Excerpt:
Research Aids for the Nineteenth Century
Research Aids for the Nineteenth Century
This is the calendar FAQ. Its purpose is to give an overview of the Christian, Hebrew, Persian, and Islamic calendars in common use. It will provide a historical background for the Christian calendar, plus an overview of the French Revolutionary calendar, the Maya calendar, and the Chinese calendar.
Although these achievements are fundamental to modern mathematics and physics, it is less well known that Newton himself placed great value on his private researches into theology and alchemy. Interest in the wealth of surviving manuscript material in these areas has increased dramatically in recent years, and the Newton Project was formed in 1998 to make all Newton's texts, both 'scientific' and 'non-scientific' (including those papers relevant to his three decades service at the Royal Mint), available to a broad readership in a form that is at once scholarly and accessible. The Project aims to create a printed edition of Newton's theological, alchemical and administrative writings and an electronic edition of all his writings, including his correspondence.
The Newton Project is an effort to release online the complete record of Isaac Newton’s published and unpublished writings. Certainly, Newton was one of the most important figures in the history of modern science, and the Project offers a substantial contribution to this field by offering historians unprecedented access to his archives. Although the work is far from finished, the text offered on the site thus far is both a key resource for historians and a model for the online publication of historic manuscripts.
The greatest success of the Newton Project is its multi-layered presentation of the historical manuscripts. The Project fully utilizes the hypertext medium to balance the historical integrity of the subject with acts of editorial clarification. Each transcription can be displayed in several formats. The first, “normalised,” format is edited and omits deleted text, expands unfamiliar abbreviations, corrects spelling, and offers something like a final draft, which represents what Newton most likely intended a reader to see in his text. With this option, the editors allow a viewer to quickly access Newton’s writing without struggling to decipher the meanings of difficult marks and indications. The next format, termed “diplomatic,” attempts to preserve the process of the text’s original production by graphically indicating text that has been marked through, squeezed between the lines, or includes special characters. When a viewer rolls the mouse over these notations, a pop-up textbox gives an editorial note describing the nature of each irregularity. In addition to these two formats, photographic images of some manuscripts are available for closer reading and verification. A viewer can easily switch between these three formats to find the level of authenticity or editorial influence with which he or she is comfortable.
The site is well designed, attractive, and professional. The main text appears under the title banner in the middle and right side of the screen, while a list of navigation links on the left leads to a description of the project’s background, biographical information, and sections that highlight new, featured, and upcoming additions to the site. Individual pages are also cross-linked to make navigating the site simple. The site also includes an extensive bibliography, a guide to the source collections, and dozens of links to other Newton sites as well as many other history-of-science and manuscript publishing sites.
A final important consideration of online history is the concept of permanence. This idea is especially pertinent to the Newton Project because they only recently extended their funding for another five years. But, to the Project’s credit, the creators have already arranged for the online transcriptions to be deposited with the Oxford Text Archive to guarantee sustainability in the unlikely event that additional funding is unavailable in the future. Once again, the Newton Project has successfully addressed a major challenge of online history.
Miles Travis
Center for History and New Media
February 5, 2005
Before we continue describing the evolution of ways to mark the passage of time, perhaps we should broadly define what constitutes a clock. All clocks must have two basic components:
a regular, constant or repetitive process or action to mark off equal increments of time. Early examples of such processes included the movement of the sun across the sky, candles marked in increments, oil lamps with marked reservoirs, sand glasses (hourglasses), and in the Orient, knotted cords and small stone or metal mazes filled with incense that would burn at a certain pace. Modern clocks use a balance wheel, pendulum, vibrating crystal, or electromagnetic waves associated with the internal workings of atoms as their regulators.
a means of keeping track of the increments of time and displaying the result. Our ways of keeping track of the passage of time include the position of clock hands and digital time displays.
The history of timekeeping is the story of the search for ever more consistent actions or processes to regulate the rate of a clock.
The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has over 8,800 maps online. The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North and South America maps and other cartographic materials. Historic maps of the World, Europe, Asia and Africa are also represented. Collection categories include antique atlas, globe, school geography, maritime chart, state, county, city, pocket, wall, childrens and manuscript maps. The collection can be used to study history, genealogy and family history.
Whether you are an academic, family historian, collector, teacher or parent - welcome! All the worthwhile information about early maps can be found here, or from here. The 135 'pages' of this carefully organised site offer comment and guidance, and many, many links - selected for relevance and quality.
This site provides background information on clean air legislation and related efforts to enforce a reduction of pollutants in our atmosphere. It also serves as an introduction to a threaded discussion group on this subject that is being conducted by the American Meteorological Society.
This site focuses on the history of environmental legislation in the United States that sought to reduce airborne pollutants from motor vehicles, utilities, factories and other industrial sources. It begins with the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 and follows clean air initiatives, including major legislation of 1963, 1970 and 1990, to the present day. The site has useful biographies of the various acts' congressional sponsors and scientific advisors, as well as notes on those who opposed the legislation. In addition, there are photographs and satellite images of smog over major cities in the United States and worldwide, a timeline of environmental activism since the second World War, links to the EPA and other sites, and excerpts from Senator Edmund S. Muskie's Archives at Bates College. The authors of the site also wish to expand the historical record by recording the personal recollections of those involved with the debate over clean air, as well as any documents or photographs they might have.
This guide is intended for historians who want to use Geographical Information Systems (GIS). It describes how to create GIS databases and how to use GIS to perform historical research. Its aims are to:
Define GIS and outline how it can be used in historical research
Evaluate the way GIS models the world
Describe how to get data into a GIS
Demonstrate the basic operations that GIS offers to explore a database
Review how time is handled in GIS
Explain how GIS can be used for simple mapping and more advanced forms of visualisation
Discuss quantitative data analysis within GIS
Illustrate the use of GIS for qualitative analysis
Summarise documenting and preserving GIS datasets
The book provides a broad sweep of GIS knowledge relevant to historians without assuming prior knowledge. It includes case studies from a variety of historical projects that have used GIS and an extensive reading list of GIS texts relevant to historians.
The purpose of the GATE experiment was to understand the tropical atmosphere and its role in the global circulation of the atmosphere. It was the first major experiment of the Global Atmospheric Research program, whose goal was to understand the predictability of the atmosphere and extend the time range of daily weather forecasts to over two weeks.
This site, produced by the American Meteorological Society, examines the early years of research by GARP, the Global Atmospheric Research Program. GARP's Atlantic Tropical Experiment, also known as GATE, was a preliminary attempt in the 1970s to understand how the atmospheric patterns of the tropics affect the entire world's weather. The site includes the original research proposals and reviews of the program from the 1970s and early 80s, as well as maps of the GATE experiment zone near the Cape Verde Islands to the west of Africa. Moreover, the site collects and presents the personal recollections of the scientists and engineers who worked on GATE, and includes links to research produced by the experiment and its ongoing importance in meteorological science.
Established in 1879 to build and organize a collection of scientific materials in the earth sciences, the U.S. Geological Survey Library is now the largest library for earth sciences in the world. The library system includes four libraries and is part of the Geographic Information Office of the USGS.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) Library is the largest earth science library in the world. The library serves the research needs of USGS scientists throughout the nation and provides information to other organizations and individuals in the areas of geology, hydrology, cartography, biology, and related fields. USGS libraries are located in Reston, Virginia; Denver, Colorado; Menlo Park, California; and Flagstaff, Arizona. The site provides search engines for the library catalogue, USGS and other government maps, and the USGS minerals collection. Special Collections include field notes, photographs, sketches, logs, reports and maps dating from 1879. The page is broken down into useful sub-pages and is easily navigated.