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5 unusual facts about Jesse Ramsden


Hans Moritz von Brühl

Brühl built (probably in 1787) a small observatory at his villa at Harefield, and set up there, about 1794, a two-foot astronomical circle by Jesse Ramsden, one of the first instruments of the kind made in England.

Jesse Ramsden

His most celebrated work was a 5-feet vertical circle, which was finished in 1789 and was used by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo in constructing his catalogue of stars.

He was the first to carry out in practice a method of reading off angles (first suggested in 1768 by the Duke of Chaulnes) by measuring the distance of the index from the nearest division line by means of a micrometer screw which moves one or two fine threads placed in the focus of a microscope.

Observatory Inlet

Vancouver also named three headlands at the entrance of Observatory Inlet: Maskelyne Point, for Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, Wales Point, for William Wales, the mathematical master who sailed with James Cook, and Ramsden Point, after the famed mathematical instrument-maker Jesse Ramsden.

Salterhebble

Jesse Ramsden - Eighteenth-century scientific instrument-maker.


Keratometer

It was invented by the German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz in 1880, although an earlier model was developed in 1796 by Jesse Ramsden and Everard Home.


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