Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Boorstin, Daniel Joseph (1983), The discoverers, Random House Inc, Retrieved on 2013-08-08Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: Memes
08 AUG 2013
The Clock United Communities
IN Europe the clock very early became a public machine. Churches expected communicants to assemble regularly and repeatedly for prayers, and flourishing cities brought people together to share a life of commerce and entertainment. When clocks took their places in church steeples and town belfries, they entered on a public stage. There they proclaimed themselves to rich and poor, awakening the interest even of those who had no personal reason to mark the hours. Machines that began as public in... 1 
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notesLarge clocks in every town brought everyone together under one precise time. It was a reminder that we are all part of a community.
08 AUG 2013
Secrecy Led to the Loss of Chinese Technological Achievem...
While these state records survive, most of the ancient Chinese literature on astronomy has disappeared. Because astronomy was so state-oriented, so security-bound, and so secret, the old astronomy books have left few traces. By contrast, the early books on mathematics, which were used by merchants, directors of public works, and military commanders, have survived in considerable numbers. Repeated imperial edicts enforced state security for calendrical science, astronomy, and astrology. In A.D... 1 notes
notesThe state guarded its understanding of Astronomy and Time-Keeping so that history has little record of the details of how advanced it was. In contrast, public science is known and revered by historians.
08 AUG 2013
The Experiment that Disproved Astrology
A story told by this friend, Firminus, shook the young Augustine from his pagan faith. Firminus’ father, an earnest experimenter in astrology, always noted the positions of the stars and even “took care with the most exact diligence to know the birth of his very puppies.” Firminus’ father learned that one of his women-servants was to be delivered of a child at about the same time that Firminus’ mother was expecting. “Both were delivered at the same instant; so that both were constrained to al... 1 notes
notesTwo children born at the same time, one a master, the other a slave.
13 OCT 2013
The Clock, Icon of Science
Philosophers were always looking for new handles on the universe—new
similes, new metaphors, new analogies. Despite their scorn for those who
cast the Creator of the Universe in man's image, the theologians never
ceased to scrutinize man's own handiwork as their clues to God. Now man
was a proud clockmaker, a maker of self-moving machines. Once set in
motion, the mechanical clock seemed to tick with a life of its own. Might
not the universe itself be a vast clock made and set in motion by the... 1 notes
notesThe first icon to replace religous icons in Western culture.
13 OCT 2013
The Talent of Mechanics
Generally speaking, people have a very erroneous idea of the type of talent proper to the ideal mechanician. He is not a geometrician who, delving into the theory of movement and the categories of phenomena, formulates new mechanical principles or discovers unsuspected laws of nature.… In most other branches of science are to be found constant principles; a multitude of methods offer to the genius inexhaustible possibilities. If a scholar poses himself a new problem, he can attack it fortifie... 1 notes
notesIt is highly intuitive and cannot be taught from a textbook. It sounds much like an art.
13 OCT 2013
The Clock as the Mother of All Machines
PRECISELY because the clock did not start as a practical tool shaped for a single purpose, it was destined to be the mother of machines. The clock broke down the walls between kinds of knowledge, ingenuity, and skill, and clockmakers were the first consciously to apply the theories of mechanics and physics to the making of machines. Progress came from the collaboration of scientists—Galileo, Huygens, Hooke, and others—with craftsmen and mechanics. Since clocks were the first modern measuring ... 1 notes
notesIt required a number of sciences, was based on multiple engineering developments, and contributed itself to science by allowing the measurement of time.
13 OCT 2013
History of the Weekdays
By the third century the seven-day week had become common in private
life throughout the Roman Empire. Each day was dedicated to one of the
seven planets. Those seven, according to the current astronomy, included
the sun and the moon, but not the earth. The order in which planets
governed the days of the week was: sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter,
Venus, and Saturn. This order was not that of their then supposed distance
from the earth, which was the "normal" order in which Dante, for exampl... 1 notes
notesFrom astronomy and astrology to religion, complete with superstitions.
13 OCT 2013
The Emergence of the Week Began the Scientific Mind
The making of our week was another forward step in man's mastery of the
world, in his reach toward science. The week was man's own cluster, not
dictated by the visible forces of nature, for the planetary influences were
invisible. By seeking astral regularities, by imagining that regularly recurring
forces at a distance, forces that could be judged only by their effects,
might govern the world, mankind was preparing a new arsenal of thought,
an escape from the prison of Again-and-Again. The p... 1 notes
notesIt was the first time human beings established an artificial order to things, setting up cycles.
13 OCT 2013
The Hourglass
Not the flowing waters of time but the falling sands of time have given
modern poets their favorite metaphor for the passing hours. In England,
sandglasses were frequently placed in coffins as a symbol that life's time had
run out. "The sands of time are sinking," went the hymn. "The dawn of
heaven breaks."
But the hourglass, measuring time by dripping sand, comes late in our
story. Sand was, of course, less fluid than water, and hence less adapted to
the subtle calibration required by the v...Folksonomies: engineering invention
Folksonomies: engineering invention
1 notes
notesSand vs water, the evolving art and ingenuity involved in crafting this timepiece.
13 OCT 2013
Galileo and the Altar Lamp Pendulum
IN 1583 Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), a youth of nineteen attending prayers in the baptistery of the Cathedral of Pisa, was, according to tradition, distracted by the swinging of the altar lamp. No matter how wide the swing of the lamp, it seemed that the time it took the lamp to move from one end to the other was the same. Of course Galileo had no watch, but he checked the intervals of the swing by his own pulse. This curious everyday puzzle, he said, enticed him away from the study of medici... 1 notes
notesThe puzzle and the pendulum time piece.
13 OCT 2013
The Importance of Mathematics in Seafaring
Before there was an accurate seafaring clock, the sailor seeking his bearings
had to be a trained mathematician. The accepted way to find longitude
at sea was by precise observations of the moon, which required refined
instruments and subtle calculations. An error as small as 5' in observing the
moon meant an error of 2V2. degrees of longitude, which on the ocean could
be as much as 150 miles—enough to wreck a ship on treacherous shoals.
Fatal miscalculation might come from a crude instrument...
1 Sailors had to be mathematicians in order to keep their bearings on the ocean.
13 OCT 2013
Anecdote About the Cuckoo Clock in China
The gaudy watches of indifferent workmanship, fabricated purposely for the China market and once in universal demand, are now scarcely asked for. One gentleman in the Honourable East India Company’s employ took it into his head that cuckoo clocks might prove a saleable article in China, and accordingly laid in a large assortment, which more than answered his most sanguine expectations. But as these wooden machines were constructed for sale only, and not for use, the cuckoo clocks became all m... 1 notes
notesA salesman convinces his buyers that his faulty clocks will work once again once the birds come out of hibernation.
