurprising opposition, Halley was unanimously elected, his popularity at a new high.
|
From page 160... ...
Likely under pressure in part from Newton, Queen Anne authorized a handful of Royal Society council members to oversee Flamsteed's activities at the observatory, infuriating Flamsteed. They were to purchase and keep up the facility's instruments, which were technically Flamsteed's personal property, and ensure that his results were published annually.Adding insult to injury, the queen appointed Halley -- without even consulting Flamsteed -- to edit his prized Historia Coelestis.
|
From page 161... ...
In 1714, testimony from both Halley and the increasingly irascible Sir Isaac Newton helped pass the Longitude Act, the world's first scientific legislation. On July 20, Queen Anne gave the nod to the bill, which was encouraged by William Whiston, who had succeeded Newton at Cambridge as Lucasian professor, and a fellow mathematician named Humphrey Dutton.
|
From page 162... ...
Halley reportedly took an oath of allegiance at Westminster Abbey to the new King George I, who came to the throne on Queen Anne's death in 1714. His ascension transformed the government from Tory to Whig, which favored Flamsteed once again.
|
From page 163... ...
King George officially named Halley to replace Flamsteed on February 9, 1720. WHILE PINING FOR THIS POST, Halley had made serious contributions to mathematics.
|
From page 164... ...
Light, contrary to accepted beliefs, had a finite velocity and did not arrive instantaneously, Roemer explained in a paper later published in the Philosophical Transactions. (Like Cassini and Huygens, Roemer was invited to Paris to join the French academicians, who received pensions from the king.)
|
From page 165... ...
His first purchase: a mural quadrant, with an eight-foot radius, to measure zenith distances of stars moving toward the meridian in order to determine latitude. Crafted by George Graham, one of the leading instrument makers of the early 18th century, the device consisted of a circular border that forms a 90-degree arc attached to an arm that is pointed at the celestial body.
|
From page 166... ...
A year later, in 1725, Flamsteed's widow, abetted by his assistants, published Flamsteed's own version of Historia Coelestis, which cataloged nearly 3,000 stars, and several years later an accompanying star atlas that displayed his data graphically. After George's son succeeded the king in 1727, his wife Queen Catherine visited Greenwich and toured Halley's observatory there and was favorably impressed.
|
From page 167... ...
sets up for a finder of the longitude." By as early as 1731, Halley had acquired enough data to establish the use of lunar observations for determining longitude at sea. Although at the equator the margin of error ranged up to nearly 70 miles, it was an improvement over existing methods.Around this time English astronomer James Bradley, Halley's eventual successor, discovered another celestial phenomenon that could also skew lunar observations, namely aberration, the ever-so-slight deflection of light through space.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.