The French astronomer La Condamine, sent to Perú to measure an arc of the meridian in 1736, decided to return to France by way of the River Amazon, mapping the river and collecting observations of all sorts. This intention was over-optimistic and the circumstances of the journey prevented La Condamine from gathering much new information or undertaking the necessary observations to improve existing maps. He published three popular versions of the journey but witheld most of the observations that he did (...) make for a later report which was never written. His journals are now lost, but his aims and achievements can be assessed from contemporary documents and the collation of his three accounts. (shrink)

Rossbank functioned from 1840 to 1854 as one of a chain of British Colonial Observatories which combined with European and Asian observatories in the study of terrestrial magnetism. It was established in Hobart, Tasmania, by the Governor of Van Diemen's Land, Sir John Franklin, and Captain James Clark Ross, R.N., commanding H.M. ships Erebus and Terror. The history and operation of the Rossbank Observatory is related, its instruments described, and the results discussed.Biographical notes on the Observatory staff, with lists of (...) its archives and instruments are provided. A number of previously unpublished pictures show the Observatory in use and the surviving buildings and instruments today. (shrink)

Among the first artefacts of aluminium exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1855 were scientific instruments. France retained this lead, with her craftsmen employing the metal in balance-beams, telescopes, binoculars, sextants, and anemometer vanes. Within a few years instrument-makers in other countries took up the use of aluminium-bronze alloys, which offered greater strength and rigidity. These alloys served in the construction of various precision astronomical, surveying, and other instruments. Differing reports on aluminium, its alloys, and their qualities were largely due (...) to uncritical acceptance of the metals and ignorance of their precise constitution. Trace impurities had marked effects on quality, and numerous patented alloys reached the market without metallurgical testing. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, as these problems were being overcome and the metal became cheap, it fell from favour as a component of quality scientific instruments. (shrink)

In 1668 Robert Hooke recognised the utility of a barometer which could foretell storms at sea, but neither he nor his contemporaries in Britain or elsewhere in Europe succeeded in constructing such an instrument which would work reliably on a moving ship. Theorists and instrument makers, including Hooke, Amontons, De Luc, Passement, Magellan and Blondeau proposed novel forms of tube, but at the time it was not possible to work glass to the suggested shape. The competition between France and England (...) was won by Edward Nairne, who devised the constricted-tube barometer for Captain Cook's second voyage of 1772-75. Nairne barometers were soon taken on other British exploring voyages, but French ships were slow to follow the pattern, possibly in consequence of naval disruption following the Revolution. The earliest Nairne examples were adapted from the domestic barometer, with the tube mounted on a flat back, but within the lifetime of Nairne & Blunt marine barometers adopted the form common for most of the nineteenth century, with the tube enclosed within a square or round-section wooden frame. (shrink)

William Scoresby Jnr spent the first years of his working life as a whaler, and then became an ordained minister of the Church of England. His early writings on the environment of the Greenland Sea gained him a reputation as an Arctic scientist. In the later part of his life he turned to the investigation of magnetism as it concerned the ship's compass, trying to find the best form of needle, and how the compass was affected by the magnetism of (...) the ship itself.Though he lived in various parts of the country, Scoresby kept his attachment to Whitby and bequeathed his papers, books and apparatus to its Literary and Philosophical Society. In this catalogue the apparatus and material relics are related to published accounts of his work.In the text, [S] numbers refer to Scoresby's publications and [C] numbers to the catalogue. (shrink)