The Discoverers By: Daniel J. Boorstin

A History of man's search to know his world and himself.

History Timeline!

Book 1: TIME

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"Time is the greatest innovator"

- Francis Bacon(1625)

Part 1:The Heavenly Empire

The Temptations of the Moon

Note. 1

3200 B.C

The Egyptians invented an everyday calendar.

Note. 7

2500 B.C

Greeks had figured out how to predict when the rising or setting sun would gild the tip of any particular, which helped them add a glow to their ceremonies and anniversaries.

Note. 3

432 B.C

The so-called Metonic cycle was discovered.

Note. 4

1572

Saint Bartholomew s days ; brutal massacre of Protestants.

Note. 2

1582

Pope Gregory XIII took ten days out of the calendar.

Note. 8

1582

Pope Gregory ordained that October 4 was to be followed by October 15.

Note. 6

1752

The Old style calendar was changed to the New Style calendar

Note. 5

1929

The Soviet Union aiming to dissolve the Christian year replaced the Gregorian with the Revolutionary calendar.

The Week: Gateway to Science

Note.1

139 B.C

Mathematici were expelled not only from Rome and Italy

Note. 2

201 A.D. - 300 A.D

Romans were living with a 7-day week.

God and Astrologers

Note. 4

48 B.C

Caesar burned many libraries

Note. 3

1406

Ptolemy's " Geography" reached Western Europe

Note. 1

1543

Ptolemy writes " De Revolutionibus"

Note. 2

1598

Tycho Brahe writes "Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica"

Part 2: From Sun Time To Clock Time

Measuring the Dark Hours

Note. 1

Note. 10

Note.2

Note. 3

Note. 4

Note. 5

Note. 6

Note. 7

Note. 8

Note. 9

The Rise of the Equal Hour

Note. 2

1330

The hour became our modern hour, one of twenty-four equal parts of the day.

Note. 3

1335

The campanile of the Chapel of the Blessed virgin in Milan is admired by Galvano della Fiamma.

Note. 5

1350

The Strasbourg clock is made for the Cathedral of Strasbourg, and served the public as a calendar and aid to astrology.

Note. 7

1364

Giovanni de' Dondi completed a clock that combined a planetarium and a timepiece.

Note. 6

1574

The Strasbourg clock is rebuilt with movable feasts, a Copernican planetarium with revolution of the planets, phases of the moon, eclipses, apparent and sidereal times, procession of the equinoxes, and etc.

Note. 4

1739

London announced the declaration of war against Spain.

Note. 1

1786

The cannon clock was installed by the Duke of Orleans in the garden of Palais Royal

Note. 10

Note. 8

Note. 9

Making Time Portable

Note. 2

1342

The principal of cross-staff was applied in western Europe.

Note. 1

1583

Galileo Galilei discovers isochronism.

Note. 3

1595

John Davis devised the handier backstaff.

Note. 9

1658

Hooke conjectured a marine clock made by the use of springs instead of Gravity.

Note. 7

1662

The Royal Society was founded.

Note. 8

1665

Robert Hooke wrote "Micrographia"

Note. 10

1674

Huygens made a watch with a balance spring.

Note. 4

1707

An English fleet foundered on the rocks of Scilly Islands.

Note. 5

1714

Parliament passed an act " For providing a Publick Reward for such Person or Persons as shall discover the Longitude at Sea".

Note. 6

1736

In" Rake's Progress" Hogarth tries to solve the puzzle of longitude.

Part 3: The Missionary Clock

One need not be astonished that the Chinese sages did not make these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all

-Albert Einstein (1953)

Open Sesame to China

Note. 3

1090

Su Sung's Clock was created.

Note. 1

1577

Mateo Ricci decided to join the Society of Jesuit.

Note. 2

September 1578

Matteo arrives in Goa to study and teach theology.

Note. 4

June 21, 1629

The Imperial Astronomers dictated that an eclipse would occur at 10:30 and would last for two hours. They were wrong. The Jesuits forecast-ed that the ellipse would happen at 11:30 and would last one two minutes.

Note. 5

1760

The Jesuit Father was in charge of the Emperor's astronomical affairs.

Note. 6

1808

John Barrow wrote "Travels in China".

Mother of Machines

Note. 10

1330 - 1382

Bishop Nicole d'Oresme created the unforgettable metaphor: "a clockwork universe, God the perfect clock maker!"

Note. 4

1353

Genoa's first mechanical public clock was made in Milan.

Note. 2

1480

A German clock maker devised a little lathe, also known as a compound.

Note. 5

1536

Calvin wrote "Institutes of the Christian Religion".

Note. 1

1540

Juanelo Torriano went to Spain to make a clock for Emperor Charles V. Torriano.

Note. 8

1571 - 1630

The Life of Johannes Kepler.

Note. 7

1618 - 1648

Thirty Years War

Note. 3

1741

French clock maker invented the "fuse machine".

Note. 6

1760

Laurence Sterne wrote " Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy".

Note. 9

1777

Punctuality was used in Sheridan's " School for Scandal"

What It Happened in the West

Note. 2

1361 B.C

The earliest verifiable eclipse reported by any people is recorded by the Chinese.

Note. 1

221 B.C

The " Chinese Caesar" , King Cheng, managed within 25 years to unify a half-dozen Chinese provinces into a single great empire, with a vast hierarchy of bureaucrats.

Note. 3

840 A.D

The Emperor of China ordered all observers in the imperial observatory to keep their business secret " Not to tell any common people about what they did for a living".

Note. 5

1830

Japan was able to make mainsprings for spring driven clocks.

Note. 4

1873

The Japanese changed from the "natural" sunlight day divided into six equal hours between sunrise and sunset.

Book 2: The Earth And The Seas

"There is no sea in-navigable, no land uninhabitable"

- Robert Thorne, Merchant and Geographer (1527)

Part 4: The Geography of the Imagination

The Awe of Mountains

Note. 3

2980 B.C

Zoser was the 1st king of Egyptian king of the third dynasty.

Note. 2

460 B.C

Herodotus described the Tower of Babel as a pile of solid towers, each slightly smaller than the one on which it rested.

Note. 4

701 A.D. - 800 A.D

The Great stupa of Borobudur in Java was created.

Note. 5

1113 - 1150

Cambodian king Suryavarman built the the most gigantic religious monument in the world of the stupa temple complex of Angkor Wat.

Note. 1

1823 - 1829

Hokusai made the "Thirty-six Views of Fuji" which showed the many faces of the sacred heights.

Charting Heaven and Hell

Note. 2

600 B.C. - 501 B.C

Orphic Greeks and Etruscans developed a mythology of judgement day.

Note. 1

216 A.D. - 276 A.D.

The Manichaean followers of the Persian sage Manes gave the moon a role in their mystic doctrines.

Note. 3

232 A.D - 304 A.D

The Life Porphyry . He explained that each soul was by nature a "fiery breath" tending to rise to the heavens, yet as a soul lowered into the earthly atmosphere it tended to become damp and heavy.

Note. 4

410 A.D - 485 A.D

Proclus was one of the last great Greek Neoplatonists.

Note. 5

1099 - 1179

The Life of Saint Hildegard of Bingen , who at age eight had been consigned to a nunnery with all the last rights of the dead to signify she was buried to the world.

Note. 6

1265 - 1321

Dante Alighieri. during his life he wrote "Divine Comedy".

Note. 7

1307

Dante Aligheri wrote about his journey through the realms of the dead.

The Appeal of Symmerty

Note. 3

384 B.C. - 322 B.C.

The Life of Aristotle.

Note. 5

276 B.C. - 195 B.C.

Eratosthenes is known for wonderful ancient geographical studies.

Note. 7

165 B.C. - 127 B.C.

Hipparchus discovered the procession of the equinoxes, cataloged 1,000 stars, and invented trigonometry.

Note. 8

135 B.C. - 51 B.C.

Posidonius and Strabo declared the earth to be 18,000 miles around.

Note. 4

64 B.C. - 25 A.D.

The life of the influential Strabo.

Note. 1

1635 - 1715

The Life Thomas Burnet

Note. 2

1684

Thomas Brunet wrote " Sacred Theory of the Earth".

The Prison of Christian Dogma

Note. 3

484 - 578

Saint Brendan was an Irish Monk believing that Paradise was somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

Note. 2

560 - 636

Isidore of Serville is reputed as one of the most learned men of the age.

Note. 4

1099 - 1166

Al-Idrisi reported an expedition to locate the wall that held back these pagan forces of the Apocalypse.

Note. 1

1275 A.D

The Hereford Cathedral was built.

Note .5

1488

The Portuguese opened a new Eastern waterway to India around the tip of Africa.

A Flat Earth Returns

Note .3

1120 B.C. - 256 B.C.

The Rites of Chou.

Note .2

221 B.C. - 207 B.C.

The Ch'in Era

Note. 4

202 B.C. - 220 A.D.

The Han Dynasty.

Note. 5

78 A.D. - 139 A.D.

The life of the Chinese pioneer Chang Heng.

Note. 1

230 A.D. - 240 A.D.

Julius Solinus published nine-tenths of his " Collectanea Rerum memorabilium" (Gallery of Wonderful Things).

Note. 6

265 - 420

The Chin Dynasty.

Note. 7

618 - 907

The T'ang Dynasty.

Note. 8

960 - 1279

The Sung Era

Part 5: Paths To The East

"From the East, light" (Ex Orienete, lux)

-Latin Proverbs

"Too far East is West"

- English Proverb

Pilgrims and Crusaders

Note.1

673 - 735

The Venerable Bede

Note. 3

April 12, 1096

A some 15,000 Pilgrims joined The Crusades.

Note. 2

1130

William the Conqueror and his men set up the Kingdom of Sicily, where Christians, Jews and Arabs exchange knowledge, arts, and ideas.

Note. 4

1187

The West attracted many Christians Pilgrims.

Note. 5

1304 - 1374

Ibn Battuta was on the greatest Muslim travelers of the Middle ages.