Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T15:24:13.346Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

II—Calculating the Meridional Parts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2010

Extract

As Professor Taylor has described, the Hariot ms. is largely concerned with the calculation of meridional parts. These calculations are of great interest not only as regards the question of priority, but also because they are based on a method which was more than fifty years in advance of contemporary mathematical knowledge. Although the ms. is paged and cross-referenced, the calculations are incomplete and inadequately explained; arithmetical errors (remarkably few when all calculations had to be done by long multiplication!) make absolute interpretation of all figures almost impossible. Considerable detail is thus unavoidable if the essential parts of the ms. are to be put on record and explained; though the most important point must be left unexplained. There can be little doubt that Hariot's calculations are original and independent.

Type
The Doctrine of Nauticall Triangles Compendious
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1953

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

1Certaine Errors in Navigation …, by , E. W., London 1599. A photographic copy of the Preface and the table of meridional parts are reproduced in The International Hydrographic Review, Vol. VIII, No. 1, p. 84 et seq., May, 1931.Google Scholar
2Rouse Ball, W. W.A short account of the History of Mathematics, London, 1888, p. 211.Google Scholar
3All values used here have been calculated directly; meridional parts for the sphere are available to five decimals in Table of Meridional Parts …, Special Publication No. 21 of the International Hydrographic Bureau, Monaco, 1928.Google Scholar
4See (1), footnote on page 85 of reproduction.Google Scholar