Sir William Thomson and the Intercept Method

1972 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-98
Author(s):  
Charles H. Cotter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
New Method ◽  
William Thomson ◽  
Lord Kelvin ◽  
Short Method ◽  
Royal Society Of London

The year 1971 marked the first centenary of the publication of a paper on navigation which appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London in which the author, Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) described a new method of determining an astronomical position line. The method was impracticable and was not, therefore, adopted by practical seamen. Nevertheless, its design is ingenious and interesting, and an investigation of its principles adds lustre to the genius of its inventor—reputedly one of the most eminent philosophers of the nineteenth century. Although the method failed in the eyes of the mariners for whom it was intended, Thomson sparked off an interest in short-method tables which has persisted even to the present day.

Fit to print? Referee reports on mathematics for the nineteenth-century journals of the Royal Society of London

2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sloan Evans Despeaux
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Scientific Societies ◽  
Royal Society Of London

The Royal Society was one of the first British scientific societies to establish a peer review process for papers submitted to its journals. Initially, its peer review procedures were at best informal, but by the 1830s they became a formal, required gateway for all Royal Society submissions. This paper focuses on referee reports of mathematical papers submitted to the Society from 1832 to 1900, years covered in the first 15 volumes of referee reports archived at the Royal Society Library. Besides judging the content of papers, mathematical referees during this period discussed issues of professionalization and politics in their reports.

scholarly journals Instruments and relics

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-485
Author(s):  
Rebekah Higgitt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Early History ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Royal Society Of London

Abstract Despite the age and prestige of the Royal Society of London, the history of its collections of scientific instruments and apparatus has largely been one of accidental accumulation and neglect. This article tracks their movements and the processes by which objects came to be recognized as possessing value beyond reuse or sale. From at least the mid-nineteenth century, the few surviving objects with links to the society’s early history and its most illustrious Fellows came to be termed ‘relics’, were treated with suitable reverence, put on display and made part of the society’s public self-presentation. If the more quotidian objects survived into the later 1800s, when their potential as objects for collection, research, display, reproduction and loan began to be appreciated, they are likely to have survived to the present day.

scholarly journals The formation of ice and the grained structure of glaciers

1905 ◽  
Vol 76 (512) ◽  
pp. 431-439 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Precise Meaning ◽  
William Thomson ◽  
James Thomson ◽  
Lord Kelvin

In the following pages I have the honour to lay before the Royal Society the results of a lengthy research on the formation of ice and the grained structure of glaciers, which may serve as a complement to the previous investigations on the same subject published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ and ‘Proceedings of the Royal Society by Forbes, Tyndall and Huxley, Tyndall, Faraday, T. Graham, J. F. Main, J. C. McConnel and D. A. Kidd, and elsewhere by Guyot, Agassiz, James Thomson, and Sir William Thomson (now Lord Kelvin), Hermann and Adolf Schlagintweit, Person, Leydolt, Rüdorff, Bertin, Grad and A. Dupré, Moseley, A. Heim, J. T. Bottomley, K. R Koch and Klocke, Forel, Ed. Hagenbach-Bischoff, E. von Drygalski, Mügge, H. Hess and others. 1. It will be convenient at the outset to define the precise meaning with which it is proposed to employ certain words, some of which are in vague popular use, while others are less familiar or new.

The ‘Universal’ Sea and Air Navigation Tables and the a and b Almanac

1951 ◽  
Vol 4 (02) ◽  
pp. 109-116
Author(s):  
F. Radler de Aquino
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Spherical Coordinates ◽  
Heavenly Body ◽  
William Thomson ◽  
Spherical Triangles ◽  
One Year ◽  
Lord Kelvin ◽  
First Time

The position of a point on the surface will then be expressed by two spherical coordinates: namely, ist, the distance of the point from the primitive circle measured on a secondary; 2nd, the distance intercepted on the primitive circle between this secondary and some given point of the primitive circle assumed as the origin of coordinates.—William Chauvenet,Manual of Spherical and Practical Astronomy(1896).On 16 May 1870, exactly eighty years before this paper was written, Lord Kelvin, then Sir William Thomson, worked out an epoch-making example of how to find the hour angle and azimuth of a heavenly body by inspection, in order to facilitate the use of Captain Thomas Sumner's method at sea. His work was published one year later in theProceedings of the Royal Society, and in it he describes a page of his new Tables for Facilitating Sumner's Method at Sea. These tables, comprising nine pages, were made public on 11 November 1875 and were published in London in May of the following year; from them have been derived all modern navigation tables based on right-angled spherical triangles. Kelvin then used, for the first time, Greenwich hour angle in arc and assumed latitudes and longitudes. (The writer has himself used G.H.A. in arc since 1902 and assumed positions since 1908.)

scholarly journals The Conception and Development of Weir's Diagram

1977 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-520
Author(s):  
Charles H. Cotter
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Magnetic Compass ◽  
Spherical Trigonometry ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
William Thomson ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Lord Kelvin

Just a century ago, in 1876, Patrick Weir, an officer of a vessel trading between London and Australia, conceived the idea of a diagram that might facilitate finding the Sun's true azimuth for the purpose of checking the magnetic compass. Some thirteen, years later Captain Weir's Diagram was the subject of a paper communicated by Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In his paper Weir outlined the train of reasoning by which he succeeded in constructing a novel diagram which was described by Professor P. G. Tait as ‘a singularly elegant construction which, not only puts in a new and attractive light one of the most awkward of the problems of spherical trigonometry, but it practically gives in a single-page diagram the whole content of the two volumes of Burdwood's Azimuth Tables’. Tait also remarked that the method supplied an interesting graphical plane construction of a function of three independent variables.

Between Hostile Camps: Sir Humphry Davy's Presidency of The Royal Society of London, 1820–1827

1983 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Philip Miller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
World Wide ◽  
British Society ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Science ◽  
Humphry Davy ◽  
Royal Society Of London

The career of Humphry Davy (1778–1829) is one of the fairy tales of early nineteenth-century British science. His rise from obscure Cornish origins to world-wide eminence as a chemical discoverer, to popular celebrity amongst London's scientific audiences, to a knighthood from the Prince Regent, and finally to the Presidency of the Royal Society, provide apposite material for Smilesian accounts of British society as open to talents. But the use of Davy's career to illustrate the thesis that ‘genius will out’ is not without its problems. As Davy began to reap the benefits of his early chemical discoveries, and to acquire status and wealth, his dedication to research waned. The ‘new’ Davy who emerged in the years after Waterloo, though admired by many sections of the metropolitan scientific community, was also widely criticized. Ambivalence became marked with Davy's election to, and conduct in, the Presidency of the Royal Society.

Chairman's Opening Address

1897 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 2-17
Author(s):  
James Geikie
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Successful Completion ◽  
Scientific Results ◽  
Royal Charter ◽  
Lord Kelvin ◽  
First Time ◽  
Opening Address ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Royal Society Of London

I have to congratulate the Society on the re-appointment to our Presidential Chair of Lord Kelvin, first of British Physicists. Five years ago, as you are aware, Lord Kelvin became President of the Royal Society of London, at the urgent request of that body. This is not the first time, I may remind you, that we have provided a President for the London Society. The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, as our body was known before it received the Royal Charter authorising it to assume its present designation, gave two Presidents to the Royal Society of London—namely, the Earl of Morton and Sir John Pringle, Bart.In his Address, delivered two years ago, our respected ex-President took note of some of the more important papers communicated to the Society during the immediately preceding Sessions. I think I can hardly do better than follow his example. But before making the attempt, I wish briefly to refer to the successful completion within the present year of a great national undertaking. I allude, of course, to the famous “Challenger” Expedition. Our Library has now received the two volumes of Summary of Results, with Appendices, which complete the Society's set of the fifty volumes of Reports of the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger. These voluminous Reports form by far the largest contribution hitherto made to Marine Zoology. Indeed, their publication marks an epoch in this department of science.

A letter by William Thomson, F. R. S., on the ‘Thomson effect’

1971 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-232
Keyword(s):  
Electrical Conduction ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Mobile Element ◽  
Public University ◽  
The State ◽  
Thomson Effect ◽  
The Public ◽  
University Library ◽  
William Thomson ◽  
Lord Kelvin

Of two letters written by William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) to the Genevese physicist Auguste de la Rive (1801-1873, For. Mem. R.S.) which are preserved in the public University Library of Geneva, one is of distinct interest. This letter (M.S. 2319), written on 17 December 1856, throws sidelights on the discovery of the ‘Thomson Effect’ (originally described in his paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1851) and on the state of his thought about the nature of the mobile element involved in electrical conduction.

Lord Kelvin and His Compass

1979 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. E. May
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Trade Mark ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Unpublished Paper ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
William Thomson ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Obituary Notice ◽  
Lord Kelvin ◽  
Patent Design

It is now more than thirty years since Commander W. E. May, R.N. (formerly of the Admiralty Compass Observatory), drafted this hitherto unpublished paper, recording his opinions based on a study of documents made available to him in 1947 by Messrs Kelvin, Bottomley and Baird. The documents referred to in the paper are:The Thomson v. Moore case as presented to the House of Lords in the Thomson v. Moore case (Patent Design and Trade Mark Cases, Vol. VII, No. 36.)The case of Thomson v. Hughes (Patent Design and Trade Mark Cases, Vol. VII, Nos. 9 and 22.)Report of Proof of case of Kelvin v. Whyte Thomson &. Co.Bound volume of patent specifications referred to in the last named.It is a curious habit of editors and publishers to invite well-known persons to write articles on subjects outside their normal orbit. Thus in 1874 Sir William Thomson was invited to write for Good Words an article on the mariner's compass. He took up the task and soon realized that he did not know enough of the subject to complete the article. He then began to study the compass and the final part of the article was published in 1879. Such is one of Lord Kelvin's explanations of how he came to interest himself. In 1885, in an affidavit for the Moore case, he said that he took up the study of the compass in 1871, whilst elsewhere he said that it was the necessity of writing for the Royal Society an obituary notice on Archibald Smith, who died in 1872, which first turned his attention to compasses.

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