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Sky and Ocean Joined: The U. S. Naval Observatory 1830-2000

Sky and Ocean Joined: The U. S. Naval Observatory 1830-2000

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Steven Dick
Cambridge University Press, 12/7/2007
EAN 9780521037501, ISBN10: 0521037506

Paperback, 624 pages, 24.7 x 17.4 x 3 cm
Language: English

As one of the oldest scientific institutions in the United States, the US Naval Observatory has a rich and colourful history. This volume is, first and foremost, a story of the relations between space, time and navigation, from the rise of the chronometer in the United States to the Global Positioning System of satellites, for which the Naval Observatory provides the time to a billionth of a second per day. It is a story of the history of technology, in the form of telescopes, lenses, detectors, calculators, clocks and computers over 170 years. It describes how one scientific institution under government and military patronage has contributed, through all the vagaries of history, to almost two centuries of unparalleled progress in astronomy. Sky and Ocean Joined will appeal to historians of science, technology, scientific institutions and American science, as well as astronomers, meteorologists and physicists.

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Prelude
perspectives and problems
the nation, the navy, the stars
Part I. The Founding Era, 1830–65
1. From depot to national observatory, 1830–46
2. A choice of roles
the Maury years, 1844–61
3. Foundations of the American Nautical Almanac Office, 1849–65
4. Gilliss and the Civil War years
Part II. The Golden Era, 1866–93
5. Scientific life and work
6. Asaph Hall, the great refractor and the moons of Mars
7. William Harkness and the transits of Venus of 1874 and 1882
8. Simon Newcomb and his work
Part III. The Twentieth Century
9. Observatory circle
a new site and administrative challenges for the twentieth century
10. Space
the astronomy of position and its uses
11. Time
a service for the world
12. Navigation
from stars to satellites
Summary
Select bibliographical essay
Appendices
Index.

'... easy reading. It is well-illustrated and well-referenced ... an historical tour-de-force, and I thoroughly recommend it to everyone interested in US astronomical history ...' Journal of Astronomical History & Heritage