Invention Timeline – Erastosthenes, Greek Geometer and Astronomer; Recognized by Some as the Founder of Genuine Astronomy
b. 276 B. C. and d. about 196 B. C.
Famous Greek geometer and astronomer, and the librarian of the great library of Alexandria. He is recognized by some as the founder of genuine astronomy. Among his remarkable operations was the measurement of the obliquity of the ecliptic, which he computed to be 23° 51′ 20″. He also made an attempt to ascertain the dimensions of the earth by a method which has been used with success in modern times, and which he invented.
To the open ear it sings the early genesis of things—
Of tendency through endless ages, of the star dust and star pilgrimages,
Of rounded worlds, of space and time, of the olds floods subsiding slime,
Of chemic matter, force and form, of poles and powers, cold, wet and warm,
The rushing metamorphoses, dissolving all that fixture is,
Melts things that be to things that seem,
And solid nature to a dream.
—Emerson
I look upon a library as a kind of mental
chemist’s shop, filled with the crystals of all forms
and hues which have come from the union of individual
thought with local circumstances or universal principles.
—The Poet of the Breakfast-Table: O. W. Holmes
1716—Edmund Halley suggested that the distance of the earth from the sun might be estimated by observing the transit of Venus, and devised a plan for doing so.
