Dr Administrator
Author's posts
Mar 25 2012
Book Review: The Great Arc by John Keay
This is a review of “The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India Was Mapped and Everest Was Named” by John Keay. This book does exactly what it says in the lengthy subtitle: describe the Great Triangulation Survey of India which was conducted in the first half of the 19th century.
It fits together with “Map of a Nation” by Rachel Hewitt and “The Measure of All Things” By Ken Alder. The former describes the detailed mapping of the United Kingdom by the Ordnance Survey, whilst the later describes the measurement of the Paris meridian by Méchain and Delambre. Of the three surveys the French one had been completed first at the beginning of the 19th century whilst the mapping of the UK was going on at the same time as the Indian survey.
The book is centred around the Great Arc survey originally proposed by William Lambton at the beginning of the 19th Century. Lambton’s aim was primarily to measure a meridian (a line of longitude), in the same manner as the Paris meridian in order to gain more information on the shape of the earth (geodesy). For his sponsors in England and the administration of India the survey served as a military and commercial exercise. Military action is often a spur to survey, since getting your troops and their equipment from point A to point B and ensuring they prevail over any forces they come across on the way is a high-value activity which is greatly assisted by the provision of accurate maps. Surveying is also invaluable when you are planning infrastructure such as roads, canals and railways.
The survey came a time when the British relationship with the area now known as India was changing from a trading one based on outposts to one in which the British took territory militarily. The Triangulation Survey was not exhaustive, it comprised a central spine (The Great Arc) running along the 78th meridian up through the tip of the Indian peninsular to the edge of the Himalayas with regular “cross-bars” running from West to East, towards the north an array of parallel meridians were also measure. (You can see a map here). The aim was to use this survey to constrain further local surveys.
The Great Arc survey was a great endeavour, taking 40 or so years in total, after Lambton died in 1823 George Everest took on the job of leading the project. Lambton seems to have been a pleasant sort of chap who went a little native, disappearing from the view of his sponsors. Everest, on the other hand, appeared to be a complete git – being abusive to most of his subordinates and apparently also winding up his superiors.
Much of the activity in the book is in common with that which took place during the surveys of France and the United Kingdom. Laying out base-lines: distances measured directly on the ground by means of rods or chains used to pin down the distances in the “triangulation” which is a collection of angular measurements at the vertices of an array of triangles. Once again the precision is impressive, two 7 mile baselines measured out 200 miles apart agree with the triangulation measurement to within a few inches. Angular measurements were made using a theodolite, Keay labels the one used in India as the “Great Theodolite”, which I thought was a term reserved for the Ramsden device used in the UK (we can’t all have a Great Theodolite!).
The Indian survey presented different challenges in the form of the wildlife (tigers, scorpions etc) but also disease. The rate of attrition amongst the surveyors, particularly as they traversed jungle was terrible. The book is not explicit about figures but in the later stages of the survey something like a thousand men were involved and a couple of hundred of those died of disease. Lambton and later Everest both suffered from recurring bouts of malaria.
The “discovery” of Mount Everest and the tallest peaks in the Himalayas was somewhat incidental to the main thrust of the survey. It had become clear in the first decade or so of the 19th century that the Himalayas were the tallest mountains in the world but their precise height was uncertain. Political difficulties with Nepal, their location far from the sea and their immense size meant determinations were poor. Indeed at the time of the beginning of the survey the height of Mont Blanc in Europe was only know to within a thousand feet or so of its currently accepted value. It wasn’t until 1856, after the Great Arc had been completed and Andrew Scott Waugh had taken over the survey that Mount Everest (known at the time as Peak XV) was measured and Waugh proposed Everest be its name. (Everest is apparently pronounced Eve-rest rather than Ever-est, and the man himself was very particular about this).
Put beside “Map of a Nation” and “The Measure of All Things”, “The Great Arc” is a nice, brief introduction to the theme of triangulation surveys and geodesy which covers measuring the height of mountains in a bit more detail than the other two.
The Great Arc survey, along with the French meridian survey fit together with the earlier French Geodesic Mission to Peru by Condamine and Bouger around 1735, which is described in “Measure of the Earth” by Larrie G. Ferreiro – I’ve added this to my wish list.
Footnotes
You can see my Evernotes on The Great Arc here.
Mar 18 2012
Book Review: Decoding the Heavens by Jo Marchant
“Decoding the Heavens” by Jo Marchant is the story of the Antikythera Mechanism, a mechanical astronomical calculator dating from around 100BC which predicts the motions of heavenly bodies including the sun, moon and various planets. The best way to understand how the device worked is through videos relating to this book (here) and, rather more slickly (here).
The Antikythera Mechanism was recovered off the coast of the island which provides its name in 1900. The wreck from which it was recovered was also carrying a large number of impressive bronze and marble statues, for example the Antikythera Ephebe. It is believed it was sailing from the Asia Minor coast to Rome, carrying the spoils of war. The wreck lies at a depth of 60 metres which is deep for the technology available at the time, the distinctive metal-helmeted diving suit. It was discovered by the crew of Captain Krontos, who were sponge-divers. As such they did a very risky job, Marchant reports that between 1886 and 1910 around 10,000 divers died from the bends and a further 20,000 were paralysed.
Once they had discovered the wreck they reported it to the Greek government who organised the salvage operation, at the time it was one of the first marine archaeological salvages – it was preceded in 1884 by a speculative operation in the straits of Salamis which had recovered little. By the 1950s hundreds of wrecks were known in the Mediterranean. Marchant states that this is the first ever attempt to salvage artefacts from a sunken ship, I’m sceptical of this claim – it’s only true for very narrow definitions of each word – Edmond Halley, for example, had a company offering to salvage treasure from sunken ships in the 1690s.
It is curious how little regarded the Anthikythera Mechanism has been over the hundred or so years since its discovery. A measure of this is that the Athens National Museum, where it is kept, were still finding bits of it in 2005! This re-discovery is in some sense understandable, the Mechanism presents a rather unassuming appearance when compared to the statues with which it was found furthermore curating appears to have sharpened its act up over the years. A second reason is that it almost has the air of a fake about it, no other mechanism of comparable complexity was known until around 1000AD, and there was little written evidence for the existence of such devices.
The book works through the interpretation of the mechanism chronologically by researcher, starting with the initial interpretations made by John Svoronos and Pericles Rediadis (1903), Konstantin Rados (1905), Albert Rehm (1907) and John Theophanidis (1934). These are covered quite briefly. These initial studies were based on an exterior view of the fragments and small amounts of visible text, of which more became visible as cleaning attempts were made. It’s worth highlighting here that the mechanism was covered in text, both labels and operating instructions although originally little of this text was discernable. From these studies the mechanism was related to astronomical equipment such as the astrolabe, but was clearly different since it had a more complex clockwork-like mechanism. This chronological approach means that the reader gets a fragmented view of the device (with reverses in interpretation), as the story unfolds. There is also a degree of dramatisation of the story (e.g. “Shit,” said Roger Hadland) scattered through the book, I must admit to finding these rather grating but they are relatively sparse.
After the initial investigations there was a hiatus, with interest appearing to restart in the 1950s possibly spurred by a visit by Jacque Cousteau to the wreck in 1953. Derek De Solla Price was the next to attempt an analysis aided by x-ray imaging of the mechanism which was not available in earlier times. Price was Professor of the History of Science at Yale, in addition to his work on the Antikythera Mechanism he also did early work on scientometrics and the Japanese atomic bomb effort. He finally published his analysis in “Gears from the Greeks” in 1974, this included a detailed description of how the mechanism might have operated based on the gearing made visible by x-ray imaging.
The next attempt at a reconstruction was made by Michael Wright, originally curator of the engineering collection at the Science Museum in work starting in the early 1980s. He was joined by Allan G Bromley, a computer scientist and historian who was also involved in the reconstruction of the the Babbage. They quickly realised that Price’s theoretical reconstruction was in places somewhat creative. Wright ultimately produced a physical reconstruction of the mechanism over a period of 20 or so years.
Most recently, commencing in around 1998) there has been a collaboration led by Mike Edmunds at Cardiff University (The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project). They were able to bring to bear better x-ray tomography which was even able to reveal the details of inscriptions inside the accreted masses of the mechanism fragments, alongside Polynomial Texture Mapping, a photographic technique utilising multiple lighting angles and reconstruction to provide maximum information from surface markings. With collaborators at the Athens Nation Museum they also had access to an additional major fragment which had recently been discovered. Their work was published in the journal Nature (here in 2006 and here in 2008).
The comparison between the Wright and Edmunds collaborations is intriguing, in terms of scientific prestige the Edmunds collaboration have published on the mechanism in Nature the premier general science journal. They are a large collaboration with the best equipment, and fit well within the conventional scientific context. Wright, and to a lesser extent Bromley, were different. Wright in particular comes over has being very hard done by in the process, working in his spare time on the mechanism, always apparently “junior” to Bromley (the formal academic) and ultimately being pipped to glory by the Edmunds collaboration. His story comes through because Marchant has clearly interviewed many of the participants, rather than relying on the published literature. From the point of view of the published literature, all that is really visible to the scientific world, Wright’s efforts were virtually invisible until long after he had started work on the Mechanism.
The “problem” for the earliest interpreters of the mechanism is that it was so utterly different from anything else available from the period. There were no other clockwork like devices and few mentions of them, indeed the next instances were thought to be around 1000AD – it looks like the Antikythera Mechanism was dropped into the past from elsewhere. Nowadays it can be seen that this isn’t true. Archimedes and Ctesibius had been making complex mechanical devices in the 3rd century BC, although there are no physical remnants and the written records are sparse. On the other side, mechanisms of this type were in existence through to 1000AD and from then clocks appeared very rapidly suggesting a pre-existing store of knowledge.
In ancient Greece it is believed there were hundreds of thousands of bronze statues, the number left today are in the hundreds, at most. What chance even a few hundred rather unassuming objects to survive? As for the written record, what survives from the period has been repeatedly transcribed to suit the prevailing conditions, and they did not seek detailed descriptions of recondite mechanics. Can you lay your hands on the blue prints for an NMR machine?
The Antikythera Mechanism would have been made on the basis of the astronomical observations of the Babylonians who preceded its Greek makers. They had no “mechanical” model of the motions of the stars but they had a long, deep observational record of their movements. I’m interested in the night sky, and I can’t tell you but the details of the phases of the moon, even where it rises and sets let alone the motions of other planets are a mystery to me in the intuitive sense (I know I can look them up). The ancients had little to do at night, other than look at the sky – I feel I’ve lost something through having so many distractions and a night sky obscured by light pollution.
Footnotes
My Evernote on the book contains page by page comments, and also some links to related material
Mar 02 2012
Book Review: The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth
The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth
“The Etymologicon” by Mark Forsyth is a book of the origin of words, of their etymology. It’s based on the author’s blog, the Inky Fool, it reads very much as a sequence of blog posts strung together. This isn’t necessarily bad but does sometime make it feel like a a unrelenting, whirlwind tour of the origins of English words.
Although English was never my strongest subject at school this combination of history and language has always fascinated me. I thought I’d pluck out and summarise a few little gems that caught my eye:
Romany people have received a range of names, based on the mistaken assumptions of their origins. The term “gypsy” arises from those that thought they came from Egypt, most bizarrely the Spanish at one point seemed to believe they come from Flemish Belgium, hence the word “Flamenco”. The Roma ultimately come from India, their language having its roots in Hindi and Sanskrit.
Wamblecropt, meaning “afflicted by nausea” appeared in Cawdrey’s Table Alphabetical of 1604 which Forsyth cites as the first dictionary not directed to the aid of translators. He also highlights that the fame of Dr Johnson’s dictionary is not in its novelty as a type of book but in Johnson’s fame as a learned man. I feel there is a need to randomly reintroduce such words to the language, to see if their time has returned. “I am often wamblecropt on the train into work”.
I’d always assumed that Nazi was a a contraction of Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeitpartei, which it is but it was also a pre-existing term of abuse relating to Bavarian peasants who were the butt of jokes in Germany in the early 20th century. Nazi is a contraction of Ignatius, a common Bavarian name.
“Terrorism”, it seems was coined in English after the French Revolution to describe a system of government based on terror.
Rather romantically, the ring finger is so-named because early medicine held that the ring finger was directly connected to the heart and could be treated as a proxy for the treatment of heart problems, and so when we marry we put a ring on our ring finger. My wedding ring is the only jewellery I wear. Somewhat insensitively, when choosing a ring for Mrs SomeBeans at which point the issue of a ring for me was first raised, I exclaimed that I wasn’t particularly interested if it cost as much as hers did. I relented fairly soon afterwards, having saved on an engagement ring which Mrs SomeBeans wouldn’t have been able to wear as at the time she worked in the food industry.
You’ll be pleased to know that there was a “gorm” to go with “gormless”, gorm was a 12th century Scandinavian word meaning sense or understanding. Similarly, there were once also “feck” and “reck”, now only found in “feckless” and “reckless”. Happily there was also a “gruntle”, which is now only found in “disgruntled”. To gruntle is to grunt often, as pigs might do, in this instance dis- prefix is an intensifier.
Obviously I could go on, but it would be repetitive.
It’s difficult to know with a book like this the level of referencing which is desirable, it is light on references but the author acknowledges this at the end of the book, providing a brief bibliography and some more detailed references as an example.
Books similar to this include, Lynne Truss’s “Eats, shoots and leaves” and David Crystal’s “The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language“. The most useful part of my library membership is online access to the Oxford English Dictionary, which is also a goldmine for etymologists.
All in all an entertaining read, and compatible with the stresses of new parenthood.
Feb 24 2012
I am Dr Faustus
Ananyo Bhattacharya writes in the Guardian that “Scientists have sold their souls – and basic research – to business“. I wish, respectfully, to dispute this statement.
The article is built around the assertion that basic research in the UK has been corrupted by the idea that it must demonstrate a degree of usefulness, in particular to commercial interests.
Bhattacharya says:
“it is worth noting that the overwhelming majority of game-changing ideas and inventions have not come about as a result of scientists addressing the needs of business.
This is utter cobblers, have you heard of the Industrial Revolution? Do you know that that power is measured in Watts, after the steam engine designer James Watt or that the units of energy, Joules, are named for James Joule a brewer at the forefront of technological improvements for his brewery. What about the transistor, invented at Bell Labs? How about Lavoiser and the foundations of chemistry? These people may well have appeared to do their research as what we would describe as a “hobby” but they were strongly motivated by the businesses in which they worked at a time when the corporate research laboratory simply didn’t exist nor did the university research department. Even the work that Isaac Newton did was very relevant to commercial interests in his time, the motions of the moon and planets which can be derived from his laws of gravitation were important to navigation, and therefore trade. His work on the telescope can be seen in a similar light. The weaker version of this argument is that single causes for scientific discoveries simply do not exist, they arise from a combination of factors including straightforward curiosity, commercial interests, dependent discoveries, national prestige amongst other things.
Science has also been part of the entertainment business, it still is. Robert Hooke was employed by the Royal Society to provide scientific demonstrations to its members, similarly Michael Faraday was employed at the Royal Institution and long before electricity was used to do anything useful it was a part of the repertoire of travelling lecturers.
In common with many scientists, much of my work in academia was funded at least in part by industry including Courtaulds, Nestle and Unilever for whom I now work. There’s only a subset of scientist who work in areas which attract no direct industrial funding. Frankly, it is insulting for the rest of us to be told that our work is devalued because of those contacts we have had with industry. Industry is valuable to research because it asks interesting questions, and demands interesting things. How do I make a computer out of plastic? What must a drug that cures Alzheimer’s Disease do? What properties must my avalanche defence barrier have?
It is some form of arrogance to demand money from the public purse whilst simultaneously exclaiming that you can’t possibly describe how you will usefully spend that money; that the fruits of your labour are simply impossible to evaluate. Can you imagine a school or a hospital running this way, let alone a business?
The article also references the “unmeasureability” of basic research impacts, I think there is a degree of truth in this in particular the idea that an impact statement can be written for each and every grant and that the detail of that research proposal can be meaningfully given an “impact value”. However, this approach misses out the critical element of every research project: people.
Most of the people doing research in our university departments will leave them to do other work elsewhere. Trained people are the measurable impact of every research project; their training in basic research skills; their education in specific research skills around their core topic and only finally their knowledge in the very specific area they were taken on to research. As I mentioned earlier several companies spent moderate amounts of money on me through my academic research career what they got from that was not the publication output, I’m confident that my scientific impact in terms of citations will be largely forgotten in a few years time, the important thing was me!
Feb 17 2012
Childcare for scientists
Thomas - tired by feeding
Clearly childrearing is primarily a biology experiment but there are elements of physical sciences which are helpful.
A second area of interest is in temperature-control. Haake water baths are to scientists and temperature control as Marshall amplifiers are to musicians and guitars – other brands are available but they just don’t have the cachet. These devices will maintain water (and samples) at a fixed temperature. It turns out that the description “lukewarm”, used to specify the required temperature for baby feed, has been in use in English since the 14th century, distressingly for a scientist the OED does not provide an actual temperature in SI units corresponding to “lukewarm” (or in any other units for that matter). There is a clear gap in the market here for an espresso-style baby feeding machine which takes as inputs unsterilised gear, expressed breast milk and formula milk and dispenses the required aliquots of “lukewarm” milk – a baby weighing scale could usefully be incorporated into the top of the device. In principle it may be possible to get it to carry out the feeding, although in practice robots struggle with handling soft, squishy, shrieking things.
Finally, one is pretty much forced into preparing a baby feeding spreadsheet. It pains me to be forced to this, I have a “what would chimps do?” attitude to baby-rearing. But these days babies are set feeding targets (150-200 ml per kg per 24 hours), and woebetide any parents failing to meet those targets – they are threatened with a return to hospital by a brigade of midwives whose advice on achieving the target varies greatly but waking the baby up at 3 hourly intervals for a feeding, day and night, is a fixed point. Force-feeding a baby at 3am is quite challenging, changing the nappy first is a good waker-upper for both parties but once feeding the baby gradually slips back to sleep – as illustrated at the top of this post.
The midwife seemed unimpressed by my describing this as being akin to preparing baby foie gras.
About
I've worked as a scientist for the last 30 years, at various universities, a large home and personal care company, a startup in Liverpool called The Sensible Code Company (formerly ScraperWiki Ltd), GBG and now as a consultant in data science.
I write about:
* the books I have read, typically science and history (or both), partly as a reminder to myself and partly as a review;
* science, things I have done or things I find interesting;
* technology, programming and gadgets;
politics, and current affairs;
* ...and other stuff as it takes my fancy - holidays, photographs and things I want to remember.