Figures
0.1 This young lady finds her binoculars very unsatisfactory and might blame their optical quality, but in context, the causes of their failure include user errors and environmental factors. Victorian trade card, likely American 5
1.1 Patent drawing of the Jennings compass, showing the space for the treated iron filings, from Henry Constantine Jennings, Specification of Henry Constantine Jennings. Mariners’ Compass. Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1857 15
1.2 Patent drawing of the card of the Jennings compass, showing the iron “shields”, from Henry Constantine Jennings, Specification of Henry Constantine Jennings. Mariners’ Compass. Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1857 15
1.3 Magnetic compass inscribed “insulating Compass No 6” and “Jennings & Cos. Patent”, London, about 1818 18
1.4 Underside of the card of the Jennings compass with two iron “shields”, London, about 1818 18
2.1 Example of the graphical determination of the relative humidity RH from the ambient and dew point temperature measurements, using the Tetens equation 26
2.2 Heinrich Greinacher’s double diffusion hygrometer. Schweizerische Bauzeitung (1946), fig. 2 28
2.3 Schematic drawing of the double diffusion hydrometer. Adapted from Greinacher, Helvetica Physica Acta (1944), fig. 2 29
2.4 Greinacher’s simplified diffusion hygrometer. Chimia (1953), fig. 3 30
2.5 Example of the graphical determination of the relative humidity from the manometer readout and the temperature. Adapted from Greinacher, Schweizer Archive für angewandte Wissenschaft und Technik (1949), fig. 2 31
2.6 Commercial diffusion hygrometers: (a) TESA and (b) Rüeger 32
2.7 Internal view of the TESA hygrometer 34
2.8 Hair hygrometer “Hygrofix Haenni” 36
3.1 The Herschel telescope of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (RSAS), on its present mount (RSAS) 40
3.2 The 16 cm speculum mirror made by William Herschel and delivered to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1790 (RSAS) 40
3.3 The Herschel telescope in its original mount, illustrated in a drawing by Jacob Johan Tavaststjerna, 1813 (RSAS) 45
3.4 Edward Nairne’s 1771 portable equatorial telescope, as depicted in Edward Nairne, “XIV. Description and Use of a New Constructed Equatorial Telescope or Portable Observatory, Made by Mr Edward Nairne”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 61 (1771), pp. 107–113 47
3.5 Telescope built by William Herschel for William Watson at Bath in 1783–1785 51
3.6 The Herschel telescope on exhibition in Stockholm in Heritage from Newton and Linnaeus in 1962 (RSAS) 54
4.1 The Newall telescope at Ferndene without its dome in 1877 62
4.2 Robert Newall on the observing platform mentioned by Henry Holiday, operates his telescope 66
4.3 Maurolycus crater on the Moon, sketched by Henry Holiday using the Newall telescope, 1870 67
4.4 Eratosthenes crater on the Moon, sketched by Henry Holiday using the Newall telescope, 1871 68
4.5 The dismantling of the dome for the Newall telescope at Cambridge in 1957 73
4.6 The dome of the Newall telescope at Penteli Observatory 74
4.7 The Newall telescope today 76
5.1 Cast plaster phrenological head with numbered sections cast into the head, made by Francisco Mitchelelle of Pathhead, Scotland, mid-nineteenth century 79
5.2 Set of silver phrenological callipers, presented to George Combe by the pupils of Mr Williams’ Secular School, made by Michael Crichton, Edinburgh, 1852 80
5.3 Phrenology of the crow, from Joseph Vimont’s Traité de phrénologie humaine et comparée, 1831 82
6.1 Charles Grant’s perpetual log, or “Hydroscope”, 1806 94
6.2 Richard Hall Gower’s improved patent log, 1807, from Gower’s Supplement to the Practical Seamanship, plate 4 94
6.3 James Hookey’s fish-shaped log 101
6.4 Francis Higginson’s spring-loaded log, circa 1828 101
6.5 R. R. Baines’s perpetual log or “sea perambulator”, 1816, from the Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture, 2nd series, 37, 1820 102
6.6 The second form of the Gould log, from the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia or a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Miscellaneous Literature, Philadelphia, 1803, vol. 3, appendix, plate 1 111
6.7 The Massey log, 1802 patent design 112
7.1 A zone plate and its structure of concentric rings 134
7.2 The modern setup of the TXM. Image adapted from Peter Fischer et al., “Soft X-Ray Microscopy of Nanomagnetism”, Materials Today 9, nos. 1–2 (2006), pp. 26–33 136
7.3 Experimental proof that zone plates could be used as imaging optics. The image shows the Fe XVII radiation from the Sun, recorded during ESRO Mission CR16 on 11 March 1971 139
7.4 The first successful recording with the TMX prototype shows a metallic copper grating, from B. Niemann, D. Rudolph, and G. Schmahl, “Soft x-ray Imaging Zone Plates with Large Zone Numbers for Microscopic and Spectroscopic Applications”, Optics Communications 12, no. 2 (1974), pp. 160–163 140
7.5 The series of deteriorating red cells shows how the superficial and intracellular structures are reorganised after a malaria infection. From Cathleen Magowan et al., “Intracellular Structures of Normal and Aberrant Plasmodium Falciparum Malaria Parasites Imaged by Soft X-Ray Microscopy,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94, no. 12 (June 1997), pp. 6222–6227, fig. 2 144
7.6 Tomographic “slice” of a plant cell (left), which together with other slices was computed into the cell’s tomogram (right). Reprinted from D. Weiß et al., “Computed Tomography of Cryogenic Biological Specimens Based on X-Ray Microscopic Images”, Ultramicroscopy 84, nos. 3–4 (2000), pp. 185–197 145
7.7 An idea for a TXM icon: the alignment of fluorescence microscopy (left) with the red markers for the orientation and the TXM image (right) with the detailed information about the cells content and arrangement. Reprinted from Gerd Schneider et al., “Cryo X-Ray Microscope with Flat Sample Geometry for Correlative Fluorescence and Nanoscale Tomographic Imaging”, Journal of Structural Biology 177, no. 2 (2012), pp. 212–223 146
8.1 Finding qibla as a problem of spherical astronomy 151
8.2 The upper-right quarter of the back of this astrolabe is a quadrant for finding the direction of Mecca from some desired cities 154
8.3 A rough schema of Maṭlaʿ al-anwār devised by Muḥammad Bāqir Yazdī (a). Alongside numerous applications, the horizontal plate (b) offers three different methods for finding qibla of which the “method of zījes” is illustrated here 158
8.4 A Persian, rectangular qibla-indicator, now with empty housings for a hinged compass (on top) and a gnomon (at the centre). Unsigned and undated, possibly eighteenth century 160
8.5 Ṣafḥa-yi jahān-numā (“Plate of the World”): a Mecca-centred qibla-indicator accompanying a horizontal pin-gnomon sundial. Persian lines of instruction and a gazetteer of towns appear on the back of the instrument 162
8.6 A late qibla-indicator fitted with a compass and a horizontal pin-gnomon sundial. A gazetteer of numerous qibla arguments is engraved on its back, and on the inner and outer sides of its lid 163
9.1 Pedro Nunes’s book De Crepusculis (1542), fol. 18r, where the author presents a diagram of the nonius scale 169
9.2 Engraving of the “medium azimuthal brass quadrant” with the nonius, in the second edition of Tycho Brahe’s Astronomiæ instauratæ mechanica, Nuremberg, 1602 171
9.3 Azimuthal quadrant with a nonius scale, attributed to the English maker James Kynvyn, and produced for Robert Dudley, c.1595, as depicted in Dudley’s Dell’arcano del mare, Florence, 1647 173
9.4 First page of Orazio Borgondio’s paper describing his invention of “a new construction of an astronomical quadrant in which we have easily and with certainty the arc second”, from Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences et des beaux arts (April 1720), pp. 764–766 175
10.1 Thomas Young’s eriometer. Part of a letter from Young to Sir Joseph Banks dated 10 September 1810 180
10.2 A schematic sketch of the experimental setup 181
10.3 A diffraction phenomenon created by wool fibres examined with a replica of an eriometer 184
10.4 Replica of Young’s eriometer for Banks, 1810, built by Phil Hanisch 187
10.5 Experimental measurement of the diameter of small fibres by Paul Hanisch using his replica of Young’s 1810 eriometer 188
11.1 The Stereoautograph of Von Orel and Zeiss, 1922, from Arthur R. Hinks, “Stereographic Survey: The Stereoautograph”, Geographical Journal 59, no. 4 (April 1922), between pp. 276 and 277 199
11.2 Photograph of the Wild photo-theodolite acquired by the Royal Geographical Society in 1926, from D. A. Hutchison and Arthur Hinks, “The Photo-theodolite of Mr H. Wild”, Geographical Journal 67, no. 3 (March 1926), between pp. 236 and 237 200
11.3 Hope Islands, mangrove and shingle cay, photograph by M. A. Spender, 1928 205
11.4 Kodak’s shopfront, George Street, Sydney, 1932–1934 207
12.1 The newly built Institute of Physics in Padua, 1937 211
12.2 The Cockroft-Walton generator set up at Padua Institute of Physics, 1938 211
12.3 The cloud chamber kept at the Giovanni Pollen Museum in Padua 213
12.4 The cloud chamber described in 1953 by Cresti, Loria, and Zago, as depicted in Marcello Cresti, Arturo Loria, and Guido Zago, “Camera di Wilson in campo magnetico”, Il Nuovo Cimento 10 (1953), pp. 843–850: 844 219
12.5 The cosmic-ray laboratory set up in 1950 by Padua Institute of Physics at Pian di Fedaia, close to the Marmolada, at an altitude of 2000 m in the Dolomites 220
12.6 Rossi’s 7-ton electromagnet in use at the Fedaia cosmic-ray laboratory, in the 1950s 221
12.7 Marcello Cresti (on the left), and Guido Zago (on the right) with two tourists, at the entrance of the Fedaia cosmic-ray laboratory 222
13.1 Jennings insulated compass 226
13.2 Flow diagram of the creative process 227
13.3 The mariner’s astrolabe as a function of circles 229
13.4 Optical tooling target from the author’s workshop 230
13.5 The optical tooling target in action 232
13.6 Top view of the field cap of the Hubble Space Telescope mirror testing interferometer. NASA, November 1990, from Lew Allen et al., The Hubble Space Telescope: Optical Systems Failure Report, NASA, November 1990, fig. 7-5 233
13.7 Repairing the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA, 5 December 1993, STS061-87-062, from https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-61/html/sts061-87-062.html (site discontinued) 234
Tables
1.1 The first fifty entries of “A List of Compasses, Instruments &c. at the Compass Observatory”, about 1850 8
6.1 British log proposals in Hanoverian era, organised by date. All publications printed in London unless otherwise indicated 126