Invention Timeline - James Gregory, Scotch Philosopher and Mathematician; Inventor of the Refracting Telescope
b. November 6, 1638 and d. October ? 1675
Scotch philosopher and mathematician. He invented the refracting telescope and his mathematical discoveries placed him in the first rank of philosophers. He published at the age of 24 “Optica Promota” (1663), a description of a reflecting telescope; his invention dated from 1661. He solved by infinite series the Keplerian problem of drawing tangents to curves geometrically, and devised a rule for the direct and inverse method of tangents. On June 15, 1668, he gave an “Account of a Controversy betwixt Stephano de Angelis and John Baptist Riccioli” respecting the motion of the earth. He was a professor in the University of Edinburgh.
Thou hast the secret strange
To read that hidden book, the human heart;
Thou hast the ready writer’s practis’d art;
Thou hast the thought to range
The broadest circle intellect hath ran-
And thou art God’s best work-an honest man.
—Willis
600 B. C.—Miletus divided the earth into five climatic zones, introducing the equator and meridians and made a rough measurement of the inclination of the equator to the ecliptic.
276-195 B. C.—Eratosthenes lived, and made measurements of the lengths of the sun’s shadow at Alexandria and at the first cataract of the Nile and thus calculated the earth’s circumference at about 25,000 miles.
1200—The Moors introduced astronomy into Europe.
