The Mechanical Career of Councillor Orffyreus, Confidence Man
by Alejandro Jenkins
[2013/01]
"In the early 18th century, J. E. E. Bessler, known as Orffyreus, constructed several wheels that he claimed could keep turning forever, powered only by gravity. He never revealed the details of his invention, but he conducted demonstrations (with the machine's inner workings covered) that persuaded competent observers that he might have discovered the secret of perpetual motion. Among Bessler's defenders were Gottfried Leibniz, Johann Bernoulli, Prof. Willem 's Gravesande of Leiden University (who wrote to Isaac Newton on the subject), and Prince Karl, ruler of the German state of Hesse-Kassel..."
History of solar wind and space plasma physics revisited
by T. E. Girish et al.
[2013/01] "A paper published by Scottish geophysicist J.A. Broun in 1858 contained several pioneering and remarkable ideas in solar-terrestrial physics. He could anticipate more or less correctly the nature and origin of solar wind, solar magnetic fields, sunspot activity and geomagnetic storms in the middle of the 19th century. Broun applied the experimental results of the behavior of ionized gases in discharge tubes for the first time to Space Physics which may be considered as the beginning of the astrophysical plasma physics. In this context he attempted to explain the plasma interactions of solar wind with the comet tails and earth's magnetosphere. Most of the postulates or hypotheses put forward by Broun in 1858 and later in 1874 was rediscovered during the 20th century, after the advent of Space age."
Bicentennial of the Great Poncelet Theorem
by Vladimir Dragovic and Milena Radnovic
[2012/12] "On November 18th, 1812, near Smolensk, a young
French officer serving as a battery commander was
wounded and his horse killed under him ... During
his subsequent imprisonment in Saratov ... he
recalled the fundamental principles of geometry ...
without literature, [and discovered]
one of the deepest, most beautiful, and most
important theorems of projective geometry."
Secrets of the Northern Lights
by Pål Brekke
[Sky and Telescope 125, No. 2, 18 (2013 February)] In part about Kristian Birkeland
(see "New Entries: People", below).
The Moon and the Mystery of the Huntley
by Wm. H. Stevenson III
[Sky and Telescope 125, No. 2, 26 (2013 February)]
About the Confederate Navy's ill-fated submarine.
The Great Meteor Procession of 1913
by Donald W. Olson and Steve Hutcheon
[Sky and Telescope 125, No. 2, 32 (2013 February)]
"Exactly 100 years ago this month, the most remarkable procession
of fireballs ever recorded passed over Canada." The great-circle
path of the procession (noticed at the time, and extended by the authors of
the present article all the way to the South Atlantic Ocean
with evidence from German ship-logs) traces the decaying orbit
of a temporary "mini-moon" briefly captured by the Earth and
burnt in the atmosphere.
Deep-Sky Wonders: Puppis, the Stern
by Sue French
[Sky and Telescope 125, No. 2, 56 (2013 February)]
A tour through Puppis, a modern constellation carved out
of the traditional Argo Navis, with quotations from a
Nineteenth-Century translation of Aratus and from
Garrett P. Serviss's Pleasures of the Telescope
(see "New Primary Sources: Astronomy" below).
English translation (by Nathaniel Bowditch):
Volume I ---
Volume II ---
Volume III ---
Volume IV
[Boston: Hillard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins (Little and Brown), 1829-1839]
The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903
by Kristian Birkeland
[Christiana: Aschehoug, 1908] Only the first part of Volume I seems to have been placed in the Archive,
which is extraordinarily unfortunate, since Birkeland's most important
contribution to science is found in the second part!
A General Catalogue of Double Stars Within 121° of the
the North Pole
by Sherburne Wesley Burnham
Volume I: The Catalogue ---
Volume II: Notes
[Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1906]
Théorie de Jupiter et de Saturne
by Pierre Simon Laplace
[Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences
de Paris, (1785)] That is, of their mutual gravitational interaction.
Sur quelques points du système du monde
by Pierre Simon Laplace
[Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences
de Paris, (1789)] Satellites of Jupiter; obliquity of ecliptic;
longitude measurements; figure of earth; stability of the figure of the sea;
nodes of the planets; many-body problem; etc.
Mécanique analytique (1788)
by Joseph-Louis Lagrange
Volume I
---
Volume II
[Paris: Mallet-Bachelier, 1853]
Leçons élémentaires sur
les mathematiques (1795)
by Joseph-Louis Lagrange. English translation:
Lectures on Elementary Mathematics
[Chicago: Open Court, 1898]
Recherches sur le calcul intégral et sur le système du monde
by Pierre Simon Laplace
[Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de Paris,, (1772)]
"I propose to give in this memoir a new method of integrating differential
equations by approximation, with its application ... to the movement of the planets."
Reviews of Rational Geometry edited by George Bruce Halsted
[n.d.] Not surprisingly, they all tend to be favourable ones.
Synthetic Projective Geometry
by George Bruce Halsted
[New York: Wiley, 1906]
"Man, imprisoned in a little body with short-arm hands instead
of wings, created for his guidance a mole geometry, a tactile
space, codified by Euclid ... Yet man is no mole."
Le grand ballon captif à vapeur de M. Henry Giffard
by Gaston Tissandier, illustrated by Albert Tissandier
[Paris: Masson, 1878] The illustrations are truly astonishing:
technical drawing as a kind of proto-surrealism.