Abstract
In a little under a decade beginning in 1749 and ending in 1757, the secular acceleration of the moon had gone from being a postulated and fairly widely accepted but still unquantified phenomenon to a proven fact, whose size had been estimated three times with differing but not completely incompatible results. Dunthorne’s determination of the size of the coefficient of the moon’s secular equation as 10″ per century2 was effectively confirmed by Lalande and became the accepted figure in later eighteenth-century theoretical investigations of the secular acceleration, especially after the publication of Mayer’s revised and not-too-discordant value of 9″ per century2 in his final lunar tables edited by Maskelyne in 1770.
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Notes
- 1.
Costard, “Concerning the Year of the Eclipse foretold by Thales”, pp. 24–25.
- 2.
Costard, “Concerning an Eclipse mention’d by Xenophon”, pp. 158–159.
- 3.
Long, Astronomy, pp. 435–436.
- 4.
Long, Astronomy, pp. 435–436.
- 5.
Hastie (1900), p. xxxix.
- 6.
An English translation of Kant’s essay is given by Hastie (1900), pp. 1–11. All quotations from Kant’s essay are taken from Hastie’s translation.
- 7.
Hastie (1900), p. 4.
- 8.
Hastie (1900), p. 4.
- 9.
Cartwright (1999), p. 145.
- 10.
Wilson (1985), p. 21.
- 11.
Wilson (1985), p. 21.
- 12.
Bernoulli, “Mémoire sur la Comparaison de quelques Observations anciennes de la Lune acec les Tables de Mayer”.
- 13.
Bernoulli, “Mémoire sur la Comparaison de quelques Observations anciennes de la Lune acec les Tables de Mayer”, p. 179.
- 14.
On the subsequent history of the theoretical investigation of the moon’s secular acceleration, see Kushner (1989), Britton (1992), pp. 153–178, and Wilson (2010), pp. 239–284.
- 15.
Newcomb, Researches on the Motion of the Moon, p. 43.
- 16.
The recent discovery of an account of this eclipse preserved on a cuneiform tablet from Babylon has cleared Ptolemy of the charge of misrepresenting the Babylonian account of the observation. See Steele (2005).
- 17.
Stephenson (1997).
- 18.
Ideler followed this work with his monumental two-volume Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie in 1825–1826.
References
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Ideler, Ludwig, 1806, Historische Untersuchungen über die astronomischen Beobachtungen der Alten (Berlin).
Mayer, Tobias, 1770, Tabulæ Motuum Solis et Lunæ Novæ et Correctæ; Auctore Tobia Mayer: Quibus Accedit Methodus Longitudinum Promota, Eodem Auctore (London).
Newcomb, Simon, 1878, Researches on the Motion of the Moon made at the United States Naval Observatory, Washington. Part I. Reduction and Discussion of Observations of the Moon Before 1750 (Washington)
Britton, J. P., 1992, Models and Precision: The Quality of Ptolemy’s Observations and Parameters (New York: Garland).
Cartwright, D. E., 1999, Tides: A Scientific History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Hastie, W., 1900, Kant’s Cosmogony as in his Essay on the Retardation of the Rotation of the Earth and his Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons).
Kushner, D., 1989, ‘The Controversy Surrounding the Secular Acceleration of the Moon’s Mean Motion’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 39, 291–316.
Newton, R. R., 1977, The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).
Steele, J. M., 2005, ‘Ptolemy, Babylon and the Rotation of the Earth’, Astronomy and Geophysics 46/5, 11–15.
Stephenson, F. R., 1997, Historical Eclipses and Earth’s Rotation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Wilson, C., 1985, ‘The Great Inequality of Jupiter and Saturn: From Kepler to Laplace’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 33, 15–290.
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Steele, J.M. (2012). Epilogue. In: Ancient Astronomical Observations and the Study of the Moon’s Motion (1691-1757). Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2149-8_9
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