Ideas of the Sun in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

1970 ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
A.J. MEADOWS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Sun

Helium

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Emission Spectrum ◽  
Mass Spectrometer ◽  
Solar Eclipse ◽  
Atomic Structure ◽  
Chemical Elements ◽  
Bright Light ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
First Time

Today we learn at such a young age about the periodic properties of the elements and their atomic structure that it seems as if we grew up with the knowledge, and that everyone must always have known such basic, simple stuff. But till nearly the end of the nineteenth century no one even suspected that such things as the noble gases, with their filled electronic orbits, might exist. Helium was the first one we at Brookhaven looked for in our mass spectrometer, and the first one discovered. This was in 1868, but the discovery was ignored and the discoverer ridiculed. He didn’t care; he had other things on his mind. His name was Pierre Jules César Janssen, and he was a French astronomer who sailed to India that year in order to take advantage of a predicted solar eclipse. With the overwhelming brightness of the sun’s disk blocked by the moon, he hoped to observe the outer layers using the newly discovered technique of absorption spectroscopy. Nobody at the time understood why, but it had been observed that when a bright light shone through a gas, the chemical elements in the gas absorbed the light at specific wavelengths. The resulting dark lines in the emission spectrum of the light were like fingerprints, for it had been found in chemical laboratories that when an element was heated it emitted light at the same wavelengths it would absorb when light from an outside source was shined on it. So the way the technique worked, Janssen reasoned, was that he could measure the wavelengths of the solar absorbed lines and compare them with lines emitted in chemical laboratories where different elements were routinely studied, thus identifying the gases present in the sun. On August 18 of that year the moon moved properly into position, and Janssen’s spectroscope captured the dark absorption lines of the gases surrounding the sun. It was an exciting moment, as for the first time the old riddle could be answered: “Twinkle twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.” The answer now was clear: the sun, a typical star, was made overwhelmingly of hydrogen. But to Janssen’s surprise there was one additional and annoying line, with a wavelength of 587.49 nanometers.

The ‘robed Christ’ in pre-Conquest sculptures of the Crucifixion

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 153-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Coatsworth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Geographical Distribution ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Viking Period

In the nineteenth century, John Romilly Allen confidently claimed that the iconography of the Crucifixion with the robed or ‘fully draped’ Christ was a phenomenon of Celtic art, found in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, distinguishable from the ‘Saxon’ type in which Christ wore a loin-cloth. Other features of the Saxon type were the presence of the sun and moon above the arms of the cross, instead of angels as in Ireland; and the figures of the Virgin and St John at the foot of the cross, without the spear- and sponge-bearers, the latter pair appearing only exceptionally at Alnmouth, Northumberland; Aycliffe, County Durham; and Bradbourne, Derbyshire. Clearly two different versions were identified in this analysis, but no attempt was made to clarify the chronological relationship between the examples cited, and only the geographical distribution of a small number of examples was considered. Romilly Allen's confidence in distinguishing ‘Celt’ from ‘Saxon’ on the basis of art styles, even for the pre-Viking period, is not always shared today, as the continuing discussion of the origins of several important manuscripts shows. The terms ‘Insular’ and ‘Hiberno-Saxon’ used to describe much of the art from the sixth century to the eighth underline die perceived difficulties.

Germany at the Fin de Siècle: Culture, Politics, and Ideas

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-140
Author(s):  
H. Glenn Penny
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
German Population ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The World ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Weimar Culture

This is a fascinating book, partly because of the excellent contributions, and partly because of the ways in which the editors have chosen to engage the topic and organize their volume. Marchand and Lindenfeld open the collection with a loaded question: Was there a German fin de siècle? Did Germans, in other words, share the kinds of reactions to modernity that have so fascinated historians of Austria and France? Their answer is yes and no. Many German intellectuals embraced the modernist currents Carl Schorske identified more than forty years ago in his work on fin de siècle Vienna, reacting to the depressing problems of modernization in ways similar to their Austrian counterparts. And yet much of the German population was largely unbowed by their putatively perplexing condition. As the editors argue, despite the worries of many an intellectual, “the later Wilhelmine world was characterized by enormous ambition and optimism, booming industries and bustling new urban spaces, cultural and political activism on a new scale, and the promise, if not the immediate realization, of a ‘place in the sun’ on the world stage” (p. 1). That optimism is the perplexing bit, because many of us, schooled in the dark side of Weimar culture and its intellectual antecedents, have learned to imagine Germans at the end of the nineteenth century (or at least our favorite representatives) as people caught up in a pessimistic, existential, Nietzschean funk. Indeed, the editors themselves have not avoided that position entirely.

A new Greek Calendar and Festivals of the Sun

1948 ◽  
Vol 38 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 37-42
Author(s):  
Stefan Weinstock
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Made In

It is known that the Greeks found the means of time-reckoning when they began to observe and to record the rising and setting of the stars. Such recording had already been made in Babylonia and Egypt and taken up in Greece (and further developed) by Hesiod, Democritus, Eudoxus, and Ptolemy. Our knowledge of what they achieved was based until the end of the nineteenth century on the calendars of Geminus, Ptolemy, Aetius Amidenus, the Quintilii, Clodius Tuscus (and on some occasional references in other writers). In recent decades further examples have been found in astrological manuscripts and in papyri, amongst which the Calendar of Antiochus and that of the Pap. Hibeh 27 are the most prominent. Professor Rehm in his admirable Parapegmastudien has recently shown how much can be learnt from the simple entries in calendars about time-reckoning, astronomy, and, in general, about the cosmic system of a nation or a period. Religious entries on the other hand (which are of great importance for the origin and development of festivals) are less frequent—we find in the Hibeh Papyrus a number of local Egyptian festivals and in the Calendar of Antiochus two festivals of the Sun and a festival of the Nile.

Tripoli at the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century A. D./Eighth Century AH

1978 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 55-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Annual Report ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
French Translation ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The People ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town

In the Seventh Annual Report of the Society I published an account of the journey of the shaykh Al-Tijānī to Tripoli at the beginning of the fourteenth century A. D./eighth century A. H., with particular reference to the Arab tribes and chiefs whom he encountered.What follows is a translation of the passages from the Riḥla in which he describes the city of Tripoli as he saw it during the eighteen months of his residence. Page references are to the 1958 Tunis edition of the work, followed by references to the nineteenth century French translation by Alphonse Rousseau. The latter is incomplete, and not always accurate.221, trans. 1853, 135Our entry into (Tripoli) took place on Saturday, 19th Jumāḍā II (707).237, trans. 1853, 135–6As we approached Tripoli and came upon it, its whiteness almost blinded the eye with the rays of the sun, so that I knew the truth of their name for it, the White City. All the people came out, showing their delight and raising their voices in acclaim. The governor of the city vacated the place of his residence, the citadel of the town, so that we might occupy it. I saw the traces of obvious splendour in the citadel (qaṣba), but ruin had gained sway. The governors had sold most of it, so that the houses which surrounded it were built from its stones. There are two wide courts, and outside is the mosque (masjid), formerly known as the Mosque of the Ten, since ten of the shaykhs of the town used to gather in it to conduct the affairs of the city before the Almohads took possession. When they did so, the custom ceased, and the name was abandoned.

scholarly journals The Subaltern Would Speak: Palimpsestic Identities in Nuruddin Farah’s ‘Blood in the Sun’ Trilogy

IJOHMN ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Naeema Abdelgawad
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Postcolonial Identity ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Philosophical Standpoint ◽  
History Of

Nuruddin Farah’s ‘Blood in the Sun’ trilogy is a socio-political voyage into the Somali life and consciousness. It is a serious attempt to explore the changes that befell the Somali society and converted into a poor, failure and famine struck state in the present though it was a powerful and rich state in the past. The trilogy is a documentation of the history of Somalia from a philosophical standpoint; it delves into clan and ethnic traditions and, at the same time, expounds the adverse consequences of colonisation that have been invoked by the first wave of the ‘Rush to Africa’ in the nineteenth century. The article is an endeavour to underline the complex status of subalternity of the Somalis whose palimpsestic historical and political situation forced a palimpsestic identity. Farah’s ‘Blood in the Sun’ trilogy enfolds three novels; i.e. Maps (1986), Gifts (1993), and Secrets (1998) which are reflective of the current failure social and political situation which negatively influences the identity of the natives. The article hopes to be the kernel of further studies handling the complex postcolonial identity of the Somalis from a historical-political perspective.

The Nineteenth-Century Perspective

Impact! ◽  
1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerrit L. Verschuur
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Chemical Signature ◽  
The Earth ◽  
John Herschel ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Difficult Issue

If comets and asteroids have a habit of wandering dangerously close to the earth, why wasn’t the danger recognized a long time ago? It was. In fact, before the beginning of the twentieth century the threat of comets was taken for granted (asteroids had not yet entered the picture). Most astronomers in the nineteenth century accepted that the danger of collision was so obvious that it hardly warranted argument. How they elaborated on the danger varied from the understated, as in the case of Sir John Herschel who in 1835 said that the experience of passing through a comet’s tail might not be “unattended by danger,” to the dramatic, as we shall see. In 1840, Thomas Dick, a well-known popularizer of astronomy, wrote a wonderful book entitled The Sidereal Heavens. In it he reviewed all that was known about the heavens, and did so from a theologian’s perspective. This meant that he repeatedly reminded his readers that the splendor of the night skies was largely the responsibility of the “Divine.” But then, if the existence of planets, comets, nebulae, stars, the sun and moon could be attributed to God, this raised a difficult issue for Dick. If comets were also part of God’s plan, why did the threat of impact exist? Surely God would never allow his creation to be destroyed. Dick did not shy from his predicament and began to search for an answer by conceding that little was known about the nature and origin of comets. At the time it was thought that the head of a comet probably consisted of “something analogous to globular masses of vapor, slightly condensed towards the center, and shining either by inherent light or by the reflected rays of the sun.” The reason he could not be sure as to why the head glowed was because the means to study the properties of light had not yet been invented. That required the development of the spectroscope decades later, a device that breaks light into its various colors, which, when examined closely, can reveal the chemical signature of the object from which the light arrives.

Searching for a Modern Chinese Monument: The Design of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing

2005 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delin Lai
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Modern State ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Nationalist Party ◽  
Chinese Architecture ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
New Nation

In this article, I address the design of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing (1925-31), the most important monument of republican China. By putting it in the context of Sun's ideal for a modern China, the historiography of Chinese architecture since the nineteenth century, various historical associations of competition proposals, the new commemoration rite the Chinese Nationalist Party developed for Sun, and the iconic needs in a cultural politics for awakening masses, I argue that Chinese-style architecture, rather than a readymade system, was an open-ended discourse, in which tradition was examined in relation to the new interest in international architecture. This is epitomized in the design of the mausoleum, in which various ideals for a modern Chinese monument-stylistic, functional, and symbolic-were conceived as part of an effort to fashion the new nation. Modern architecture, in this instance, must be understood as a material embodiment of the struggle to define a modern state.

Epoch-Eclipse and Apocalypse: Special “Effects” in A Connecticut Yankee

PMLA ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 88 (5) ◽  
pp. 1104-1114
Author(s):  
David Ketterer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Solar Eclipse ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
King Arthur ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Heavenly Body ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Nineteenth Century America

HANK MORGAN'S USE of a solar eclipse to impress upon King Arthur and his court that a magician superior to Merlin stands before them is, undoubtedly, the most impressive episode in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Twain's time-travel version of the international novel. Arthur is at least as affected as the reader and, as a consequence, Hank istransformed from being a prisoner into being the Boss. But perhaps the reader does not appreciate that on a symbolic level, this blotting out and temporary displacement of one heavenly body by another parallels the “transposition of epochs—and bodies [human and stellar]” (p. 18) which is the donnée of the novel—the displacement of nineteenth-century America by sixth-century Britain and, subsequently, the displacement, first tentative then total, of sixth-century Britain by nineteenth-century America.1 By equating this “epoch-eclipse” with the apparent extinction of the sun, Twain is implying that the posited world transformation is an event of apocalyptic proportions. In the Revelation of John the Divine, as in traditional symbology, fire is the instrument of apocalypse and, thus, Twain's use of the sun in this context is most appropriate.2

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