The spring of order: Robert Main’s management of astronomical labor at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich

2021 ◽  
pp. 007327532110284
Author(s):  
Daniel Belteki
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Royal Observatory ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Number Of Individuals

During the early nineteenth century the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, significantly increased the number of individuals it employed. One of the new roles created was the position of First Assistant, who oversaw the management of astronomical labor at the observatory. This article examines the contribution of Robert Main, who was the first person employed in this role. It shows that, through Robert Main’s duties and tasks, the observatory appears as a hybrid site embodying aspects of the other institutions that formed part of its operational network. Moreover, it demonstrates that the transformation of the observatory during the nineteenth century was driven by his rigorous maintenance of discipline in relation to the daily operations of the site.

scholarly journals XXII. On the extensive atmosphere of Mars

1831 ◽  
Vol 121 ◽  
pp. 417-422 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Astronomical Observations ◽  
Royal Observatory ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
The One

That several of the planets as well as that which we inhabit are surrounded by atmosphere, astronomical observations have long since established; the extent, however, to which in particular planets such atmospheres are diffused, is as yet not satisfactorily determined. The former rests principally upon phenomena observed on the planets’ discs, whilst the latter derives its support chiefly from those detected at or near their respective limbs. Every night, nay almost every hour, may give us indication of the one, whilst years are sometimes necessary, as in the case of planets unattended by satellites, to help us to the other; thus the hypothesis of the extensive atmosphere of Mars derives its origin from the observations of Cassini and Roëmer, and has stood more than a century and a half without refutation or support. The observations to which I allude formed part of a series undertaken for the determination of the parallax of Mars, and are recorded in the Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences. Cassini’s were made at Briare and at La Charité sur Loire; whilst Roémer’s was obtained at the Royal Observatory of Paris.

scholarly journals COLLABORATORS, COLLABORATION, AND THE PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE IN NAPOLEONIC ITALY, THE OPPIZZONI AFFAIR, 1805–1807

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
AMBROGIO A. CAIANI
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Active Agent ◽  
Local History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Control ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fine Line ◽  
History Of ◽  
Made In ◽  
Going Native

ABSTRACTThe recent bicentennial commemorations of the Napoleonic empire have witnessed a proliferation of new studies. Scholars now possess much more sophisticated conceptual tools than in past decades with which to gauge the problems faced by French imperial administrators throughout Europe. Well-trodden concepts, like centre/periphery or collaboration/resistance, have been reinvigorated by more sophisticated understandings of how rulers and ruled interacted in the early nineteenth century. This article argues that, while much progress has been made in understanding problems of ‘resistance’, there is more to be said about the other side of the same coin, namely: ‘collaboration’. Using the micro/local history of a scandal in Napoleonic Bologna, this article wishes to reaffirm that collaboration was an active agent that shaped, and often shook, the French imperial project. The biggest problem remained that, despite ‘good intentions’, collaborators sometimes simply did not collaborate with each other. After all, imperial clients were determined to benefit from the experience of empire. The centre was often submerged by local petty squabbles. This article will use a specific micro-history in Bologna to highlight the extent to which Napoleonic empire builders had to thread a fine line between the impracticalities of direct control and the dangers of ‘going native’.

scholarly journals Loss of Innocence: Albert Moll, Sigmund Freud and the Invention of Childhood Sexuality Around 1900

2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lutz D.H. Sauerteig
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Normal Development ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sexual Experiences ◽  
Childhood Sexuality ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
The One

AbstractThis paper analyses how, prior to the work of Sigmund Freud, an understanding of infant and childhood sexuality emerged during the nineteenth century. Key contributors to the debate were Albert Moll, Max Dessoir and others, as fin-de-siècle artists and writers celebrated a sexualised image of the child. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most paediatricians, sexologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and pedagogues agreed that sexuality formed part of a child’s ‘normal’ development. This paper argues that the main disagreements in discourses about childhood sexuality related to different interpretations of children’s sexual experiences. On the one hand stood an explanation that argued for a homology between children’s and adults’ sexual experiences, on the other hand was an understanding that suggested that adults and children had distinct and different experiences. Whereas the homological interpretation was favoured by the majority of commentators, including Moll, Freud, and to some extent also by C.G. Jung, the heterological interpretation was supported by a minority, including childhood psychologist Charlotte Bühler.

The Anglo-Gallicanism of dom Thomas Preston, 1567–1647

1972 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 239-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurus Lunn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
General Theory ◽  
Corporate Identity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Thin Red Line ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Literary Output ◽  
The Church

Gallicanism - the name given to the general theory that the Church, especially the Church in France, is free from the jurisdiction of the pope, while remaining Roman and Catholic - is familiar to most historians. The existence of such a thing as Anglo-Gallicanism, on the other hand, seems scarcely credible. Post-Reformation English Catholics present the image of a persecuted and retiring group of people, who, in order to preserve their corporate identity, became more Italianate in their culture than the Italians and in their theology more papalist than the popes; and of the majority of English Catholics this was true. But throughout their history there runs a thin red line of dissent, which passes from the Appellant priests in the late sixteenth century, via Blackloism in the seventeenth, to Charles Butler, Joseph Berington and the Catholic Committee at the dawn of emancipation. Gallicanism, and perhaps its English counterpart, were given a death-blow by Napoleon’s application of papal authority to the French bishops. But Anglo-Gallicanism was an unconscionably long time dying, for at Downside in the early nineteenth century William Bernard Ullathorne, later bishop of Birmingham, was taught theology from Gallican textbooks. In this tradition a prominent part, in terms of impact and literary output, was played by another Benedictine, Thomas Preston, alias Roger Widdrington.

scholarly journals O europeu e o outro (The European and the other)

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 177
Author(s):  
Rafael Chaves Santos
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Life Time ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ethnographic Collections

A primeira grande Expedição Científica Austríaca ao Brasil no início século XIX produziu, além da coleta de diversas espécies e peças de coleções antropológicas e etnográficas, vários relatos das experiências de seus participantes. Um destes, Johann Natterer, cuja permanência em nossas terras foi a mais demorada, não pode em vida concluir sua obra, mas deixou centenas de cartas que relatam suas experiências e vivências pelas regiões do Brasil. Seus textos, ainda pouco trabalhados no Brasil, são, neste artigo, analisados como prática social que busca evidenciar por meio da linguagem posições ideológicas de caráter eurocêntrico.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Europeus. Relatos. Linguagem. Índios. ABSTRACTThe first major Austrian Scientific Expedition to Brazil in early nineteenth century produced, in addition to collecting various species and parts of anthropological and ethnographic collections, many compilations of the experiences of their participants. One of these, Johann Natterer, whose permanence in our land was the most time consuming, could not complete his work in life time, but left hundreds of letters that described his knowledge and his experiences of life in the regions of Brazil. This article analyses his texts, which had not been yet studied in Brazil, as a social practice that seeks to demonstrate through language the Eurocentric ideological character.KEYWORDS: Europeans. Reports. Language. Indians.

Beyond control: Orientalist tensions and the history of the “upas tree” myth

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-189
Author(s):  
Tim Hannigan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Surrounding Atmosphere ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The “upas tree” is one of the most enduring European myths about Southeast Asia. Accounts of a tree so toxic that it renders the surrounding atmosphere deadly can first be identified in fourteenth-century journey narratives covering what is now Indonesia. But while most other such apocrypha vanished from later European accounts of the region, the upas myth remained prominent and in fact became progressively more elaborate and fantastical, culminating in a notorious hoax: the 1783 account of J. N. Foersch. This article examines the history of the development of the upas myth, and considers the divergent responses to Foersch’s hoax amongst scientists and colonial administrators on the one hand, and poets, playwrights, and artists on the other. In this it reveals a significant tension within the emerging “Orientalist” discourse about Southeast Asia in the early nineteenth century.

The physical interpretation of the wave theory of light

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank A. J. L. James
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Physical Interpretation ◽  
Wave Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century

There existed essentially two theories of light during the early nineteenth century: the particulate theory and the wave theory. This we realise today is a gross over-simplification, since there were many varieties of each theory. But to the supporters of one theory the other theory had faults so fundamental that no distinction between varieties of the same theory was sufficient to placate opposition to that theory. This meant that opponents of either the wave or the particulate theory seldom, in their attacks, distinguished between different varieties of either theory.

Literature

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sverre Bagge
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Great Emphasis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Middle Ages

There is a continuous tradition of historical writing from the Middle Ages to the present day in all three of the Scandinavian kingdoms, as well as in Iceland, though admittedly it began later (not until the early fourteenth century) in Sweden than in the other countries. The works dating from the Middle Ages have already been discussed. Those of the Early Modern Period are of interest as evidence of learning and for an understanding of how “history” was viewed at the time, and also because they contain a number of documents from the Middle Ages whose originals have been lost. However, the beginning of modern scholarly historical writing is usually dated to the early nineteenth century, in Scandinavia as in the rest of Europe. The professionalization of history, which started in Germany, quickly spread to Scandinavia. Throughout Europe, this professionalization was related to a national revival that typically placed great emphasis on a nation’s medieval past....

Mpongwe Origins: Historiographical Perspectives

1975 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 59-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry H. Bucher
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Previous Period ◽  
The North ◽  
Bantu Language ◽  
Linguistic Classification

The Mpongwe people of the Gabon estuary live today in the immediate area of Libreville, the capital city of the Gabon Republic. Libreville is built on Mpongwe ancestral lands, and its history is only a small and comparatively recent chapter in the longer story of the Mpongwe and their neighbors. In the nineteenth century the expression “les Gabonais” or “the Gaboon people” had only one meaning—the Mpongwe of the estuary who were the coastal trading aristocracy.The Mpongwe are only one of the six peoples belonging to the Myèné-speaking group of Gabon. The other five are the Orungu, Nkomi, Galoa, Adyumba, and Enenga. Only the Mpongwe are patrilineal. Myèné is purely a linguistic classification, a subdivision of the Bantu language. All six of these societies fit into a circle whose circumference includes the three largest cities in Gabon today—Libreville, Port Gentil (formerly Cape Lopez), and Lambaréné (Map 1). From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, Myèné was the coastal lingua franca between the southern Cameroun and Cabinda. The Myèné societies in general, and the Mpongwe in particular, have played a key role in Gabon's past, and continue to be an influential minority in modern Gabon. In the early nineteenth century, and for an unknown previous period, the closest non-Myèné neighbors of the Mpongwe were the Benga and the related societies to the north, and the Shekiani and Bakélé to the east. The Shekiani were the couriers in the Mpongwe trade with the Bakélé and other interior societies.

Loadstones and Earths

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Wothers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Silicon Dioxide ◽  
English Translation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mineral Salt ◽  
Chemical Compositions ◽  
Great Work ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century

Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848), discoverer of the elements selenium, thorium, cerium, and silicon and deviser of the chemical symbols we use today, was one of the last in a long list of Swedish mineralogists and chemists active during the eighteenth century. Berzelius himself regarded one of his predecessors, Axel Fredrik Cronstedt (1722–65), as the founder of chemical mineralogy. We met Cronstedt in Chapter 2 as the discoverer of the element nickel, isolated from the ore kupfernickel. But another of Cronstedt’s achievements was perhaps of even greater significance: his development of a classification of minerals based not on their physical appearances, as had been common up to this time, but on their chemical compositions. He first published his scheme anonymously in Swedish in 1758, but it was later translated into English as An Essay towards a System of Mineralogy. Cronstedt recognized four general classes of minerals: earths, bitumens, salts, and metals. As their name suggests, the bitumens were flammable substances that might dissolve in oil but not in water. The main difference between the salts and the earths was that the former, which included the ‘alcaline mineral salt’ natron, could be dissolved in water and recrystallized from it. The earths he defined as ‘those substances which are not ductile, are mostly indissoluble in water or oil, and preserve their constitution in a strong heat’. Cronstedt initially recognized nine different classes of earth. By the time of Torbern Bergman (1735–84), these had been reduced to five which ‘cannot be derived from each other or from anything simpler’. Lavoisier and his collaborators included these five in their great work on nomenclature even though they suspected that, like soda and potash, they were most likely not simple substances, but species that contained new metals. In the 1788 English translation of the nomenclature these were called silice, alumina, barytes, lime, and magnesia. The first two eventually, in the early nineteenth century, yielded the elements silicon and aluminium. The word ‘silicon’ derives from the Latin ‘silex’ (meaning ‘flint’—a form of silicon dioxide), with the ending ‘-on’ reflecting its resemblance to the other non-metals carbon and boron.

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