Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its CausesBabbage, Charles
History
Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes
Babbage, Charles
Royal Society (Great Britain); Science -- Great Britain -- History
It is far from necessary to my present object, to state all that has
been written and said respecting these pendulum experiments: I shall
confine myself merely to two points; one, the transit observations, I
shall allude to, because I may perhaps show the kind of feeling that
exists respecting them, and possibly enable Captain Sabine to explain
them. The other point, the error in the estimation of the division of
the level, I shall discuss, because it is an admitted fact.
Some opinion may be formed of transit observations, by taking the
difference of times of the passage of any star between the several
wires; supposing the distances of those wires equal, the intervals of
time occupied by the star in passing from one to the other, ought to be
precisely the same. As those times of passing from one wire to another
are usually given to seconds and tenths of seconds, it rarely happens
that the accordance is perfect.
The transit instrument used by Captain Sabine was thirty inches in
length, and the wires are stated to be equi-distant. Out of about 370
transits, there are eighty-seven, or nearly one-fourth, which have the
intervals between all the wires agreeing to the same, the tenth of
a second. At Sierra Leone, nineteen out of seventy-two have the same
accordance; and of the moon culminating stars, p. 409, twelve out of
twenty-four are equally exact. With larger instruments, and in great
observatories, this is not always the case.
Captain Kater has given, in the Philosophical Transactions, 1819, p.
427, a series of transits, with a three and a half foot transit, in
which about one-eleventh part of them only have this degree of accuracy;
and it should be observed that not merely the instrument, but the stars
selected, have, in this instance, an advantage over Captain Sabine's.
The transit of M. Bessel is five feet in length, made by Frauenhofer,
and the magnifying power employed is 182; yet, out of some observations
of his in January, 1826, only one-eleventh have this degree of
accordance. In thirty-three of the Greenwich observations of January,
1828, fifteen have this agreement, or five-elevenths; but this is with
a ten-feet transit. Now in none of these instances do the times agree
within a tenth of a second between all the wires; but I have accounted
those as agreeing in all the wires in which there is not more than
four-tenths of a second between the greatest and least.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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