In this section we should again mention the names of Mark Antun Dominis and Rugjer Boskovic, whose work was veritably encyclopaedistic.
The first known manual about book-keeping was "Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto," written by Benko Kotruljic (born in Dubrovnik, 15th century). Its French translation appeared under the title "Parfait négociant" in Lyon in 1613.
The NAHSTE project, based at the University of Edinburgh and funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP), was designed to open up a variety of outstanding collections of archives and manuscripts held at the three partner Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), and to make them fully accessible on the Web. The project also shows linkages to related records held by non-HEI collaborators
This booklet gives a brief introduction to the concept of plate tectonics and complements the visual and written information in This Dynamic Planet (see Further reading), a map published in 1994 by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Smithsonian Institution. The booklet highlights some of the people and discoveries that advanced the development of the theory and traces its progress since its proposal. Although the general idea of plate tectonics is now widely accepted, many aspects still continue to confound and challenge scientists. The earth-science revolution launched by the theory of plate tectonics is not finished.
ILEJ, the "Internet Library of Early Journals" was a joint project by the Universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Oxford, conducted under the auspices of the eLib (Electronic Libraries) Programme. It aimed to digitise substantial runs of 18th and 19th century journals, and make these images available on the Internet, together with their associated bibliographic data. The project finished in 1999, and no additional material will be added. See Final Report for conclusions of the project.
The core collection for the project are runs of at least 20 consecutive years of:
Three 18th-century journals Three 19th-century journals
Gentleman's Magazine
The Annual Register
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
Notes and Queries
The Builder
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
This full text library of early journals includes all of the articles printed in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (United Kingdom National Academy of Science) from 1757 to 1777. Researchers will find here articles on the history of biology, technology, physics, electicity, botany, zoology, chemistry, medicine, anatomy, astronomy, and other scientific subjects. Also included are full text versions of "The Builder" (1843-52) a British journal for engineers and archictes. All pages are electronically stored as PDF files and thus are not individually searchable. Searches can be done by author, title or subject for various articles in the database. Other full text journals here include the Annual Register (which often includes a section on Natural History), Blackwell's, Gentleman's Magazine, and Notes and Queries.
Ancient Greeks struggled to understand the nature of matter
Empedocles (around 490 to 444 BC) thought there were four original elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water. He thought everything else came about through their combination and/or separation by the two opposite principles of Love and Strife.
Leucippus (around 460 to 420 BC) and Democritus (around 460 to 370 BC), supposedly a pupil of Leucippus, are considered the founders of atomism. Leucippus regarded atoms as imperceptible, individual particles that differ only in shape and position.
Plato (about 427 to 347 BC) in his work, the Timaeus, proposes a mathematical construction of the elements - earth, air, fire, water. Each of these elements is said to consist of particles or primary bodies. Each particle is a regular geometrical solid- the cube, tetrahedron, octahedron and icosahedron. Each of these particles is composed of simple right triangles. The particles are like the molecules of the theory; the triangles are its atoms.
Plato's beliefs as regards the universe were that the stars, planets, Sun and Moon move round the Earth in crystalline spheres. The sphere of the Moon was closest to the Earth, then the sphere of the Sun, then Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and furthest away was the sphere of the stars. He believed that the Moon shines by reflected sunlight.
Queen Elizabeth I of England ascended to the throne in 1558. The last women of sole political power had been a Greek Egyptian Pharaoh named Cleopatra in the mid-1st century B.C. She reemerged in the 16th century as Elizabeth I. Her century is marked by the break away of Protestant churches from the authority of the Pope, whose Catholic authority had been instituted by the sword of the French King, Charlemagne, in the 8th century. Elizabeth was raised during intense religious strife between the Catholics and Protestants. She began her reign with rejections of marriage alliances with Spain, France and English nobles to rule as the Virgin Queen. As Queen she managed to pass a unification act that created a single Church of England that excluded papal authority. Elizabeth, however, seemed to be more enchanted with the arts encouraging the works of Shakespeare.
