b. October ? 1776 and d. March 1, 1862

English mathematician, physicist and optician. In 1817 he published “Essay on the Strength of Timber and Other Materials,” which was the result of experiments in Woolwich dockyard and much-needed data for engineering calculations; in 1820, in an “Essay on Magnetic Attractions,” he described a simple method of correcting ships’ compasses. In an essay “On the Origin of Terrestrial Magnetism,” January 27, 1831, he demosntrated the similarity between terrestrial magnetism and that of a wooden globe wound with copper wire carrying a galvanic current. He made early attempts at signaling with electricity. In telescopes he corrected color and curvature by a concavo-convex lens composed of a substance he found in carbon-disulphide, with equal refractive and twice the dispersive power of flint glass. To him belongs the credit of the first experiment involving the principle of the electric motor (1826).

A colossal soul, he lies vast abroad on his times, uncomprehended by them, and requires a long focal distance to be seen; suggests, as Aristotle, Bacon, Selden, Humboldt, that a certain vastness of learning, or quasi omnipresence of the human soul in nature, is possible.

—Representative Men: Emerson

1115 B. C.—Mariner’s compass said to have been known in China.

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