[IP] Hooke's journal found
Begin forwarded message:
From: Kurt Albershardt <kurt@xxxxxx>
Date: March 28, 2006 12:18:38 PM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Hooke's journal found
Journal charting birth of modern science was lost for more than 200
years
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12037638/from/RS.3/>
By Jeremy Lovell
Reuters
Updated: 10:12 p.m. ET March 27, 2006
LONDON - A manuscript charting the birth of modern science, lost for
more than 200 years, goes on sale on Tuesday with a price tag in
excess of one million pounds.
Hailed as "science's missing link", the journal of Robert Hooke
contains details of experiments he conducted as curator at the Royal
Society from 1662 and his correspondence as its secretary from 1677.
It was found by chance in a cupboard at a private house in Hampshire
by experts from auctioneer Bonhams conducting a routine valuation.
The notes include a celebrated row between Hooke and Isaac Newton
over planetary motion and gravity, and the lost record confirming the
first observation of microbes by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek.
...
Hooke discovered that Jupiter revolved on its own axis, suggested
that gravity could be measured using a pendulum and, as a talented
architect, was chief assistant to Christopher Wren in rebuilding
London after the Great Fire of 1666.
He also suggested the presence of gravitational 'vortices' pulling
comets from their orbit, and invented the reflecting telescope, the
sextant, the punched-paper record-keeper, the wind gauge, the worm
gear and the wheel barometer.
But he fell out with Newton when he accused him of stealing from his
original ideas when he produced his theory of light and colour in
1672, and Newton removed all reference to Hooke from his famed
Principia.
Despite Hooke's huge contribution to science and understanding, the
only innovation to bear his name is Hooke's Law -- ut tensio sic vis
(extension [of a spring] is proportional to force) - the shortest law
in physics.
...
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