The British Society for the History of Mathematics
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Written by David Singmaster (zingmast@sbu.ac.uk ). Links to relevant external websites are being added occasionally to this gazetteer but the BSHM has no control over the availability or contents of these links. Please inform the BSHM Webster (A.Mann@gre.ac.uk) of any broken links.
[When the gazetteer was edited for serial publication in the BSHM Newsletter, references were omitted since the bibliography was too substantial to be included. Publication on the web permits references to be included for material now being added to the website, but they are still absent from material originally prepared for the Newsletter - TM, August 2002]
Because of its size, the London section of the Gazetteer is divided into eight pages: the main index page; scientific institutions and societies; the British Museum, British Library and Science Museum; other institutions and places (this page); and mathematical people: A - C, D - G, H - M, N - R and S - Z. Inevitably these categories are somewhat arbitrary so use of the index page and / or the Search facility is recommended.
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There are several monuments to mathematicians in Westminster Abbey. Details can be found in a useful booklet entitled The Abbey Scientists by A. Rupert Hall.
John Couch Adams (1819-1892), one of the predictors of Neptune, is commemorated by a relief medallion in the North Aisle of the Choir.
Isaac Barrow (1630-1677) is buried in Poets' Corner. He died on a visit to London while in lodgings near Charing Cross.
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) has been recently commemorated in Poets' Corner (not for his mathematics, I guess).
William Cavendish (1592-1676), first Duke of Newcastle and ancestor of the Dukes of Devonshire and of Henry Cavendish, has a monument by Grinling Gibbons in the North Transept.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) is buried in Poets' Corner, in the floor near his monument. He wrote the first scientific book in English A treatise on the astrolabe. He was buried in the Abbey because he was Clerk of Works to the King. Poets' Corner was established around him. He lived in a house in the gardens of the Abbey in 1399-1400. Isaac Disraeli observes that Chaucer used a "suspicious shield, which the heralds opined must have been blazoned out of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth propositions of the first book of Euclid." I don't know if this is on his monument here or elsewhere.
A plaque to Paul Dirac, adjacent to Newton, was unveiled on 13 Nov 1995.
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Inside the Choir, to the left, is the grave of Canon Robinson Duckworth (1834-1911), the friend of Lewis Carroll, who was rowing on the immortal day that Carroll invented Alice.
There is a floor medallion to Michael Faraday (1791-1867).
There is a memorial to Henry Fawcett who started as a mathematician but went into political economy and politics, becoming Postmaster General, and the father of Philippa Fawcett (the first woman placed above the 'senior [male] wrangler').
A memorial to George Green (1793-1841) was unveiled on 16 July 1993 as part of his bicentenary celebrations (reported in BSHM Newsletter 25-6 (1994), pp.5-7).
A monument to Edmond Halley was unveiled in Westminster Abbey on the day of perihelion of Halley's Comet, 9 Feb 1986.
Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) is buried in the north aisle of the Nave, and there is also a commemorative stone to his father William Herschel.
Jeremiah Horrox (or Horrocks) (1617?-1641) has a tablet and portrait medallion at the west end of the nave.
The physicists William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) (1824-1907), Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) and J. J. Thomson (1856-1940) are buried near Newton. Kelvin is honoured by a stained glass window, along with Henry V and Dick Whittington. James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) is commemorated by a floor inscription nearby.
Charles Montague (1661-1715), first Earl of Halifax and the patron of Newton and Newton's niece, is buried in the Chapel of Henry VII.
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Voltaire attended the funeral of Isaac Newton (1642-1727) here: "I have seen a professor of mathematics, only because he was great in his vocation, buried like a king who had done good to his subjects". Newton's grave is under a stone floor slab marker "His depositum est Quod Mortale fuit Isaaci Newtoni". His monument, designed by William Kent and sculpted by Rysbrack, is one of the most conspicuous sites in the Abbey and had long been denied to noble applicants. It shows him resting on a pile of his books. The stone parchment borne by the cherubs beside him once showed a 'Diagram' and a 'converging series', but these vanished when the monument was cleaned c1950. A putto holds (held??) a diagram of elliptic orbits from De Motu Corporum, and there is an inscription: "Let mortals congratulate themselves that so great an ornament of the human race has existed" . (The sources vary - there may be one Latin inscription and the above are parts of it, with varying translations in the different sources.) There are also epitaphs which were proposed or written much later and are not actually on the tomb, such as Alexander Pope's: "Nature and Nature's law lay hid in night. God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light."
Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III, in whose honour Queen's College, Oxford, was founded, is buried in the Chapel of Edward the Confessor.
Lord Rayleigh (1842-1919) and Thomas Young (1773-1829) have medallions in St. Andrew's Chapel.
Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-1682), nephew of Charles I, was a major military figure of his time, becoming commander-in-chief of Charles I's armies in the 1640s. He was also interested in science and devoted himself to scientific pursuits after retiring from military life in 1653 and continued upon returning to England after the Restoration. He was a founder of the Royal Society. The problem of passing a cube through another of the same size is sometimes called Prince Rupert's Problem and he is further commemorated in Prince's metal (a form of brass used for guns) and Prince Rupert's drops. He also greatly improved gunpowder and invented a quadrant for mariners. He is buried in Henry VII's chapel.
Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell (1650-1707) has a monument in the South Choir Aisle. It was his wreck of four ships with the loss of 2000 lives, including his own, off the Scilly Isles on 22 Oct 1707 which led to the Longitude Act of 1714. One of only two persons to be washed ashore alive, Shovell was promptly killed by a fisherwoman for his ring.
Lady Frances Sidney (1531-1589), Countess of Sussex and foundress of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, has a tomb in St. Paul's Chapel.
William Spottiswoode (1825-1883), President of the Royal Society and mathematical physicist, is buried in Poets' Corner.
Sir George Stokes (1819-1903), PRS and mathematical physicist, has a portrait medallion in the North Aisle of the Choir.
Thomas Tompion (1639-1713) and George Graham (1673-1751), the leading clockmakers of their time, are buried in the same grave.
"Alice" Liddell married Reginald Hargreaves here on 15 Sep 1880.
Christopher Wren designed the west towers of the Abbey, but they were built by his students Hawksmoor and James.
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The Houses of Parliament are an unlikely candidate for a mathematical monument, but qualify for several reasons.
First, Geoffrey Chaucer was Clerk of the King's Works at Westminster Palace in 1389-1391 and supervised the building of Westminster Hall, the only surviving medieval part of the Houses.
The British Exchequer used tally sticks until 1782. In 1834, the cancelled tallies were declared surplus and the clerks were ordered to incinerate them in the House furnaces. A chimney overheated and set fire to the whole building, providing the subject of one of Turner's finest paintings. Examples of the tally-sticks are displayed in the Terrace corridor. This destruction had a further scientific footnote: the Imperial standards of length, weight, volume, etc., were destroyed and a major commission chaired by Airy was required to reconstruct the standards during 1838-1842. Reminders of this are secondary standards of length in three places: 1) Set into the wall of the north side of Trafalgar Square. (These were erected by H. W. Chisholm, father of Grace Chisholm (Young).) 2) In the Great Hall of the Guildhall. 3) By the gate of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. There also are (were?) a standard yard and pound built into the right wall of the staircase from the Lower Waiting Hall to the Upper Waiting Hall.
From 1869 to 1938, the Board of Trade used the adjacent Jewel Tower for its Standards Department.
Several mathematicians and scientists have also been Members of Parliament, including Francis Bacon (for Liverpool, 1588-1592), Henry Billingsley, George Cayley (the early aeronautical pioneer), Davies (Giddy) Gilbert (for Bodmin, 1808-1830; he wrote on negative numbers), Joseph Larmor (for Cambridge University, 1911-1922), John Stuart Mill (for Westminster, 1865-1868), Isaac Newton (for Cambridge University, 1688-1690 and 1701-1702, but he is only recorded as having spoken once, when he asked for a window to be opened), Samuel Pepys (for Harwich), David Ricardo (for Portarlington, 1819-1823), Sir John Sinclair (for Caithness), Sir George Gabriel Stokes (for Cambridge University, 1887-1892), James Stuart (6 times, for Cambridge University??), William Henry Fox Talbot (for Chippenham, 1833-1834) and Christopher Wren. William Parsons, as Baron Oxmantown, was MP for King's County (now Co. Offaly), Ireland, in 1823-1834; later, as third Earl Rosse, he sat in the Lords, as did his son, Laurence, fourth Earl. Rayleigh and Rutherford occasionally spoke in the House of Lords.
The father of Grace Emily Chisholm (Young) (1868-1944) was Warden of the Standards from 1867 to 1877 and she writes of her visits to the building and the nearby Jewel Tower, which housed the Standards Department from 1869 to 1938.
A short way down Broadway from Westminster Abbey is the (supposedly secret) headquarters of MI6, where the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) was set up c.1918 and remained until its removal to Bletchley Park in Sep 1939.
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The Banqueting Hall in Whitehall is one of Inigo Jones' harmonious designs, built in 1622, with the main room being a double cube.
The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, was designed by William Wilkins,
a mathematician turned architect (qv under Cambridge).
It has four mosaic floors in the entrance, made in 1926-1933 and 1945-1952 by
Boris Anrep. The Landing shows the Muses, including Lydia Lopokova (the ballet
dancer wife of John Maynard Keynes) as Terpsichore, the Muse of Dancing, at
the far left and Urania, the Muse of Astronomy at the back right. The West Vestibule
shows the labours of Life, including depictions of Astronomy, Engineering and
Science. The East Vestibule shows the Pleasures of Life. The North Vestibule,
done after WW2, shows the Modern Virtues. Bertrand Russell is shown as Lucidity
pulling Truth from a well at the back left. E = mc2 appears as an object of
contemplation to T. S. Eliot at the back. Rutherford is shown with a splitting
atom at back right. Fred Hoyle is depicted as a steeplejack in Pursuit, at the
front right corner. The middle right shows Alice in Wonderland. [An Introduction
to Boris Anrep's Mosaics at the National Gallery London; The National Gallery,
1993.]
In the Gallery is Hans Holbein's 1533 painting 'The Ambassadors' which features an anamorphic view of a skull - i.e. a view with a distorted perspective - and some dials believed to have been made by Nicholas Kratzer. John Sharp has suggested that the proper view of the skull is from the right of the painting: previously it was thought that one should look from the left. For detailed discussion see the recent National Gallery exhibition catalogue about this painting.
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The National Portrait Gallery is located in part of the same building and contains portraits of many British scientists and mathematicians, some on permanent display. On a recent visit, I noted the following in an exhibit of 19 & 20C portraits and in the Room devoted to Science and Technology - some of these are the classic images of these people. C. Babbage, P. Blackett, T. Carlyle, L. Carroll (C. L. Dodgson), M. Faraday, H. & M. Fawcett, J. Herschel, D. Hodgkin, W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin), J. M. Keynes, J. S. Mill, C. J. Napier, R. Napier, F. Nightingale, B. Russell, E. Rutherford, H. J. S. Smith, H. Spencer.
The Cuming Museum, Newington Reference Library, 155-157 Walworth Road, SE1; tel: 020 7701 1342, is a small local museum with relics of Faraday, who was born and baptised nearby, including a bust, his family bible and some steel samples. A recent, but temporary, exhibit included a fine puzzle jug (probably Doulton of c.1850), a late 19C Chinese boxwood cube puzzle and an early example of the impossible arrow through a small hole, done as a Pears Soap Puzzle c1880.
The Guildhall has copies of the standards of length in its Great Hall. The Library's Clock Room contains the Clockmakers' Company Collection of old clocks and watches, including some of John Harrison's work.
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Sir John Soane's Museum is at 12, 13, 14 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2. It has the watch that Queen Anne gave to Wren [Montizambert (2), p. 124]. The collection includes many original Hogarth works. One of these, 'The Election Entertainment' of c1755, has a placard on the floor saying "Give us our Eleven Days", a reference to the change to the Gregorian calendar in 1752 [A. Q. Morton, p. 17, is a dim reproduction]. Another, 'The Rake's Progress: The Madhouse' of c1735 shows a lunatic in Bedlam drawing a scheme to determine longitude by firing bombs, but this appears in the first version of the painting and it doesn't show well (or at all) in this version. In both cases, the material is rather clearer in engravings of these pictures.
The Tower of London is where the Royal Mint was located from the 13C till 1812.
Chaucer was imprisoned in the Tower at one time. Archbishop William
Laud (1573-1645), once a mathematician, was imprisoned here and executed
on Tower Hill nearby [Greenwood (2), p. 149 with portrait on p. 150]. Jonas
Moore was governor of the Tower in the 1670s. Flamsteed lived here
as Moore's guest from 1674 until becoming Astronomer Royal in 1675. Pepys
was imprisoned here briefly in 1679. Newton (1642-1727) was Warden of
the Mint from 1696 to 1699 while he supervised the complete remaking of the
silver coinage. From 1699 until his death in 1727, he was Master of the Mint,
a less responsible, but better paid, job. He may have lived briefly in the Warden's
Residence, which was in the Tower, near the Jewel Tower, or he may have lived
nearby in Haydon Square, in the Minories. [Dyer. Craig, p. 13.] An assay furnace
and a touchstone of Newton's were preserved at the Mint [Craig, p. 22]. After
Newton's death, the Mastership was offered to Samuel Clarke, a noted expositor
of Newton's work, but he declined and it was offered to and accepted by John
Conduitt, husband of Newton's stepniece [Craig, p. 26].
In 1812, the Mint moved to the Old Royal Mint building just east?northeast of
the Tower. Babbage applied for the Mastership in 1846 and 1849. John
Herschel was appointed Master in 1849.
The Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, has a display of Indonesian betel nut cutters collected by Samuel Eilenberg! (I don't know if they are still there?) It also contains "Tippoo's Tiger", a curious Indian sculpture of a tiger eating a European and containing a mechanical organ which moves one arm of the hapless victim.
The Wallace Collection, Manchester Square, is a famous art collection, but
it includes an unrivalled collection of gold boxes, mostly for snuff. Box G80,
of gold and cornelian, made in Dresden c1770, has a secret panel, only discovered
in 1976, which has portraits of Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet on the
two sides. She was his mistress and the translator of Newton into French.
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Hampton Court Palace is on the SW borders of London. Christopher Wren designed the present east and south wings, and the Fountain Court. In the Clock Court is a superb astronomical clock of 1540, possibly designed by Nicholas Kratzer, 'deviser of the King's horologies', and now running with an 1879 works. Kratzer had been tutor to Thomas More's family and astronomer to Henry VIII.
The famous maze was planted c.1690 by George London and Henry Wise and is the oldest extant hedge maze as well as one of the earliest non-unicursal designs. There are islands in the maze, but the 'hand on wall' rule solves it. In 1997, it was reported that the replanting with English yew in the 1960s was done with the plants too close together and so the trees did not produce lateral growth, leaving gaps which have had to be filled with railings or stakes. Possibly the whole maze will have to be replanted.
The King's Observatory, or Kew Observatory, is in the Old Deer Park, Richmond. Built for George III by Sir William Chambers and finished in 1769 in time for the King to observe the transit of Venus on 3 June. The prime meridian ran through here before Greenwich. Previously, Queen Caroline had a Hermitage built on the site in 1731, decorated with busts of Boyle and Newton by Rysbrack; these are now at Kensington Palace. In the Old Deer Park are three obelisks, to the east, west and north, used as meridian marks for adjusting the instruments.
The King's Astronomer at Kew was, from 1768 to 1782, George III's former mathematics tutor Stephen C. T. Demainbray (1710-1782). He was followed, from 1782 to 1840, by his son Stephen G. F. T. Demainbray (1759-1854), assisted by his brother-in-law Stephen Rigaud, who died in 1814. Stephen Peter Rigaud (1774-1839), the son of Stephen Rigaud and Mary Demainbray, was Savilian professor of geometry, then astronomy, at Oxford; he succeeded his father as Observer in 1814 until his death in 1839.
Demainbray brought his collection of instruments to Kew and they were incorporated with the royal collection of instruments bought by George III in 1760-1762 from George Adams, as well as instruments of previous kings. These were later given to King's College, London, and then to the Science Museum in 1927 where they have recently been put on display.
In 1772, the horologist John Harrison asked George III to have his H5 tested at Kew. It did not perform well, but the King remembered he had stored lodestones nearby! When these were removed, H5 was accurate to 1/3 sec/day over a ten week period.
It ceased as an astronomical observatory in 1841, but continued as a magnetic and meteorological observatory until the early 1980s. Francis Ronalds was Director in 1843-1852. In 1858, Warren De La Rue set up his photoheliograph here and began the first daily recording of sunspots. It has now been renamed King's Observatory and Museum, and converted into the head office of Autoglass Holdings Ltd: to visit it one must make advance arrangements (telephone Mr. Douglas Roberts, 020-8907-4193).
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The London Museum contains one of the most famous of automata - Psycho - devised by John Algernon Clarke and bought and improved by J. N. Maskelyne.
The north part of Burlington House, with its entrance in Burlington Gardens, was originally built for the University of London in 1866-1869 and until recently housed the Museum of Mankind, the ethnographic section of the British Museum. Over the central portico and on the parapet of the facade are statues of Archimedes, Aristotle, Bacon, Bentham, Cuvier, Davy, Galen, Galileo, Goethe, Harvey, Hume, Hunter, Laplace, Leibniz, Linnaeus, Lock, Newton, Plato, Adam Smith, and a few non-scientists.
The Royal Botanic Gardens has the oldest 'Newton' apple tree, taken directly from the original at Woolsthorpe before it perished.
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The (old) Royal Observatory is located on the hill in Greenwich Park (Greenwich, SE10; tel: 020-8858 4422) overlooking the National Maritime Museum, of which it is now a part. It is of especial interest to those of an astronomical or navigational inclination. It was founded on 22 Jun 1675 by Charles II who commanded Flamsteed to apply "the most exact Care and Diligence to rectifying the Tables of the Motions of the Heavens, and the Places of the fixed Stars, so as to find out the so?much desired Longitude at Sea, for perfecting the art of Navigation".
Charles's interest had been aroused a year earlier when the Sieur de St. Pierre, a French friend of his mistress, claimed to have a method for finding longitude. This was essentially the method of lunar distances, first proposed by Johannes Werner in 1514. A royal commission, including Wren and Hooke, had already been set up to consider using the dip of a magnetic needle to determine longitude and Charles asked them to study St. Pierre's proposal. The commission asked Flamsteed to report on it and he showed the method was theoretically sound, but was impractical as the positions of the moon and the stars were not known with sufficient accuracy. Jonas Moore, governor of the Tower, Surveyor General of the Ordnance, instigated the foundation of an observatory and actually donated the necessary instruments to Flamsteed. Flamsteed's salary was so low (£100 per year, to cover costs of instruments and assistants) that he had to take in pupils and to serve as deputy for Walter Pope, Gresham Professor of Astronomy, from 1681, and to be rector of St. Bartholomew's, Burstow, Surrey, in 1684-1719. (Burstow is close to Gatwick Airport, at the border with West Sussex, some 23 miles from Greenwich). Flamsteed's widow removed the instruments, leaving Halley with none.
The Astronomers Royal lived in Flamsteed House from 1676 to 1948; this was designed by Wren for, as he put it, "the Observator's habitation and a little for pompe". Hooke directed the construction. The foundation stone was laid on 10 Aug 1675 and the first observations from it were made on 31 May 1676.
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Several Astronomers Royal are of interest to mathematicians and the others are of some historical importance even if not of mathematical interest, so I will list them (dates are of tenure of the post).
1. John Flamsteed (1675-1719). He was the first astronomer to make regular use of telescopic sights. He also invented the conical projection for maps. His assistant, Joseph Crosthwait, prepared his observations for publication after his death.
2. Edmond Halley (1720-1742), whose tombstone is in the courtyard. He continued as Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford while being Astronomer Royal.
3. James Bradley (1742-1762), who announced the nutation of the Earth's axis in 1748, using the zenith sector that he had used to discover the aberration of light in 1725-1729. This instrument may still be at the observatory. He also continued as Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford. He resisted Harrison's chronometer as a solution to the longitude problem, preferring the astronomical method of lunar distances which he developed and he hoped for a share of the prize money.
4. Nathaniel Bliss (1762-1764), Halley's successor as Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford. He favoured the method of lunar distances.
5. Nevil Maskelyne (1765-1811). He also favoured the method of lunar distances and seems to have deliberately tried to sabotage Harrison's chronometers and the tests on them, hoping to win the Longitude Prize for himself. He founded the Nautical Almanac in 1766. He determined the universal gravitational constant G in 1774-1776 (v. Schiehallion). Jean (III) Bernoulli (1744-1807) visited the Observatory in 1769. Maskelyne installed the first transit telescope, on the present Prime Meridian. With this and new clocks, it was believed that observations could be made accurate to 0.1 sec. However Maskelyne discovered that he and his assistant Kinnebrooke differed by an average of 0.8 sec and Kinnebrooke was sacked. Bessell later recognized the significance of the difference and developed it into the 'personal equation' of an observer, a phenomenon due to differing reaction times of observers.
6. John Pond (1811-1835), who was requested to resign.
7. George Biddell Airy (1835-1881). Airy's study of oscillatory phenomena in the regulators of the Greenwich equatorial telescopes led to two papers in 1840 and 1850 which are considered the beginning of the theory of automatic control. But Airy is mainly remembered as too busy to consider John Couch Adams' predictions of Neptune in 1846.
On Airy's retirement in 1881, J. C. Adams & J. W. L. Glaisher both declined the post.
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8. William Henry Mahoney Christie (1881-1910). Chief Assistant from 1870.
9. Frank Watson Dyson (1910-1933). Dyson organized the expeditions from Greenwich to Brazil and from Cambridge to Principe which observed the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919, confirming Einstein's prediction of the bending of light. A. S. Eddington was a prominent member of the expedition. Sydney Chapman (1888-1970) was an assistant.
10. Harold Spencer Jones (1933-1955). He used observations of Eros to determine accurately the distance of the Earth from the sun.
11. Richard v. d. R. Woolley (1956-1971).
12. Martin Ryle (1971-1982). 1974 Nobel Physics Prize for radio astronomy work.
13. Francis Graham Smith (1982-1990).
14. Arnold Wolfendale (1991-1994).
15. Martin Rees (1995- ).
From 1972, the roles of Astronomer Royal and Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, then at Herstmonceux, were separated and the Directors have been the following.
13. E. Margaret Burbidge (1972-1973)
14. Alan Hunter (1973-)
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Some other notable persons and events connected with the Observatory are the following.
Abraham Sharp (1653-1743) lived with Flamsteed in 1684-1685 and was his assistant in 1689-1696. In 1699, he computed pi to 75 places.
In 1730, John Harrison came to see Halley here.
Charles Mason (1730-1787), of the Mason-Dixon Line in the USA, was an assistant in the late 18C.
John Hellins was an assistant in the late 18C.
John William Thomas (1805-1840) was Computor from about 1834 and Chief Computor at the time of his death and was buried in a lost grave at St. Alphege's, Greenwich. (v. Llanberis, Newsletter 38 p.42).
James Glaisher was Superintendent of the Magnetic and Meteorological Department from about 1840. He was a pioneering meteorologist and made numerous ascents in balloons to make observations, reaching 30,000 feet without oxygen in 1862, a record that still stands.
E. Walter Maunder was Superintendent of the Physical Department, c.1890. He announced the eleven year cycle of sunspots in 1904.
Philip Cowell was Chief Assistant from 1896 to c.1910. In 1910, Cowell and Crommelin used new numerical quadratures to predict the perihelion of Halley's comet, getting an answer off by only three days. They were able to extrapolate backward and identify all its appearances back to -240.
A. S. Eddington (1882-1944), was Chief Assistant (1906-1913).
In 1908, Melotte discovered the 8th moon of Jupiter.
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The Observatory removed to Herstmonceux Castle, Sussex, in 1948-1958, due to smoke and light pollution obscuring the viewing, as well as air pollution attacking the instruments. Herstmonceux is a minute or so two off the Prime Meridian. The Greenwich buildings were turned over to the National Maritime Museum as the observatory moved out. Some departments had already had to move in the 1920s, e.g. the magnetic observations. The Royal Greenwich Observatory no longer exists as a particular site; since 1990, it has been headquartered at Cambridge and its main observatory is the Northern Hemisphere Observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands, Spain. In 1997, the government announced plans to merge it with the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.
The Prime Meridian crosses the Observatory courtyard. Outside is a 24 hour Shepherd slave clock installed by Airy in 1852, part of the system that provided time signals by telegraphy. Beneath it are standards of length, a reminder that the original standards were burnt in the Houses of Parliament in 1834 and had to be re-established. Note the fine views.
Entering the Observatory courtyard, you cross the Meridian, marked by a lighted strip. The Meridian is defined by the cobweb on the lens of Airy's transit circle of 1850, which is still in place and in working order, but not in use. The present Meridian was internationally adopted by a conference in Washington in 1884. A report says that a laser beam now projects along it to Essex, but looking through a telescope provided, one sees that a recent building is obstructing the view to the Essex skyline! There were earlier meridians through earlier instruments. From 1750 to 1850, it was 19 feet west of the present one. There is an 1824 obelisk on Pole Hill, Epping Forest, Chingford, Essex, used for aligning the 1750 instrument, but in 1943 it had long been invisible. (A letter to The Times from Paul A. Moxey on 5 Nov 1982 confirms that the view is hidden 'by a dense growth of hawthorn and oak'.) I visited Pole Hill in 1995 and can confirm that the obelisk is difficult to find and there is hardly any view. From 1675 to c.1720, Flamsteed used a Meridian further to the west and from c.1725 to 1750, Halley used a Meridian a bit east of Flamsteed's. Plaques facing the courtyard show the positions of Halley's and Flamsteed's Meridians.
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The Meridian has been marked a few other places, e.g. in the underground passage at Hither Green railway station. It also passes through the Yacht pub, to the east of the Naval College, and through Greenwich Power Station. In the Lee Valley Regional Park, just north of Waltham Abbey, there is a walk which goes along the Meridian for over half a mile [T. Limna; Letter; The Times (9 Nov 1982)]. On the pathways from the car park to Waltham Abbey are two indications, a mosaic and a 1995 'Meridian Gateway' by Jon Mills. (v. also Brighton, Holbeach, Lewes, Louth.).
The ticket counter is in a lobby, where there is a bust of Halley and some instruments, including a 1580 astrolabe. At the far side of the courtyard, beyond Halley's tombstone, is a gateway leading to a small building with a camera obscura which gives a fine view of Greenwich. Flamsteed built this room for this purpose. (A leaflet is available near the ticket counter.)
Back in the courtyard, enter an annex to Flamsteed House. The first two rooms have material on Flamsteed, Greenwich and the longitude problem. There are a copy of Moore's Arithmetick of 1650, a bust of Flamsteed, a map showing Anson's believed and real routes, Anson's log, a print of Wren and astrolabes from 1360 and c1400. From four small rooms, furnished as in Flamsteed's time, one ascends into the Octagon Room, the original observing room at the top of Flamsteed House. This is one of the few Wren interiors extant, now restored to its original form. There are three replicas of the one-year clocks made by Thomas Tompion in 1676 which Flamsteed used to check the constancy of the day: the first clocks with Tompion's new escapement and the first clocks sufficiently accurate to check the accuracy of the rotation of the earth. One of the originals is in the British Museum. The other was recently located at Holkham Hall, Norfolk, and bought for the Observatory where it is now on display, though it had been much modified for use as a domestic clock. From the Octagon Room, one descends to an exhibition on time-keeping and longitude.
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The background to this is the disaster when on the night of 22 Oct 1707, Sir Clowdisley Shovell ran his HMS Association and three other ships aground on the Gilstone Ledges off the Scilly Isles, losing about 2000 lives, including his own. This is usually ascribed to his not knowing his longitude. In fact the consensus among his captains was that they were near Ushant at the south entrance to the English Channel, whereas they were approaching the Scillies, about 100 miles north-northwest of Ushant. Thus, the error was more one of latitude than of longitude. Nonetheless, this disaster led to Parliament passing the Longitude Act on 8 Jul 1714, offering £20,000 for a solution of the problem of finding longitude at sea to within half a degree (about 30 miles).
At the beginning of this room is material about the longitude problem: a copy of the Longitude Act; numerous proposals of methods; a copy of the first version of William Hogarth's The Madhouse from his series The Rake's Progress which shows a lunatic in Bedlam drawing a scheme proposed by William Whiston & Humphrey Ditton to determine longitude by firing bombs into the air; the first volumes of the Nautical Almanac; Huygens' attempt to make a sea-going clock; etc.
The room opens into a larger section. Here are the most notable items of the entire Museum, the original marine chronometers of John Harrison (1693-1776), which solved the problem of longitude. The central cases contain H1 (1735), H2 (1741), H3 (1757) and H4 (the first small chronometer of 1755-1759 which is the most important watch ever made). H4 lost only five seconds in an 81 day voyage to Jamaica in 1761-1762 and when William Harrison predicted landfall at Madeira within a day, Captain Digges was incredulous and bet it would not occur. When it did, Digges offered to buy a chronometer as soon as one became available and presented William and the absent John with an octant, now on display in this room. The return voyage was beset with bad weather, but the total error on both voyages, lasting about 140 days, was under two minutes and should have won the Longitude Prize. There are computer animations showing some of the key points of H1 and H3. H1 weighs about 75 lb and was originally housed in a glazed case 4 ft cube. H2 weighs about 86 lb, but is smaller than H1. H3 weighs about 60 lb. H4 weighs only 3 lb and is 5 inches across. H1, H2, H3 are running, because they have very little friction and use lignum vitae, so are self-lubricating (though H3 needs a little lubrication). These techniques could not be reduced to the size of H4 which requires lubrication and very delicate overhauling every three years, so it has been stopped to prevent wear or damage.
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To the sides are the only portrait of Harrison, holding the Jefferys watch because H4 was being tested, and an engraving made from it but with H4 replacing the Jefferys watch. There is a model showing how he made his wooden gears. There several of his drawings and a manuscript of 1775. There are also the notebooks of one of the unsung heroes of the story: in 1920, Lieutenant Commander Rupert T. Gould found all the Harrison chronometers in dreadful condition with some covered in corrosion and H1 missing many parts. Maskelyne had dropped H1 and had put all of them in a damp cupboard! Gould spent twelve unpaid years restoring them to working order. There is also a facsimile of Harrison's large Royal Astronomical Society regulator, accurate to one second in a hundred days.
In the far case are various developments of H4: K1 (1770), the first replica of H4 made by Larcum Kendall, costing £450 and used by Captain Cook on his 2nd and 3rd voyages-it lost only 7 minutes and 45 seconds on the 2nd voyage of 3 years; K2 (1772), the second replica, costing £200, used by Captain Bligh on the Bounty - it was taken to Pitcairn Island and bought by an American whaling captain in 1808; K3 (1774), costing £100 and used by Cook on his third voyage and by Vancouver; examples and materials of Earnshaw and Arnold who developed cheaper versions.
Down another staircase is an exhibit on Greenwich Time, etc. The big clock in the middle uses Grimthorpe's 'double three legged gravity escapement' which he devised for the clock in the Houses of Parliament. There is an early electric clock of 1845 by Alexander Bain, who patented the idea in 1840. There is a facsimile of Congreve's rolling ball clock: the original is in the British Museum. The 1852 Shepherd Clock which electrically drove slave clocks and provided time signals by telegraphy is here. There is a 19C railwayman's clock, which was set to GMT and sealed to prevent changes. A Japanese pillar clock has movable hour markers because they used 'temporal hours' obtained by dividing the day and the night into twelve equal parts, whose lengths vary with the seasons. And there is a digital hourglass (!!) of 1990.
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In the 20C, Atomic clocks replaced astronomical observations as the basis of time-keeping. Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the average of 11(?) atomic clocks, mostly using vibrations of caesium-133 atoms. The earth runs a bit slow leading to the occasional introduction of 'leap-seconds' at the end of the year. Currently one or two occur per year. All observatories and radio stations, etc., now use UTC (since about 1980), but GMT is still the legal time!
We now pass through several old viewing rooms with many instruments on display -the collection of astrolabes is the second largest in the world. There is a five foot transit instrument made by Robert Hooke and George Graham for Halley in 1721, the first transit instrument in England. On the side is Bradley's 12 ft zenith sector, built by Graham in 1727, designed to observe the zenith of a Draconis and which established the nutation of the earth. There is also Halley's 8 foot mural quadrant of 1725. This defined the Prime Meridian until 1750 when Bradley had an 8 foot transit instrument built in the next room by John Bird. There is a portrait of Halley. In the case to the side are many instruments including the first sextant, made by John Bird in about 1757. The site of the Bradley instrument defined the Prime Meridian until 1850, though the instrument was replaced by a 10 foot instrument by Troughton in 1816. In 1850, Airy had a transit circle built which was accurate to 1/100" of arc. This is still in place and in working order-its crosshair still defines the Prime Meridian - it was last regularly used in 1954. The latitude of the crosshair is 51degrees 28' 38" and the altitude is 153.83 ft. There is a portrait of Airy.
When you descend, walk through the garden to the Planetarium in the South Building. Beside it, under a plastic dome, are the remains of William Herschel's 40 foot telescope from his house at Slough. It was the largest telescope in the world and he used it to discover two moons of Saturn. John Herschel dismantled the telescope in 1840 and a falling tree broke up the tube, so only a short section is here. The South Building was erected in the late C19 to house the computers - who were humans in those days. Above the windows are carved the names of notable astronomers, etc. I recorded Adams, Arnold, Bird, Bliss, Bradley, Dollond, Earnshaw, Flamsteed, Graham, Halley, Harrison, Herschel, Newton, Sharp, Sheepshanks.
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The Museum has a small display room in its storage area containing some of the many items not in the main displays. A serious student may be admitted upon application to a curator-ask at the ticket desk. This room currently includes the earliest(?) theodolite, signed by H. Cole and dated to 1574 (but I didn't see if the date is on the instrument) and surprisingly small, perhaps 5 inches high. It was invented by Leonard Digges in the 1560s and he presumably made examples then, but none are now known. There is another earliest(?) theodolite at Oxford, signed "Humphrey Cole, 1586". The room also has a sundial of c1635 engraved with William Oughtred's double horizontal quadrant of the 1620s; Oughtred was the inventor of the slide rule and this dial was probably made to his specification.
The Time Ball on the roof was first installed in 1833 and was the first public time-signal, dropping at 1:00 pm GMT. In 1852, a new 'Shepherd's Master Clock System' and telegraphy were added to produce time signals at other places, e.g. on the Electric Telegraph Company in the Strand, London Bridge Station and then via the railways to time balls at other ports. (The 1852 clock was seen above.) Greenwich Mean Time was made the legal time in Britain in 1880 and was adopted as international standard in 1884. Radio time signals for correcting chronometers began in 1927. The Observatory began providing the BBC time signal on 5 Feb 1924. The signal originally had five pips, but this was changed to six pips in the 1970s. The last pip is accurate to 1/5000th of a second. From 5 Feb 1990, the signals have been generated by the BBC itself rather than the Royal Observatory. The Talking Clock started at Holborn Telephone Exchange on 24 Jul 1936, using the voice of Ethel Cain for twenty years. (The first speaking clock was started in Paris on 14 Feb 1933.)
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The National Maritime Museum, at the foot of the hill, opened in 1937. Behind the West Wing, notice the handsome Dolphin Sundial, designed by Christopher St. J. H. Daniel for the Queen's Jubilee in 1977. There is a statue of Cook between the West Wing and the Queen's House.
The central building is the Queen's House, designed by Inigo Jones in 1616. It reopened a few years ago after several years in restoration. In the roadway by the entrance is a reproduction of the memorial to Cook erected by his friend Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser at his country house, the Vache, Chalfont St. Giles, in 1781. The Great Hall is also known as the Cube Room, being of that shape. The spiral staircase, called the Tulip Stairs, to the upper floors is very elegant and was the first cantilevered stairs built in Britain. (The statics of a cantilevered spiral staircase is intriguing.) Note the fine views from the gallery and the loggia. Since this was a royal palace, most of the rooms have been restored to their royal state and are filled with paintings of royal, maritime and Greenwich subjects, including a room on Wren and the design of the Royal Naval Hospital. At the end of the tour are two rooms presently devoted to Captain Cook and the Endeavour. These primarily display paintings made on the voyage and after the voyage by William Hodges, including a portrait of Cook, and botanic pictures by Sydney Parkinson, who died on the voyage. There are also plans of the Endeavour, a bust of Banks, Cook's charts of New Zealand, Tahiti, etc. and an engraving of the first drawing of a kangaroo.
In 1997, most of the West Wing was closed for reconstruction and the part that was kept open is of no scientific interest. I append here my older list of items of interest, against the time when the West Wing reopens.
Upper Level: Discovery And Exploration. Many navigational instruments, maps, globes, books, portraits, etc. in this room. There is an astrolabe, found at Valentia Island, Ireland, from a Spanish Armada ship. There is a 1537 celestial globe, designed by the noted mathematician Gemma Frisius and engraved by his pupil, Gerhard Mercator. There is a reproduction of the earliest known world globe, by Martin Behaim of Nuremberg, in 1491. There is a 1456 map of the Mediterranean and Europe and a 1535 map of the North Atlantic. Further on is an example of the earliest printed sea atlas. Portraits include Prince Henry the Navigator, Da Gama, Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Sebastian Cabot, Magellan and Galileo. (I remember seeing some Gunter's scales on previous visits, but I didn't notice any this time.)
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Lambeth Palace, Lambeth Palace Road, Lambeth, SE1, has been the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury since about the 14C. The design of the Great Hall of Lambeth Palace is sometimes attributed to Wren. Several Archbishops have had mathematical and scientific connections. St. Anselm (c1033-1109) and John Pecham (or of Peckham) (c1230-1292) were before the time of Lambeth Palace. The most notable scientist Archbishop was probably Thomas Bradwardine (c1290-1349). He is generally considered to have died at Canterbury, but some sources say he died at Lambeth.
Cuthbert Tunstall or Tonstall (1474-1559), Bishop of London in 1522, later of Durham in 1529/30, was the author of the first arithmetic book by an Englishman: De Arte Supputandi, of 1522. On Elizabeths accession in 1558, he was in trouble, being summoned to London in 1559 and ordered to consecrate Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury. He refused, and was deprived of his post and confined to Lambeth Palace under Parkers custody, where he died on 18 Nov. He is buried in the adjacent St. Mary, Lambeth (now the Museum of Garden History), with a plaque in the chancel.
William Laud (1573-1645), Archbishop from 1633 until his execution at the Tower of London, was a mathematician and had taught at St. Johns, Oxford, rising to President of the College. There is a Van Dyck portrait of him in the Guard Room of Lambeth Palace, which has an interesting story. Laud records in his diary that in Oct 1640, he found the painting on the floor, its supporting string having broken, and added God grant this be no omen! A few weeks later he was taken from the Palace to the Tower and never left it.
Frederick Temple (1821-1902) was also a mathematician and Archbishop from 1896.
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The foundation of St. Pauls was laid in 1675 and Wrens son placed the last stone in 1708. It is sometimes claimed that Wren was compelled to put an unnecessary chain around the base of the dome and that when he put it in, it actually wasnt taut. When the dome was strengthened c1926, the chain was found in place and taut, serving its proper purpose. In the southwest tower is a fine spiral staircase called the Geometrical Staircase not now shown, and it is not beautiful, being just an example of the merely mathematical side of Wrens mind.
The Crypt contains the tomb of Wren and the memorial stone with the famous legend Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice. The stone was over the door in the North Transept before the Second World War and was moved here during restoration. A similar inscription is on the main floor under the centre of the dome. Wrens Great Model is in the Trophy Room at the back of the Crypt. An additional chain was actually installed at that time. There is a memorial to Florence Nightingale in the Crypt.
While in St. Pauls, you should also visit the Whispering Gallery, 108 feet across, under the lower dome, though one author thinks the effect is due to chance rather than Wrens design.
An 1869 biography of Dee calls him Chancellor of St. Pauls, while another source says he was made a Prebendary of St. Pauls by Elizabeth.
Also in St Pauls, Frederick Temple (1821-1902) is commemorated by a relief portrait plaque in the first alcove in the north aisle. A Napier descendent, General Sir Charles James Napier (1782-1853), the conqueror of Sind, is also commemorated. Near General Gordons monument is a plaque to H.M.S. Captain and all on board which records a naval courts finding that the design of the ship was faulty and had been designed in accordance with Parliamentary wishes and against the advice of the Navy, and further that she had been badly constructed, so that her stability was dangerously small, leading to her loss in 1870.
has a stained glass window from c1525, made by Arnold of Nijmegen, previously in a Carmelite church in Antwerp. The medallion over the seated figure at bottom centre is of Victorie and is claimed to show that the window was a thank-offering for the Victoria, the only one of Magellans ships to return in 1522. Marconi was married here in 1905.
is to the north of Westminster Abbey, beside Parliament Square. On a west tower are four handsome sundials, with an explanatory plaque beneath, by Christopher St. J. H. Daniel, 1982. The Church has a memorial to William Caxton and a memorial and a window to Walter Raleigh (who was beheaded in the adjacent Old Palace Yard and buried under the altar here - his son Carew kept the head and was buried, supposedly with the head, in the same tomb).
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The Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens includes statues of Alberti, Brunelleschi, Drer, Pythagoras, Da Vinci and Wren.
After the 1851 Great Exhibition, the Crystal Palace was moved to south London, where the area is still called Crystal Palace and was a popular venue until it burned in 1937. Among other exhibitions, Charles Edward Hoopers chess playing automaton, Ajeeb, was exhibited here in 1881-1886.
Hooke, Wren, etc. used to frequent Garaways and Jonathans Coffee Houses in Change Alley, where they would discuss problems.
Dial House, Riverside, Twickenham, adjacent to St. Mary the Virgin at the end of Church Street, has a handsome sundial of 1726, erected when Thomas Twining (the tea merchant) converted the building. A descendent presented Dial House to the church in 1890 for use as the Vicarage and it is still in use.
10 Downing Street is an unlikely place to look for scientific or mathematical interest. However there is a bust of Faraday in the Inner Hall, a portrait of Boyle in the Pillared Drawing-room and the Small Dining Room has representations of Eminent British ScientistsᲔ: a bust of Newton and portraits of Priestley, Davy and Halley. Unfortunately, these are rarely viewable.
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In the 17-18C, most of the scientific instrument makers were based in or near Fleet Street. The street was numbered in c1760.
136 Fleet Street was the shop of several generations of mathematical instrument makers. John Rowley (1673-1728), of the orrery, began at The Globe under St. Dunstans Church in Fleet Street. He was Master of Mechanicks to the King from 1714. He was succeeded in 1718 by his student Thomas Wright at The Orrery & Globe. Wright became Mathematical Instrument Maker to the Prince of Wales, later King George II, in 1718 and extended Rowleys orrery to include the other planets: in 1733 he built the Grand Orrery now in the Science Museum. He lists James Stirlings Academy as a purchaser of one of his orreries, c1730. Wright was later at The Orrery, Water Lane (the only likely Water Lane I can find is in Stratford, which doesnt seem very likely - I suspect this is a now vanished street near Fleet Street). Wright was succeeded by Benjamin Cole (1695-1766) in 1748, at the Orrery, Two Doors above the Globe Tavern. His son Benjamin Cole Jr. (1725-1813) took over in 1766. They were succeeded by John and Edward (1753-1835) Troughton in 1782, who developed the circular dividing engine for marking equal intervals on circular scales. The work of Ramsden and Troughton improved astronomical accuracy from 2' to 6" in about thirty years. The firm later became Troughton & Simms in 1826 and Cooke, Troughton & Simms in 1922 and was later amalgamated into Vickers Instruments.
George Graham (1675-1751) was at 67 Fleet Street (corner of Whitefriars St.) with his master, later uncle-in-law, Thomas Tompion (1639-1713), the father of English watchmaking. Graham was then at 148 Fleet Street from 1720. In the summer of 1730, Halley suggested that John Harrison discuss his plans with Graham and Harrison came to Grahams house. There was some hesitancy at first, but they soon hit it off and spent ten hours discussing clocks. Graham invited Harrison for dinner and give him great encouragement and a substantial loan which enabled him to build H1.
George Adams the elder (d. 1773) and the younger (1750-1795) were mathematical instrument makers to George III and had premises at Tycho Brahes Head, Fleet Street. In 1760-1762, Adams built instruments for G3 which are now displayed in a gallery in the Science Museum.
Benjamin Martin was at 171 Fleet Street, first giving a street number in 1767.
The Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) was set up c1918 a short way down Broadway from Westminster Abbey iand remained there until its removal to Bletchley Park in Sep 1939.
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The Hayward Gallery, Lambeth, SE1, is on the west side of the South Bank side of Waterloo Bridge. It is of interest, not only for what is in it, but for what is on top of it, a kinetic sculpture known as the Hayward Gallery Neon Tower. Designed by Philip Vaughan (structure) and Roger Dainton (kinetics), it is a stack of six regular framework octahedra, sharing faces. Along the 54 edges above the base are pairs of neon tubes, 9' 6" long, in five colours. The non-horizontal edges form oblique spirals, one going clockwise as it goes up, the other anticlockwise. These are coloured magenta and yellow. The horizontal triangles are coloured red, green and blue. The lights operate in eight sequences, determined by the direction of the wind, with the speed of operation determined by the wind speed - note the weather vane and anemometer on top of the tower. A model of the idea was commissioned by the Arts Council in 1970 and was displayed in the Kinetics Exhibition at the Hayward. The rooftop version was completed in 1972. Ove Arup and Partners were structural engineers.
In a parking lot at Heathrow Airport is the northwest end of the original base line for the triangulation of England. This ran 27,404.72 feet across Hounslow Heath and was measured in 1784-1785 by William Roy. The original wooden pipes were replaced by guns buried vertically in 1791. Bronze plates were attached to the guns in 1926 to commemorate the bicentenary of Roys birth. The northwest end was in Kings Arbour Field. This gun was removed in 1944 due to expansion of Heathrow Airport, but was returned to its original position in 1972 -grid reference TQ 077767. The southeast gun has never been moved and is in Roy Grove, Hampton - grid reference TQ 137709. Also at the Airport are examples of anamorphic art by Frances Hegarty in the walkways connecting Terminal 1 to the gates for Irish flights.
Her Majestys Theatre, Haymarket, was the site of Babbages innovatory experiments with coloured stage lighting.
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The Monument, by London Bridge, was designed by Hooke, who was City Surveyor at the time. It was built in 1671-1677. Wren made an unused proposal for a hollow column for astronomical purposes and the Monument has often been erroneously attributed to Wren.
The Park Lane Hotel, Park Lane, was the site of the worlds greatest draughts (= checkers) match in Aug/Sep 1992. Dr. Marion Tinsley, World Champion since 1956, who had lost only 7 games in the previous 44 years, played Chinook, a computer program developed by Jonathan Schaeffer of the University of Alberta, running on a Silicon Graphics parallel series super-computer. Tinsley won, 4-33-2. One of Chinooks loses was due to using a line of play from a standard source which turned out to be poor (this may be referring to the last game?). Another was due to looping which ran out of time. The last loss, in game 39, was due to Schaeffer instructing Chinook to go all out for a win and avoid a draw, leading to an untried move, the loss of the game and the match. In the rematch in 1994, the score was 0-6-0 when Tinsley had to retire due to ill-health and he died in 1995. His retirement meant that Chinook was now World Champion and it has retained the title against the worlds number two player. Chinook is now rated a few points higher than Tinsley was.
In Pinner Churchyard is a large pyramidal monument with coffin inside. The father of the noted gardening and horticultural writer, John Claudius Loudon, had requested to be buried above ground and this was the sons solution.
The Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill, is where the code-breaking machines Heath Robinson and Colossus were built in 1943 for Bletchley Park. The Robinson was chiefly designed by C. E. Wynn-Williams. The Colossus was directed by Max Newman and Tom Flowers was the leader of the Post Office design group.
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67 Rodenhurst Road, Clapham Park, SW4, had a magic square with constant 67 carved in stone on its gatepost. This uses the numbers 9, 10, ..., 20, 22, 23, 24, 25. Studying this, I observed that one could not get the constant 67 by using consecutive numbers and I was led to formulate the idea of an almost consecutive magic square, i.e. one using a set of consecutive numbers with at most one number skipped. Such an almost consecutive square can be made for any magic constant. Sadly, the owner/carver has died. The new owners have rebuilt the front wall in wood and they have not yet figured out where to resite the carving, so it is not presently in view.
Royal College Of Surgeons, (of England), 35-43 Lincolns Inn Fields, Holborn, WC2A 3PN, Tel: 020-7405 3474 (ext. 3011 for the Museums). The brain of Charles Babbage is on display in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. Victor Horsley published a Description of the brain of Mr. Charles Babbage, F.R.S. in the Phil. Trans., Ser. B, 200 (1908) 117-131.
Slaughters Coffee House, St. Martins Lane at Cranbourn St., was a major chess venue in mid 18C, attracting De Moivre and Philidor. De Moivre acted as a consultant mathematician here.
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Somerset House, Strand, was built in 1776-1786. In the late 18C and early 19C, much of the building was used by the main learned societies. The Royal Society was here from 1780 to 1857. The names of some of the societies remain over the doorways on each side of the entrance vestibule. There is a bust of Newton above the entrance to former Royal Society rooms, on the left of the vestibule. For many years until about the 1980s, this was the office of the Registrar General, where all births, marriages, divorces and deaths were recorded. One author reports that there is a white watch face set in the wall over the door to the Stamps and Taxes Office. The Stamps and Taxes office was in the eastern part of the South Block. I cannot find this mark and the staff at Somerset House do not recall it. The Royal Societys Main Room has a painted ceiling of the zodiac. A handout about Somerset House says there was an Admiralty exhibition here which was moved to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich in the 1870s. Since the Museum did not exist then, this may refer to some forerunner of it.
In the corridor of Block 5 of the South Wing of St. Thomass Hospital, Lambeth Palace Road, is a set of 10 silk screen prints by Eduardo Paolozzi. One of these, Computer-Epoch (Jun 1967), uses the pattern of Pascals Triangle (mod 2). I think I have seen these prints in other places.
Trafalgar Square. The zero point for road mileage from London is marked by a plaque on the ground just behind the statue of Charles I on the island at the south of the Square. Copies of the Imperial standards of length were set in the north wall by the Standards Department of the Board of Trade in 1876 and they are still there. The tablet has 1, 2 and 3 feet shown, with a chain (66 ft) and 100 ft lengths laid out nearby.
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There is a Trig Lane in the City of London, but sadly it has no connection with mathematics, having been named from a 13-14C family of fishmongers named Trygge.
In Waltham Abbey, on the northern outskirts of London, is the tomb of Robert Smith (1637-1697) a successful sea captain. The tomb is handsomely decorated with symbols of his profession, including accurate depictions of navigational instruments of the time: sounding lead, backstaff, astrolabe, dividers, compass, cross staff, hour glass. The Prime Meridian passes near the Abbey and is marked at several places.
Warren Street Station on the Victoria Line of the Underground has a handsome maze motif done in tiles on the walls of the platform and the floor of the station. It was designed by John Burrell in 1979. There is a brick pavement maze in the Warren Street childrens playground, which is a short distance down Whitfield Street.
The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers has a number of historical horological items in their museum in the Guildhall Librarys Clock Room. It includes: the earliest known (1713) clock movement and dial by John Harrison, almost entirely of wood, signed and dated; an equation of time table in Harrisons hand, from his third clock of 1717; and several of Harrisons manuscripts. In 1753, a skilled London clockmaker named John Jefferys made a pocket watch for Harrison under his supervision and incorporating many of his ideas. The success of this inspired Harrisons H4. Sobel says the Jefferys watch is here. Also here is Harrisons chronometer H5 which was tested by Kew Observatory and by Demainbray in the 1770s. It was accurate to 1/3 of a second per day over a ten week period. Sobel also says that one of the long-case clocks made by John and James Harrison in 1725-1727 is here.
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68a Kelmscott Road, Wandsworth, SW11, is a modern building by Simon Humphreys, 1998, whose volume is defined by the Fibonacci series.
Marble Hill House, Twickenham, has a main room which is cubical (24 ft cube, if I remember correctly). In one of the upper bedrooms are two lacquered tin canisters in the shape of dodecahedra. They are Pontypool ware, English, 19C, labelled Coffee and Tea.
Sudbrook Park, now the Richmond Golf Club, but actually in Petersham, has a 1726 house designed by James Gibbs with a handsome Cube Room. It is grudgingly open to visitors.
Modern concrete and fabric architecture has produced a number of buildings and structures using three-dimensional saddle Surfaces, usually hyperbolic paraboloids, though cooling towers are usually hyperboloids of revolution of one sheet. These sometimes occur because they are ruled surfaces and hence it is easy to make the forms for the concrete. I think a fabric panel tensioned at the corners, with two alternate corners going upward and the other two other going downward, does form a hyperbolic paraboloid. According to Ian Nairns book, there are hyperbolic paraboloids at: William Mallinsons Timber Yard, Parnell Road, Poplar (1961); The Commonwealth Institute, Kensington High Street (on three supports, which sounds more like a monkey saddle??) (1960-1962); Two Bishops School, Southwark (a tent shape with four corners turned up) (1959-1960). It is not always clear if architectural writers have got the correct name for the shapes described.
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There are ten known examples of Mathematical Tiles in London. The Notes of Ewell Symposium describes six examples: David Garricks villa at Hampton; Cheam Rectory, 15 Maldon Road, Cheam; 13 Crown Hill, Croydon (where there were many examples in the 19C and nearby 35 Surrey Street may have mathematical tiles); Queensbury House, 7 Burlington Gardens (where the tiles occur around a roof enclosure); 4 John Street (where the tiles are on a rear bay); and 74 Long Lane, Smithfield (where the nearby gate of St. Bartholomews Priory had mathematical tiles until restored in the early 20C). A letter of Mrs Garrick says William Chambers referred to the new tiling now made use of in c1780. Mathematicall tyles were used on Drury Lane Theatre in 1794. Later work extended the number of London examples to ten.
Written by David Singmaster. Last updated on 28th February 2003 by TM (A.Mann@gre.ac.uk). Copyright © BSHM and David Singmaster 1998 - 2003. All rights reserved.
The British Society for the History of Mathematics is registered as a company limited by guarantee, no. 3326816, and as a charity, no. 1061229. Its registered office is c/o Andrew Thurburn & Co, 38 Tamworth Road, Croydon, Surrey CR0 1XU, UK.