Peter Short?
Art Neuendorffer
http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthmag/demagrev.htm
De Magnete Physiologia nova, plurimis
& argumentis, & experimentis demonstrata
by William Gilbert
Published by Peter Short, London, 1600.
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"O that the gods would at length bring to a miserable end
such fictitious, crazy, deformed labours, with which
the minds of the studious are blinded!" - W. Gilbert
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http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthmag/demagint.htm
<<In 1600, four hundred years ago William Gilbert, later physician to
Queen Elizabeth I of England, published his great study of magnetism,
"De Magnete"--"On the Magnet". It gave the first rational explanation to
the mysterious ability of the compass needle to point north-south: the
Earth itself was magnetic. "De Magnete" opened the era of modern physics
and astronomy and started a century marked by the great achievements
of Galileo, Kepler, Newton and others.
If you lived in London in 1600, you could have purchased "De Magnete"
for seven shillings and sixpence. To read it, of course, you would have
to know Latin, the language of science in 1600. You might have had the
rare privilege of attending first runs of Shakespeare's plays in the
"Globe" theatre--sitting in the balcony if you could afford it, standing
in front of the stage if not. However, you might have had to weigh this
pleasure against the peril of bubonic plague, which usually spread in
the city during summer months.
An exhibition in Colchester, titled "William Gilberd 1544 - 1603
Celebrating a Magnetic Mind" (his name as it is spelled in Colchester)
marks the 400th anniversary of his death. It is held 25 July 2003 to
25 January 2004 in Colchester Castle Museum, Castle Park,
Colchester, Essex,, England.>>
<<[London] was congested and unsanitary, and rats carrying bubonic
plague thrived in it. Outbreaks usually ocurred in the summer, and at
such time the royal court sometimes prudently retreated to the
countryside. Physicians such as William Gilbert had their hands full,
but they could do little and were unaware of the role of the rats.
Gilbert, appointed royal physician in 1601, himself died of the plague
in 1603. Shakespeare's creative genius was in full bloom in 1600. He put
on his plays in the Globe theatre, a ring-shaped structure built in 1599
on the banks of the Thames from the remains of an earlier theatre. His
plays of the 1599-1600 season were Julius Ceasar, 12th Night and
As You Like It; in 1600-1 came Hamlet and Merry Wives of Windsor.
It is quite likely that Gilbert attended at least some of those plays.>>
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http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthmag/demagadd.htm
<<In addition of describing his own findings, Gilbert devoted long
sections of his book to a critical examination of earlier writings about
the magnet and the compass. For instance, he traced the claim that
garlic robbed a magnet of its powers to "Plutarch and Claudius Ptolemy
and all the copyists since their time," commenting "thus in philosophy
many false and idle conjectures arise from fables and falsehoods." Of
his own experiments, the most important was conducted with a magnetized
"terrella" ("little Earth"), a spherical magnet serving as a model for
the Earth. By moving a small compass over the surface of the terrella,
Gilbert reproduced the directional behavior of the compass; reputedly,
he also demonstrated this in front of Queen Elizabeth and her court.
In addition to studying magnets. Gilbert also looked into a vaguely
similar phenomenon--the fact that certain materials, when lightly rubbed
with cloth or fur, attracted light objects such as chaff. One such
material was amber, a yellow fossilized resin called elektron by the
ancient Greeks. From this Gilbert named such attraction the "electrick
force," and from that came such words as electric charge, electricity,
electrons and electronics. Gilbert even devised a pivoted
lightweight needle--a "versorium" resembling a compass needle-
-to observe the direction of the electric force.
Gilbert ascribed the deviation of the compass needle from true north to
the attraction of the continents, which tallied with observations in the
Northern Atlantic--the needle veered eastwards near Europe, westwards
near America. Noting that near the islands of Novaya Zemlaya, north of
Russia, the compass needle pointed west of true north, Gilbert
speculated that a "north-east passage" around Russia might exist, giving
more direct access by sea to the spice islands of the Far East. Some
decades earlier, Frobisher and Davis had sought in vain a similar
"north-west passage" around the American continent.
The last of the 6 "books" into which Gilbert's work is divided deals
with the motion of Earth in space and its possible connection to
magnetism. Here Gilbert voiced complete support of Copernicus, "the
Restorer of Astronomy," which made the book somewhat controversial.
Galileo, who praised "De Magnete," obtained his copy of it as a gift
from "a peripatetick philosopher of great fame, as I believe,
to free his library of its contagion.">>
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http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthmag/DMGRev2.htm
"On the Magnet" by William Gilbert of Colchester
First published by the Chiswick Press, London 1600
http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthmag/Figures/titlepag.gif
What milestone marks the beginning of modern science? Some will cite
Copernicus (1543), Kepler (1609) or Galileo (1610), yet "De Magnete"
published in 1600 by William Gilbert has at least as much of a claim.
Faced with the uncanny ability of the compass needle to point northward
(eminently useful, too!), Gilbert set out to learn all he could about
magnetism. He started by reading and examining all existing literature,
finding rather little of value. Next he designed and performed his own
experiments, not just on magnetic forces but also on "electrick" ones
(his term), feeling the two were somewhat related. His studies involved
both naturally found magnets--"loadstones" or "lodestones"--and
artificially magnetized iron. He also fully understood induced
magnetism, the fact that a piece of non-magnetic iron temporarily took
on all properties of a permanent magnet when placed next to one. He then
observed that when a small compass needle ("versorium") was moved about
the surface of a spherical magnet, it faithfully reproduced the behavior
of the compass needle. Not only did the needle point poleward when
constrained to a "horizontal" plane tangential to the sphere: it also
slanted downwards at an angle (see illustration above) when pivoted on a
horizontal axis, reproducing the "magnetic dip" discovered in 1581 by
Robert Norman. Gilbert's experiments with his spherical "terrella"
("little Earth") convinced him of what became his chief discovery.
The mysterious directionality of the compass needle, he proposed,
came about because the Earth itself was a giant magnet.
Professionally, William Gilbert (1544-1603) was a distinguished
physician, appointed in 1601 as physician to Queen Elizabeth I. The
queen died two years later, and Gilbert himself perished not long
afterwards from the plague, with which London was often afflicated. His
life-long passion, though, was magnetism, and "De Magnete"--divided into
six "books"--was certainly his greatest accomplishment. Edward Wright,
who wrote an introduction to "De Magnete", accurately observed:
"... for believe me ... these books of yours on the Magnet
will avail more for perpetuating the memory of your name
than the monument of any great Magnate placed upon your tomb."
"De Magnete" was written in Latin, but two excellent translations
exist, that of Paul Fleury Mottelay (1893) which is still in print
(Dover Books, $13.95) and a more sumptuous one by Silvanus Thompson
(1900), the source of the passages quoted here. Even translated, the
book is a challenge, with obtuse phrasing and paragraphs that stretch
for pages. Yet through it all we can see the author struggling with his
material, trying to impose some sense, some logical pattern on puzzling
and contradictory statements and observations. This is science in its
rawest state: Newton may have stood "on the shoulders of giants," but
Gilbert had to build his understanding from the ground up.
Gilbert was a perceptive observer, but that often was not enough.
He noticed that moisture disrupted static electricity (e.g. from moist
breath)--but a coating of oil did not, and droplets of water were
themselves attracted by electric forces. He observed that magnetic
forces persisted across a flame--but that magnetic iron lost its power
when raised to red heat. What did it all mean, he may well have
wondered?
Once answers are known, you can never again recapture the fog of
ignorance, the frustration of not knowing, of not being able to see a
clear connection. Reading "De Magnete" is perhaps the closest we can
ever come to reliving that experience. Gilbert accurately noted that
cast iron was feebly magnetic, and that long iron rods had magnetic
poles at their ends. Why? How? It is easy for us to nod sagely and say
yes, the iron captured the surrounding magnetic field of the Earth as it
cooled past the Curie point, and those field lines were channeled by its
elongated shape, creating a concentrated effect at its ends. But this is
now, and that was then.
Not all of Gilbert's claims have stood the test of time. Gilbert
believed that the Earth's magnetism and its rotation had a common cause:
the fact that magnetic north and astronomical north were so near to each
other seemed too much of a coincidence. Though pure guesswork, utterly
discounted now, that idea did enjoy a brief revival of sorts in the
mid-1900s, due to P.M. Blackett. Concerning the rotation of the Earth
Gilbert never had any doubt. Others might have viewed the Earth as the
center of creation, around which stars and other luminaries whirled, but
not Gilbert, who calculated the implied velocities and found them
incredibly large.
Let us not forget, in this connection, that 1600 was also the year when
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake. Claims of the Earth's rotation
had to be (at the very least) reconciled with religious dogma. Edward
Wright, in his introduction, tried to do so in the following words:
"Nor do those things which are adduced from the sacred scriptures seem
to be specially adverse to the doctrine of the mobility of the Earth;
nor does it seem to have been the intention of Moses or of the Prophets
to promulgate any mathematical or physical niceties, but to adapt
themselves to the understanding of the common people and their manner
of speech, just as nurses are accustomed to adapt themselves
to infants, and not to go into every unnecessary detail... "
If rotation and magnetism went together, how come the compass needle
rarely pointed to true north, but exhibited a small "variation" (today
called "declination")? Gilbert noted that in the northern Atlantic
Ocean, the variation was always towards the nearer continent: towards
Europe near Europe, towards American near America. He then ingeniously
proposed that if the Earth were a perfect sphere, the two directions
would always coincide. However, the Earth is not quite spherical:
the Atlantic ocean forms a gash in its surface (water apparently
contributes no magnetism), while Europe and Africa to its
east and America to the west rise above the average surface
and may add magnetic attraction.
Having made his guess, Gilbert checked it experimentally: "Let there
be a loadstone somewhat imperfect in some part, and impaired by decay
(such as one we had with a certain part corroded to resemble the
Atlantic or great Ocean)." Moving the compass needle around the
blemished terrella, Gilbert found his guess confirmed. Away from the
pitted part, and also at the center of the pit, the "versorium" pointed
towards the magnetic pole. However, near the edges of the depression,
the direction of the needle (faintly visible in the drawing) veered
towards the unblemished parts, just as the compass needle in the oceans
close to Europe or America was deflected towards the nearby continents.
Because dips and rises in the globe did not change (at least, on the
scale of human history), he boldly predicted that the "variation" will
stay unchanged: "Unless there should be a great dissolution of a
continent and a subsidence of the land such as there was in the region
Atlantis of which Plato and the ancients tell, the variation will
continue perpetually immutable... " Unfortunately, even predictions
based on experimental evidence may miss the mark. As Gellibrand
discovered around 1634, the magnetic field constantly changes, which is
why a new IGRF (International Geomagnetic Reference Field) must be
calculated, from more recent observations, every decade or so.
There is more, much more, often embellished in colorful phrases no
modern editor would ever let slip by. How stilted does modern scientific
prose sound, compared to Gilbert's words! Here, for instance is how he
proposed to use the dip angle (his term is "declination") to deduce
latitude at sea when the skies were obscured: "We may see how far from
unproductive magnetick philosophy is, how agreeable, how helpful, how
divine! Sailors when tossed about on the waves with continuous cloudy
weather, and unable by means of the celestial luminaries to learn
anything about the place or the region in which they are, with a very
slight effort and with a small instrument are comforted, and learn the
latitude of the place." Gilbert even designed an instrument
to measure the dip angle.
And those who nowadays believe in the holistic magic of magnetic
bracelets may well heed Gilbert's advice: "The application
of loadstones to all sorts of headaches no more cures them
(as some make out) than would an iron helmet or a steel cap. ">>
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http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthmag/demagrev.htm
De Magnete Physiologia nova
(As reviewed by Stuart Malin and David Barraclough in Eos,
Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, vol 81, 23 May
2000, to mark the 400th anniversary of the book's publication.)
<<The notion of a scientific textbook was unfamiliar when De Magnete
first appeared in 1600. Certainly scientific subjects and even
geomagnetism had been written about (e.g. by Petrus Peregrinus in his
Epistola de Magnete, 1269), but as reports of equipment and phenomena
rather than as in-depth investigations of a subject, with experimental
evidence and interpretation.
William Gilbert (1544-1603) was the eldest of Jerome Gilbert's
eleven children: four from his first marriage and seven from a second.
Confusingly these included a second William who,
even more confusingly, erected a memorial tablet to "our" William,
but with his year of birth erroneously given as 1540.
The family lived in Colchester, some 50 miles NE of London, where
Jerome held the prestigious post of Recorder. William received a
gentleman's education at St John's College, Cambridge, where he remained
for 11 years until 1569, acquiring bachelor's and master's degrees,
qualification as a medical doctor and a Senior Fellowship. This was
followed by a four-year "Grand Tour" of Europe, mostly spent in Italy,
before he settled in London in 1573 to practice medicine. His medical
career was spectacularly successful, culminating with presidency of the
Royal College of Physicians in 1599 and appointment as physician to
Queen Elizabeth I in 1601. The Queen died two years later, though no
blame for this attaches to Gilbert, who continued to be Royal Physician
(to James VI and I) until his own death by plague 8 months later. It is
of interest to note that Mark Ridley, a slightly younger geomagnetician
(and acquaintance of Gilbert's, whom he commended as the greatest
discoverer in magnetical science), was also a royal physician -
in his case to the Tsar of Muscovy, Boris Godunov.
Gilbert's achievements as a doctor would have been enough to secure his
fame, but he is remembered today for his investigations into magnetism
and electricity, which he reported in De Magnete. These investigations
were conducted from about 1581 to 1600, in parallel with his medical
career. The experiments were made and discussed with like-minded friends
who met in his house for this purpose; a pattern similar to that
followed half a century later which led to the foundation of the Royal
Society. Although magnetism was essentially a hobby, it was one that
Gilbert, who never married, took very seriously and on which he expended
large sums of money (£5000 according to William Harvey)
for instruments and equipment.
The book itself is a handsome production, well illustrated with
woodcuts and various printing devices such as illuminated letters at the
start of each chapter. Marginal asterisks, of two sizes, draw attention
to points of particular importance. After an author's preface, by
Gilbert, and an encomiastic preface, by Edward Wright, there are 115
chapters, sometimes of only one paragraph, arranged in 6 books. Edward
Wright (1558?-1615) is famous for putting Mercator's projection on a
sound mathematical footing. The book is not unlike a modern PhD thesis
in layout, starting with a survey of previous work, moving on to
experimental results, discussing these and setting them in the broader
context of worldwide results, and ending with speculation
and unsolved problems.
The first book starts with an historical survey, then reviews the basic
magnetic properties of a lodestone (poles, attraction and repulsion,
magnetisation of iron) and ends with the famous chapter on the Earth
itself being a great magnet. There is an interesting discussion of the
medicinal properties of iron and lodestone, in which it is concluded
that magnetism plays no part, since: "when drunk in a draught"
[lodestone does not] "avail to attract or repel".
In the second book a clear distinction is drawn between the attractive
properties of magnets and rubbed amber: "for it pleases us to call that
an electric force". Many magnetic and static-electric experiments are
reported, including investigations of the effects of interposed
material, shape of lodestone and the effect of "arming" the poles with
iron caps. Much folklore is refuted, not least the possibility of a
perpetual motion machine: "O that the gods would at length bring
to a miserable end such fictitious, crazy, deformed labours,
with which the minds of the studious are blinded! "
Book three is concerned with the directive properties of a magnet, but
also with details of the magnetisation of needles and the distribution
of magnetism in a terrella (Gilbert's word for a spherical lodestone).
The terrella experiments are of particular importance, since it was
these that led Gilbert to draw the analogy between
the magnetic field of the Earth and that of a terrella.
This introduction to geomagnetism is developed in more detail in
book 4 (on declination, which was then known as "variation")
and book 5 (on dip, which Gilbert calls declination).
The final book is more speculative. It concerns stellar and terrestrial
motions, which Gilbert erroneously associates with magnetism and
believes that this adds support to the Copernican theory. This was
unacceptable to religious views at the time and many of the European
copies of De Magnete have had Book 6 removed or defaced. Nevertheless,
the idea of action at a distance for controlling the planetary motions
was seminal for Hooke's and Newton's thoughts about gravity.
But a mere list of its contents can give only a hint of the book. It is
constantly necessary to remind oneself while reading it of just how
early it is. Here is Baconian science, based on experiment and
observation rather than hearsay, being practised twenty years before the
publication of Bacon's Novum Organum. And, over a hundred years before
it ceased to be an offence punishable by flogging for a British naval
helmsman to have garlic on his breath for fear of demagnetising the
ship's compass, De Magnete dismisses as "fable and
falsehood" the idea that a lodestone smeared with garlic loses its
power. All this at a time when it was heresy to set experiment against
the teachings of the church; indeed, it was also in 1600 that the
philosopher Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for heresy.
Admittedly, things were more relaxed in England than in Italy, but it
was still courageous, perhaps even foolhardy, to publish such a book.
The quoted price of De Magnete may be a little misleading as, even
without the benefit of this review, all four Latin editions, of 1600,
1628, 1633 and 1892 (a facsimile of the first edition) are sold out.
While second-hand copies occasionally appear at auction,
they are not cheap: a good first edition was recently
(January 1998) sold for $15,000.
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William GILBERT (1544-1603)
the first physician to serve James I.
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Physicians to James I
GILBER(t) & HARVEY
[G(a)BRIEL HARVEY]
William GILBERT expended £5000 according to
William HARVEY for instruments and equipment.
William GILBERT & William HARVEY's letters &
manuscripts burned up in the London Fire of 1666.
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In 1632, Ben Jonson wrote _The Magnetic Lady_
an "Ideal Match" for WILLIAM GILBERT "The Magnetic Man"
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Both Will Shakspere & Robert BURNS had brothers named GILBERT.
<<In 1600 in a landmark book British physician and naturalist WILLIAM
GILBERT proposed the idea that the earth may have a magnetic field.
Shakespeare seemed aware of this theory: in Troilus and Cressida
(1601-1602) he writes, (III.2.184-186) "as TRUE as steel, as plantage to
the moon/As sun to day, as turtle to her mate/ As iron to adamant, as
earth to the centre." In the same play, (IV.2.109-111) "But the strong
base and building of my love/Is as the very centre of the earth /
Drawing all things to it.">> -- _Shakespeare In The Stars_ Altschuler
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May 24 Feast day of [Black Virgin] St. Sara patroness of gypsies.
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http://www.ntin.net/McDaniel/0524.htm
May 24, 1153, St David I, King of Scotland, died at Carlisle.
David established Norman law in Scotland,
set up the office of chancellor, and began the feudal court.
Numerous almshouses, leper-hospitals, and infirmaries established.
May 24, 1543, The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus died having
just viewed that day the completed publication of
his treatise on the orbits of the planets.
May 24, 1544, WILLIAM GILBERT born.
May 24, 1607, Jamestown [1st permanent Eng. settlement] founded.
Capt. John Smith & 143 others had landed in Virginia
on April 26, 1607 [Shakspere's 43rd birthday]
May 24, 1612, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, dies.
May 24, 1689, the English Parliament passed Act of Toleration,
protecting Protestants.
May 24, 1725, One of the most famous highwaymen, Jonathan Wild,
was hanged.
May 24, 1738, King George III, son of Frederick, Prince of Wales and
grandson and successor to King George II, was born. On the same day
in London, English founder of Methodism John Wesley underwent his
famous religious conversion at Aldersgate Chapel.
May 24, 1743, French Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat born.
May 24, 1764, Boston lawyer James Otis denounces
"taxation without representation".
May 24, 1816, Emamual Leutze born in Germany. Famous for his paintings
_Columbus Before the Queen_ and _Washington Crossing the Delaware_
(with its anachronistic portrayal of the flag before it was designed).
May 24, 1819, Queen Victoria was born on her grandfather/king's
81st birthday, six months before the old mad king's death.
May 24, 1862, First trial run of London Underground.
[Queen Vic's 43rd birthday]
May 24, 1863, a Sunday, my uncle, Professor Lidenbrock,
came rushing back towards his little house, at No. 19 Königstrasse,
one of the oldest streets in the historic part of Hamburg.
Martha the maid must have thought she was running very late,
for dinner had hardly begun to simmer on the kitchen range.
May 24, 1883, The Brooklyn Bridge opened between Lower Manhattan &
Brooklyn by President Chester A. Arthur and New York governor Grover
Cleveland. Designed by John Roebling, who died before its completion,
leaving the structure to be finished by his son Washington.
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King George III - 106th birthday!
Queen Victoria's - 25th birthday
Historic Message, 24 May 1844
<<This paper tape recording of the historic message transmitted by
Samuel F. B. Morse reads when decoded, "What hath God wrought?" It was
sent by him from the Supreme Court room in the Capitol to his assistant,
Alfred VAIL, in Baltimore. Morse's early system produced a paper copy
with raised dots and dashes, which were translated later by an operator.
Across the top of this historic achievement Morse has given credit to
Annie Ellsworth, the young daughter of a good friend, for suggesting
to him what message to send. She obtained it from the Bible,
Numbers 23:23.>> http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/atthtml/morse2.html
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NUMBERS 23:23 Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob,
neither is there divination against Israel:
according to this time it shall be said of Jacob
and of Israel, What hath God wrought!
(From the last oracle of the non-Israelite prophet Balaam)
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http://www.icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/gower/gow-flor.html
John Gower, Confessio Amantis, Tale of Florent, Book I
Florent this thing HATH undertake, The day was set, the time take,
Under his seal he WROT his oth, In such a wise and forth he goth
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<= 33 =>
[T] OT---- [H] EONLIEBEGETTEROFTHESEINSVINGS
[O] NN [E T] SMRWHALLHAPPINESSEANDTHATETE
[R] NI-- [T(I)E] PROMISEDBYOVREVERLIVINGPOET
[W] IS [H E T H] THEWELLWISHINGADVENTVRERIN
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Art Neuendorffer