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The Scottish Government offers Guidance and a Regulations template to assist in the creation of rules. The template draft has been approved by the Crofting Commission. As of 12 June 2023 applications can be made online to the Crofting Commission in respect of assignations, decroftings, divisions and sublets.A person ta... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting |
Tenants and owner-occupier crofters are required to comply with a range of duties specified in sections 5AA to 5C and 19C of the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1993 as amended. There is a duty to be ordinarily resident within 32 km of the croft. If the croft is the sole dwelling and the crofter's family are residents while th... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting |
Crofting is a traditional social system in Scotland defined by small-scale food production. Crofting is characterised by its common working communities, or "townships". Individual crofts are typically established on 2–5 hectares (5–12+1⁄2 acres) of in-bye for better quality forage, arable and vegetable production. Each... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting |
In particular, where the ground was heavy peat, the creation of ditches (and their regular maintenance) was essential. A feature probably special to crofting practice was the establishing of Lazy Beds (Gaelic: fiannegan). These were areas where turfs had been cut so two layers of turf lay on top of one another. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting |
Seaweed or kelp could be spread in between these layers to fertilise the soil. This left lower areas around the beds that could then act as drainage conduits.Land use in the crofting counties is constrained by climate, soils, and topography. Since the late 20th century, the government has classified virtually all of th... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting |
Despite its challenges, crofting is important to the Highlands and Islands. In 2014–2015 there were 19,422 crofts, with 15,388 crofters. Some crofters have the tenancy of more than one croft, and in-croft absenteeism means that tenancies are held but crofts are not farmed. About 33,000 family members lived in crofting ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting |
Crofting households represented around 30% of those in the rural areas of the Highlands, and up to 65% of households in Shetland, the Western Isles, and Skye. There were 770,000 hectares under crofting tenure, roughly 25% of the agricultural land area in the Crofting Counties. Crofters held around 20% of all beef cattl... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting |
Crofting generally is regulated by the Crofting Commission, a public body of the Scottish Government. The activities of the Crofting Commission are regularly publicly reported. Section 51 of the Crofting Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 requires the Scottish Ministers to report to the Scottish Parliament on the economic cond... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting |
Historically, crofting has been linked to the Scottish Gaelic language. The Scottish Government supports the Gaelic language in the Gaelic Language Plan. The plan for 2022-2027 derives from the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting |
In relation to crofting, the Scottish Land Court must accommodate the Scottish Gaelic language including by having a Gaelic-speaking member of the Court. Lord Minginish (Chairman of the Scottish Land Court 2014-2022) continues to hold office as a Gaelic-speaking member of the Court. There are provisions to ensure that ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting |
Reports of crofting litigation are a resource designed for lawyers that gives detailed information as to the families and the farms featured in the narrative. Since 1912 crofting cases in the Scottish Land Court have been reported, and are available. They are scattered in several series and locations. Where such cases ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofting |
The Stele of Serapeitis (Georgian: სერაფიტას სტელა) is a funerary stele with bilingual inscriptions written in Ancient Greek and Armazic, a local idiom of Aramaic, found in 1940, at Armazi, near Mtskheta, in the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Iberia. The stele memorialises a short-lived Georgian princess named Serap... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stele_of_Serapeitis |
CHPAΠEITIC ZHOΥAXOΥ TOΥ NEΩTEPOΥ ΠITIAΞOΥ ΘΥΓATHP ΠOΥΠΛIKIOΥ AΓPIΠΠA ΠITI AΞOΥ ΥIOΥ IΩΔMANΓANOΥ ΓΥNH TOΥ ΠOΛΛAC NEIKAC ΠOIHCANTOC EΠITPOΠOΥ BACIΛEΩC IBHPΩN MEΓAΛOΥ ΞEΦAPNOΥΓOΥ AΠE ΘANE NEΩTEPA ETΩN K—A HTIC TO KAΛΛOC AMEIMHTON EIXESerapeitis, daughter of Zeouach the Younger, pitiaxes, wife of Iodmanganos, son of Public... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stele_of_Serapeitis |
I am Serapit, daughter of Zewah the Younger, pitiaxes of King Pharasmanes, wife of Yodmangan the victorious and winner of many victories, master of the court of King Xepharnougos and the son of Agrippa, master of the court of King Pharasmanes, victorious over the mighty, which Pharnavaz could not accomplish. Serapit wa... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stele_of_Serapeitis |
In the law of evidence in the United States, public policy doctrines for the exclusion of relevant evidence encompass several types of evidence that would be relevant to prove facts at issue in a legal proceeding, but which are nonetheless excluded because of public policy concerns. There are five major areas of exclus... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
A subsequent remedial measure is an improvement, repair, or safety measure made after an injury has occurred. FRE 407 prohibits the admission of evidence of subsequent remedial measures to show defendant's (1) negligence; (2) culpable conduct; (3) a defect in defendant's product; (4) defect in the design of defendant's... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
Second, excluding subsequent remedial measures from evidence avoids having to give juries the difficult task of distinguishing between defendant's due care prior to plaintiff's injury, and defendant's due care subsequent to plaintiff's injury. Subsequent remedial measures are, however, admissible into evidence for witn... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
If defendant says that he did not own the building where the plaintiff fell, and plaintiff disputes this claim, plaintiff may introduce evidence that the defendant sanded the stairs to show that defendant did, in fact, own the property on which the steps are located at the time her injury occurred. If defendant claims ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
Evidence of a party's ownership of—or lack of ownership of—liability insurance is inadmissible to prove (1) negligence or (2) wrongful conduct because courts do not want to discourage parties from carrying such insurance. FRE 411 states: Evidence that a person was or was not insured against liability is not admissible ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
If a witness has an interest in the policy that gives the witness a motive or bias with respect to specific testimony, the existence of the policy can be introduced to show this motive or bias. Federal rules of civil procedure rule 26 was amended in 1993 to require that any insurance policy that may pay or may reimburs... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
The Cornell University Legal Institute web site includes congressional notes.Additionally, an exception arises where the party's mention of its own liability insurance is inextricably intertwined with another statement that is admissible. For example, if after an automobile accident, the driver of one car runs over to ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
FRE 410 holds that (1) withdrawn guilty pleas; (2) nolo contendere pleas; (3) statements made during proceedings regarding guilty pleas; (4) statements made during proceedings regarding nolo contendere pleas; (5) and statements made during plea discussions with an attorney present are inadmissible for public policy rea... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
Offers to settle a claim, and related statements made during a settlement conference, are generally inadmissible under FRE 408. The primary public policy motivation is to encourage litigants to settle their disputes. This rule also recognizes that parties may make settlement offers even where they believe they have no ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
The inadmissibility of settlement claims only prohibits the admission of statements, not the admission of facts. Thus, if a party to a settlement conference mentions that she possesses a certain document relevant to the proceedings, the other party may seek to discover that document through legal processes, despite it ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
Example: Florida-based piano teacher P gets her expensive, snow white tile floors polished by North Carolina-based cleaning company C on March 22. C mails P a bill for $100,000 on March 29. P thought that the service would only cost $75,000.00, and disputes the $100,000 charge. Unable to come to a compromise with P, C ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
An offer to pay medical expenses is an offer of this nature made by a party who might potentially be liable for an injury to another is inadmissible despite its relevance. FRE 409 states: Evidence of furnishing or offering or promising to pay medical, hospital, or similar expenses occasioned by an injury is not admissi... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
D later visits P in the hospital, puts a bouquet of sunflowers on the table next to the bed where P is sobbing in pain, and exclaims,"I'm so sorry about your injury, it was completely my fault! Please don't worry about your expenses for this hospital visit, I'll write you a check for whatever your bills add up to." In ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
California law excludes from evidence and discovery relevant statements made "for the purpose of, in the course of, or pursuant to, a mediation or a mediation consultation" through California Evidence Code ("CEC") §§1115-1125, for the public policy purpose of encouraging the resolution of legal conflicts by mediation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
The exclusionary rule is another rule under which relevant evidence may be excluded, based in part on public policy concerns. It causes evidence gathered by the police from an illegal search to be inadmissible in a criminal case. The exclusion is intended, in part, to discourage law enforcement officials from violating... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
However, it is premised as much on the right of the individual accused against such a search as it is on the larger issue of law enforcement behavior. The rule does also reflect on questions of reliability regarding some (but not all) types of evidence that are excluded thereunder. For example, an officer conducting a ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy_doctrines_for_the_exclusion_of_relevant_evidence |
The European Review of Agricultural Economics (ERAE) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering agricultural economics. It was established in 1973 and is published five times per year by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, which owns the jour... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Review_of_Agricultural_Economics |
The history of geodesy (/dʒiːˈɒdɪsi/), concerning developments in measuring and representing the planet Earth, began during antiquity and ultimately blossomed during the Age of Enlightenment. Many early conceptions of the Earth held it to be flat, with the heavens being a physical dome spanning over it. Early arguments... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Though the earliest written mention of a spherical Earth comes from ancient Greek sources, there is no account of how the sphericity of Earth was discovered, or if it was initially simply a guess. A plausible explanation given by the historian Otto E. Neugebauer is that it was "the experience of travellers that suggest... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
In The Histories, written 431–425 BC, Herodotus cast doubt on a report of the Sun observed shining from the north. He stated that the phenomenon was observed by Phoenician explorers during their circumnavigation of Africa (The Histories, 4.42) who claimed to have had the Sun on their right when circumnavigating in a cl... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The historian Dmitri Panchenko hypothesizes that it was the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa that inspired the theory of a spherical Earth, the earliest mention of which was made by the philosopher Parmenides in the 5th century BC. However, nothing certain about their knowledge of geography and navigation has surv... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Some early Greek philosophers alluded to a spherical Earth, though with some ambiguity. Pythagoras (6th century BC) was among those said to have originated the idea, but this might reflect the ancient Greek practice of ascribing every discovery to one or another of their ancient wise men. Pythagoras was a mathematician... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Some idea of the sphericity of Earth seems to have been known to both Parmenides and Empedocles in the 5th century BC, and although the idea cannot reliably be ascribed to Pythagoras, it might nevertheless have been formulated in the Pythagorean school in the 5th century BC although some disagree. After the 5th century... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Plato (427–347 BC) travelled to southern Italy to study Pythagorean mathematics. When he returned to Athens and established his school, Plato also taught his students that Earth was a sphere, though he offered no justifications. "My conviction is that the Earth is a round body in the centre of the heavens, and therefor... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Aristotle (384–322 BC) was Plato's prize student and "the mind of the school". Aristotle observed "there are stars seen in Egypt and Cyprus which are not seen in the northerly regions". Since this could only happen on a curved surface, he too believed Earth was a sphere "of no great size, for otherwise the effect of s... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The shadow of Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse is round.The concepts of symmetry, equilibrium and cyclic repetition permeated Aristotle's work. In his Meteorology he divided the world into five climatic zones: two temperate areas separated by a torrid zone near the equator, and two cold inhospitable regions, "o... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Aristotle's theory of natural place relied on a spherical Earth to explain why heavy things go down (toward what Aristotle believed was the center of the Universe), and things like air and fire go up. In this geocentric model, the structure of the universe was believed to be a series of perfect spheres. The Sun, Moon, ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Archimedes gave an upper bound for the circumference of the Earth of 3,000,000 stadia (483,000 km or 300,000 mi) using the Hellenic stadion which scholars generally take to be 185 meters or 1⁄9 of a geographical mile.In proposition 2 of the First Book of his treatise On Floating Bodies, Archimedes demonstrates that "Th... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Eratosthenes (276–194 BC), a Hellenistic astronomer from what is now Cyrene, Libya working in Alexandria, Egypt, estimated Earth's circumference around 240 BC, computing a value of 252,000 stades. The length that Eratosthenes intended for a "stade" is not known, but his figure only has an error of around one to fifteen... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Eratosthenes could only measure the circumference of Earth by assuming that the distance to the Sun is so great that the rays of sunlight are practically parallel. Eratosthenes' method to calculate the Earth's circumference has been lost; what has been preserved is the simplified version described by Cleomedes to popul... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Taking the Earth as spherical, the Earth's circumference would be fifty times the distance between Alexandria and Syene, that is 250,000 stadia. Since 1 Egyptian stadium is equal to 157.5 metres, the result is 39,375 km, which is 1.4% less than the real number, 39,941 km. Eratosthenes' method was actually more complica... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The method was based on several surveying trips conducted by professional bematists, whose job was to precisely measure the extent of the territory of Egypt for agricultural and taxation-related purposes. Furthermore, the fact that Eratosthenes' measure corresponds precisely to 252,000 stadia might be intentional, sinc... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Seleucus of Seleucia (c. 190 BC), who lived in the city of Seleucia in Mesopotamia, wrote that Earth is spherical (and actually orbits the Sun, influenced by the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus of Samos). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
A parallel later ancient measurement of the size of the Earth was made by another Greek scholar, Posidonius (c. 135 – 51 BC), using a similar method as Eratosthenes. Instead of observing the sun, he noted that the star Canopus was hidden from view in most parts of Greece but that it just grazed the horizon at Rhodes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Posidonius is supposed to have measured the angular elevation of Canopus at Alexandria and determined that the angle was 1/48 of a circle. He used a distance from Alexandria to Rhodes, 5000 stadia, and so he computed the Earth's circumference in stadia as 48 × 5000 = 240,000. Some scholars see these results as luckily ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
But since the Canopus observations are both mistaken by over a degree, the "experiment" may be not much more than a recycling of Eratosthenes's numbers, while altering 1/50 to the correct 1/48 of a circle. Later, either he or a follower appears to have altered the base distance to agree with Eratosthenes's Alexandria-t... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Posidonius furthermore expressed the distance of the Sun in Earth radii. The above-mentioned larger and smaller sizes of the Earth were those used by later Roman author Claudius Ptolemy at different times: 252,000 stadia in his Almagest and 180,000 stadia in his later Geographia. His mid-career conversion resulted in t... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
While the textual evidence has not survived, the precision of the constants used in pre-Greek Vedanga models, and the model's accuracy in predicting the Moon and Sun's motion for Vedic rituals, probably came from direct astronomical observations. The cosmographic theories and assumptions in ancient India likely develop... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The Greek concept of an Earth surrounded by the spheres of the planets and that of the fixed stars, vehemently supported by astronomers like Varāhamihira and Brahmagupta, strengthened the astronomical principles. Some ideas were found possible to preserve, although in altered form.The Indian astronomer and mathematicia... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Aryabhatiya is divided into four sections: Gitika, Ganitha ("mathematics"), Kalakriya ("reckoning of time") and Gola ("celestial sphere"). The discovery that the Earth rotates on its own axis from west to east is described in Aryabhatiya (Gitika 3,6; Kalakriya 5; Gola 9,10). For example, he explained the apparent motio... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
)Aryabhatiya also estimates the circumference of the Earth. He gives this as 4967 yojanas and its diameter as 1581 1⁄24 yojanas. The length of a yojana varies considerably between sources; assuming a yojana to be 8 km (4.97097 miles) this gives a circumference of 39,736 kilometres (24,691 mi), close to the current equa... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The idea of a spherical Earth slowly spread across the globe, and ultimately became the adopted view in all major astronomical traditions.In the West, the idea came to the Romans through the lengthy process of cross-fertilization with Hellenistic civilization. Many Roman authors such as Cicero and Pliny refer in their ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
It has been suggested that seafarers probably provided the first observational evidence that Earth was not flat, based on observations of the horizon. This argument was put forward by the geographer Strabo (c. 64 BC – 24 AD), who suggested that the spherical shape of Earth was probably known to seafarers around the Med... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Claudius Ptolemy (90–168 AD) lived in Alexandria, the centre of scholarship in the 2nd century. In the Almagest, which remained the standard work of astronomy for 1,400 years, he advanced many arguments for the spherical nature of Earth. Among them was the observation that when a ship is sailing towards mountains, obse... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The first part of the Geographia is a discussion of the data and of the methods he used. As with the model of the Solar System in the Almagest, Ptolemy put all this information into a grand scheme. He assigned coordinates to all the places and geographic features he knew, in a grid that spanned the globe (although most... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Latitude was measured from the equator, as it is today, but Ptolemy preferred to express it as the length of the longest day rather than degrees of arc (the length of the midsummer day increases from 12h to 24h as you go from the equator to the polar circle). He put the meridian of 0 longitude at the most western land ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Ptolemy also devised and provided instructions on how to make maps both of the whole inhabited world (oikoumenè) and of the Roman provinces. In the second part of the Geographia, he provided the necessary topographic lists, and captions for the maps. His oikoumenè spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Canary Island... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Knowledge of the spherical shape of Earth was received in scholarship of Late Antiquity as a matter of course, in both Neoplatonism and Early Christianity. Calcidius's fourth-century Latin commentary on and translation of Plato's Timaeus, which was one of the few examples of Greek scientific thought that was known in t... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Authors from that tradition, such as Cosmas Indicopleustes, presented Earth as flat as late as in the 6th century. This last remnant of the ancient model of the cosmos disappeared during the 7th century. From the 8th century and the beginning medieval period, "no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Islamic astronomy was developed on the basis of a spherical Earth inherited from Hellenistic astronomy. The Islamic theoretical framework largely relied on the fundamental contributions of Aristotle (De caelo) and Ptolemy (Almagest), both of whom worked from the premise that Earth was spherical and at the centre of the... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Around 830 CE, Caliph al-Ma'mun commissioned a group of Muslim astronomers and geographers to measure the distance from Tadmur (Palmyra) to Raqqa in modern Syria. To determine the length of one degree of latitude, by using a rope to measure the distance travelled due north or south (meridian arc) on flat desert land un... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Andalusian polymath Ibn Hazm gave a concise proof of Earth's sphericity: at any given time, there is a point on the Earth where the Sun is directly overhead (which moves throughout the day and throughout the year). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Al-Farghānī (Latinized as Alfraganus) was a Persian astronomer of the 9th century involved in measuring the diameter of Earth, and commissioned by Al-Ma'mun. His estimate given above for a degree (562⁄3 Arabic miles) was much more accurate than the 602⁄3 Roman miles (89.7 km) given by Ptolemy. Christopher Columbus uncr... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Abu Rayhan Biruni (973–1048) used a new method to accurately compute Earth's circumference, by which he arrived at a value that was close to modern values for Earth's circumference. His estimate of 6,339.6 kilometres (3,939.2 mi) for Earth's radius was only 31.4 kilometres (19.5 mi) less than the modern mean value of 6... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Biruni's method was intended to avoid "walking across hot, dusty deserts", and the idea came to him when he was on top of a tall mountain in India (present day Pind Dadan Khan, Pakistan).From the top of the mountain, he sighted the dip angle which, along with the mountain's height (which he calculated beforehand), he a... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
He introduced techniques to measure Earth and distances on it using triangulation. He found the radius of Earth to be 6,339.6 kilometres (3,939.2 mi), a value not obtained in the West until the 16th century. His Masudic canon contains a table giving the coordinates of six hundred places, almost all of which he had dire... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
By 1060, Andalusi astronomer Al-Zarqali corrects geographical data from Ptolemy and Al-Khwarizmi, specifically by correcting Ptolemy's estimate of the longitude of the Mediterranean Sea from 62 degrees to the correct value of 42 degrees. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
A terrestrial globe (Kura-i-ard) was among the presents sent by the Persian Muslim astronomer Jamal-al-Din to Kublai Khan's Chinese court in 1267. It was made of wood on which "seven parts of water are represented in green, three parts of land in white, with rivers, lakes". Ho Peng Yoke remarks that "it did not seem to... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Muslim scholars who held to the spherical Earth theory used it for a quintessentially Islamic purpose: to calculate the distance and direction from any given point on Earth to Mecca. Muslim mathematicians developed spherical trigonometry; in the 11th century, al-Biruni used it to find the direction of Mecca from many c... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Muslim astronomers and geographers were aware of magnetic declination by the 15th century, when the Egyptian astronomer 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Wafa'i (d. 1469/1471) measured it as 7 degrees from Cairo. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
In medieval Europe, knowledge of the sphericity of Earth survived into the medieval corpus of knowledge by direct transmission of the texts of Greek antiquity (Aristotle), and via authors such as Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede. It became increasingly traceable with the rise of scholasticism and medieval lear... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The maps of Ptolemy strongly influenced the cartographers of the Middle Ages. It is probable that Christopher Columbus, using such maps, was led to believe that Asia was only 3,000 or 4,000 miles (4,800 or 6,400 km) west of Europe.Ptolemy's view was not universal, however, and chapter 20 of Sir John Mandeville's Travel... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Spread of this knowledge beyond the immediate sphere of Greco-Roman scholarship was necessarily gradual, associated with the pace of Christianisation of Europe. For example, the first evidence of knowledge of the spherical shape of Earth in Scandinavia is a 12th-century Old Icelandic translation of Elucidarius. A list ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Bishop Isidore of Seville (560–636) taught in his widely read encyclopedia, The Etymologies, that Earth was "round". The bishop's confusing exposition and choice of imprecise Latin terms have divided scholarly opinion on whether he meant a sphere or a disk or even whether he meant anything specific. Notable recent scho... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The monk Bede (c. 672–735) wrote in his influential treatise on computus, The Reckoning of Time, that Earth was round. He explained the unequal length of daylight from "the roundness of the Earth, for not without reason is it called 'the orb of the world' on the pages of Holy Scripture and of ordinary literature. It is... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
(De temporum ratione, 32). The large number of surviving manuscripts of The Reckoning of Time, copied to meet the Carolingian requirement that all priests should study the computus, indicates that many, if not most, priests were exposed to the idea of the sphericity of Earth. Ælfric of Eynsham paraphrased Bede into Old... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The 7th-century Armenian scholar Anania Shirakatsi described the world as "being like an egg with a spherical yolk (the globe) surrounded by a layer of white (the atmosphere) and covered with a hard shell (the sky)". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
During the High Middle Ages, the astronomical knowledge in Christian Europe was extended beyond what was transmitted directly from ancient authors by transmission of learning from Medieval Islamic astronomy. An early student of such learning was Gerbert d'Aurillac, the later Pope Sylvester II. Saint Hildegard (Hildegar... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
1256 AD) wrote a famous work on Astronomy called Tractatus de Sphaera, based on Ptolemy, which primarily considers the sphere of the sky. However, it contains clear proofs of Earth's sphericity in the first chapter.Many scholastic commentators on Aristotle's On the Heavens and Sacrobosco's Treatise on the Sphere unanim... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
1120), an important manual for the instruction of lesser clergy, which was translated into Middle English, Old French, Middle High German, Old Russian, Middle Dutch, Old Norse, Icelandic, Spanish, and several Italian dialects, explicitly refers to a spherical Earth. Likewise, the fact that Bertold von Regensburg (mid-1... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The invention of the telescope and the theodolite and the development of logarithm tables allowed exact triangulation and arc measurements. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Joseph Needham, in his Chinese Cosmology reports that Shen Kuo (1031-1095) used models of lunar eclipse and solar eclipse to conclude the roundness of celestial bodies. If they were like balls they would surely obstruct each other when they met. I replied that these celestial bodies were certainly like balls. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
How do we know this? By the waxing and waning of the moon. The moon itself gives forth no light, but is like a ball of silver; the light is the light of the sun (reflected). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
When the brightness is first seen, the sun (-light passes almost) alongside, so the side only is illuminated and looks like a crescent. When the sun gradually gets further away, the light shines slanting, and the moon is full, round like a bullet. If half of a sphere is covered with (white) powder and looked at from th... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Thus we know that the celestial bodies are spherical. However, Shen's ideas did not gain widespread acceptance or consideration, as the shape of Earth was not important to Confucian officials who were more concerned with human relations. In the 17th century, the idea of a spherical Earth, now considerably advanced by W... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The text also pointed out that sailing ships could return to their port of origin after circumnavigating the waters of Earth.The influence of the map is distinctly Western, as traditional maps of Chinese cartography held the graduation of the sphere at 365.25 degrees, while the Western graduation was of 360 degrees. Th... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
From this sprang a new science wholly dedicated to the demonstration of the Chinese origin of astronomy and more generally of all European science and technology. Although mainstream Chinese science until the 17th century held the view that Earth was flat, square, and enveloped by the celestial sphere, this idea was cr... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The Yuan-dynasty mathematician Li Ye (c. 1192–1279) firmly argued that Earth was spherical, just like the shape of the heavens only smaller, since a square Earth would hinder the movement of the heavens and celestial bodies in his estimation. The 17th-century Ge zhi cao treatise also used the same terminology to descri... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The Portuguese exploration of Africa and Asia, Columbus's voyage to the Americas (1492) provided more direct evidence of the size and shape of the world. The first direct demonstration of Earth's sphericity came in the form of the first circumnavigation in history, an expedition captained by Portuguese explorer Ferdina... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
They crossed the Atlantic Ocean, passed through what is now called the Strait of Magellan, crossed the Pacific, and arrived in Cebu, where Magellan was killed by Philippine natives in a battle. His second in command, the Spaniard Juan Sebastián Elcano, continued the expedition and, on September 6, 1522, arrived at Sevi... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
In the Carolingian era, scholars discussed Macrobius's view of the antipodes. One of them, the Irish monk Dungal, asserted that the tropical gap between our habitable region and the other habitable region to the south was smaller than Macrobius had believed.In 1505 the cosmographer and explorer Duarte Pacheco Pereira c... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Cassini divided the measured arc into two parts, one northward from Paris, another southward. When he computed the length of a degree from both chains, he found that the length of one degree of latitude in the northern part of the chain was shorter than that in the southern part (see illustration). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
This result, if correct, meant that the earth was not a sphere, but a prolate spheroid (taller than wide). However, this contradicted computations by Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens. In 1659, Christiaan Huygens was the first to derive the now standard formula for the centrifugal force in his work De vi centrifuga. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The formula played a central role in classical mechanics and became known as the second of Newton's laws of motion. Newton's theory of gravitation combined with the rotation of the Earth predicted the Earth to be an oblate spheroid (wider than tall), with a flattening of 1:230.The issue could be settled by measuring, f... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
The French Academy of Sciences dispatched two expeditions. One expedition (1736–37) under Pierre Louis Maupertuis was sent to Torne Valley (near the Earth's northern pole). The second mission (1735–44) under Pierre Bouguer was sent to what is modern-day Ecuador, near the equator. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
Their measurements demonstrated an oblate Earth, with a flattening of 1:210. This approximation to the true shape of the Earth became the new reference ellipsoid. In 1787 the first precise trigonometric survey to be undertaken within Britain was the Anglo-French Survey. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy |
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