Naval Disasters and Scientific Legacy

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Buy your car today on C cararbana L limitations exclusions may apply S your seven dayay returned policy are cararbanaot No. Hello, I'm Professor Suzanne Libbskom and welcome to Not just the Tutors from History Hit The podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenotose, from Shakespeare to Samuraise. relelieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft Not in other words, just the tudors, but most definitely also the tudors In the winter of sixteen eighty four, inside a London coffee house thick with tobacco smoke. and the animated voices of men engaged in heated discussion Edmund Halley posed a question. that would change humanity's understanding. of the universe. If the planets were pulled towards the sun by an invisible force that weakened with distance Why did they move in ellipses rather than circles Around him sat some of the greatest mines in England, Christopher Wen, Robert Hook, among them but no one could supply the answer Hally knew there was one man who might come up with a proof A reclusive, Cambridge mathematician Isaac Neaton Edmund Halley's story begins long before the famous comet that now bears his name streaked across the skies of Europe in his lifetime Born in London in sixteen fifty six, the son of a prosperous soap maker, He came of age during a scientific revolution that was dismantling ancient ideas about the cosmos For centuries, astronomers had imagined the heavens as fixed and perfect governed by circles and divine order but by Halleie's lifetime Copernicus and Kepler had already shattered that certainty. replacing it with the universe in motion As a young man, Halle pushed that revolution further. Leaving Oxford, he sailed to the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic to map a sky that Europeans had barely studied. His observations earned him acclaim and entry into the Royal Society, placing him at the centre of England's emerging scientific world In this episode, I'm delighted to say we're joined by David K. Love, whose book, Edmund Halley, The Many Discoveries of the Most Curious Astronomer Royal Reonstructs Hallie's extraordinary life and achievements. Beyond the comic, loveve reveals a restless and ambitious figure, an astronomer obsessed with navigation and longitude, a traller fascinated by magnetism and the eararth itself crucial champion of Newton's Principia mathematica, the work that transformed modern science I'm professor Susanne Lipbskom. Welcome to not just the Tudors from History Hip Welcome, David. Thank you very much. I'm very pleased to be here. It's a wonderful opportunity to have you on to talk about many different scientific ideas actually that Halley comes in contact with But before we get ont to him Can you paint a picture for us of What astronomy looked like, let's say, before the sixteenth century? What ideas was he challenging or building upon Hm. I think it's an excellent idea to gives some idea of the historical background because then people will understand where he is coming from And I'm afraid that means going back as far as the ancient Greeks, which I realize is outside the normal sort of time frame of your podcasts, but it'll be pretty short the reason we go back to the ancient Greeks is because, as far as we know They were the first people ever to try and develop some sort of a physical understanding of what was happening up there in the sky And they came to a number of conclusions The first of which is that the Earth was a sphere wasn't flat And then they said, Well, obviously the Earth is at the center of the universe And everything in the universe obviously goes round and round the Earth in perfect circles at uniform speed Now that worked very well for the stars, which did indeed seem to go around the earth once roughly every twenty four hours And it sort of worked moderately well with the sun and the moon Weddings came unstuck was with the planets which had this peculiar forward, backward, forward motion or seemed to So they traveled from west to east a lot of the time And then for no obvious reasons, started moving in the opposite direction for a few weeks or months. before resuming their direction that they originally had And you this was a bit of a puzzle to the ancient Greeks, but they developed mathematical systems that they felt account for it and This was more or less the system that was believed for the best part of two thousand years. And then the big breakthrough of course, came with Copernicus born fourteen seventy three in what is now Poland and Copernicus' key insight was that You could understand this weird planetary ward forward motion much more easily If you assumed that the Earth was just another planet along with the other planets And they all went round and round the sun And then this very strange forward backward forward motion would happen automatically as the Eth overtook one planet or another planet overtook the Earth It was his big breakthrough Unfortunately He's stuck to the concept of circular motion at a uniform speed So the results in terms of ictions of future planetary positions came out of his system. weren't actually that much better if at all than what the ancient Greeks had come up with. So do we need to bring play into the story here Absolutely do Because Kepler was the big next breakthrough. Born in fifteen seventy one. He was a German astronomer and he had the good fortune to be left a whole mass of observations of the planet Mars And he was able to use those observations to demonstrate that Mars actually went round the suun in an ellipse, not a circle by extension therefore the other planets did as well. So This was his first law of planetary motion. He was also able to demonstrate Mars didn't go round the Sun at a constant rate. closer to the sun quickly And when it was further away from the sun It went more slowly such that as he put it, the planet swept out equal areas in equal times. And those were his first two laws of planetary motion, and with them, He was able to make forecasts of future planetary positions were much more accurate than anybody else had managed up until then And this was one of the main factors causing people, at least educated people throughout Europe to come gradually to accept that it was the earth that went round the sun rather than the other way about. That's such a useful ground to help us understand what's advancing during Halleie's lifetime But tell me about Edmund Halle. who was he when was he born? What sort of family was he born into? And what did that mean for him as he started out on his scientific journey? Kepler died in sixteen thirty. Halle was born in sixteen fifty six the son of a prosperous soap maker It was also quite well connected. and Hallie's father had a number of properties in and around London Money was never a problem for his father or indeed for him And he was obviously a very bright boy becausecause his father sent him to St. Paul's school in the centre of London next to the cathedral And of course it burnt down in sixteen sixty six along with the cathedral The school had to have its lessons elsewhere for a while But anyway, Halleie obviously did very well there Because in sixteen seventy two He became head boy of the school. and Then in sixteen seventy three He went on to Oxford University where he studied the physical sciences, including astronomy And I suppose if we want to understand what he did next, we have to move on to the vexed problem of longitude. Yes, tellell me about this because problem of determining longitude C seems to have been a very big deal in the seventeenth century. Why was it so elusive It was a big deal. I think commercial shipping was growing in extent and people needed to know where they were That is the problem. If you're a ship in the middle of the ocean and you can't see any land anywhere How do you know where you are I mean it's all right for us. we've all got mobile phones and we can just push a few buttons and find out our latitude and longitude to six decimal places in a fraction of a second, but It wasn't at all like that in those days Latitude was easy All you had to do was observe the height of the sun above the horizon at midday or alternatively, observe the height of the polle star above the horizon during the night And either of those would give you a pretty good measure of latitude. Longitude was a different matter How on earth do you measure how far east or west you are of an essentially random line, say line of longitude going through Greenwich, for example, that's a lot more tricky One of the methods being proposed at the time was something called the lunar distance method If I can explain that briefly, it relies on using the moon, as the name would suggest The moon moves relatively quickly against the background of the stars So it moves about half a degree every hour or so. So you can use the moon as a sort of clock in the sky If you measure the angular distance between the Mon, and a known fixed star And you happen to have with you a normal. which tells you the time is at Greenwich when that will be the case and you know your own local time then the difference in those two times gives you your longitude. So if you're say one hour behind Greenwich, that means you're fifteen degrees to the west of Greenwich. If you're two ass behind Greenwich. It means you're thirty degrees to the west of Greenwich and so on The lunar distance method is actually tiny bit more complicated than that, but I think that gets to the essence of it and Can I at this stage mention Charles II's mistress I would love it if you mentioned Charles II's mistress. Well this is Louise de Carais. That's right, yes. She played a pivotal role in introducing Charles I second to a French astronomer, Sieur de Saint Pierre. Now, Sieur de Sain Pierre reckoned he could measure longitude and it seems to have been by this lunar distance method Now he must have explained it to Charles who farmed the idea out to a committee which included such luminaries as Christopher Wen And the committee had a look at it and said, well, wonderful idea. yeah, in principle. But in practice, sorry, it wouldn't actually work. And it wouldn't work because we don't know the positions of the stars sufficiently accurately And we don't really understand the orbit of the moon sufficiently well They said We could do something about that What we could do is we could found an observatory. say Greenwich would be quite a good place And what we could do then is spend the next few years measuring far more precisely positions of stars and the orbit of the moon And then we might be in a position to actually apply this Lunar distance metethod So a working party, o it was, I should say that it was Christopher Wren who suggested the site at Greenwich and a working party which included him and Robert Hook, another important person in the Royal Society And somebody called John Flamsteed. who was a very capable astronomer and who was going to end up as being the person in charge of this observer at grainage and was therefore going to become our first astronomer Royal, though he didn't know that at the time. And also there was Edmund Halle getting in at the ground floor because while he was Oxford University He'd corresponded with John Flamampsteed and they'd done a bit of observing together stage. They were very good friends So he was able to go along in this working party as well Everyone agreed it was a good site The foundoundation stone was laid in sixteen seventy five And the building was complete in sixteen seventy six. at which time John Flamsteed started work and Hallie should have just gone back to university. to finish his studies at Oxford. But he didn't. What does he do instead, David? He realized that there was a bit of a problem with what John Flamsteed was doing Slamsteed by definition could only observe stars visible from the Northern hemisphere. specifically from about fifty one degrees north of the equator at Greenwich. Famseed couldn't do by definition was observe stars that could only be seen in the southern hemisphere But nevertheless, it would be very useful if somebody could go down there and actually observe as many stars as possible. So This is exactly what Allie decided to do So he went off to the island of St. Helena where he spent a whole year observing as many bright stars as he could and fixing their positions as accurately as he could It wasn't easy by any means because Stain. Helena turned out to be a lot more cloudy than he had be led to believe So he had to waste a lot of nights just looking at endless banks of clouds. Nevertheless, after twelve months there He'd managed to fix the positions of about three hundred bright stars And so he returned to England. I mean, it's extraordinary achievement. This is a man in his what, early twenties at this point in time. He was about. twenty or twenty one at that time. Yes. abbsolutely extraordinary He was a very capable person and the money from his father helped, of course, because he was able to buy top class equipment to do all this observing. A lesser man would not have managed it And this, I think explains why he returned to something of a hero's welcome when he got back to England I mean, he published the results of his survey as soon as he could. And within a few months the Royal Society made him a fellow of the Royal Society. And for someone who had only just reached the age of twenty two What is? Really incredibly good going And oh, the bit I like Charles II was so impressed instructed Oxford University to award Hally his degree even though he hadn't actually sat the final exams Yeah. How wonderful. Do we know anything about what was going on in Halleie's private life at this time A I've got to get it in at some stage, but although we know a lot about his professional life, it's very well documented all over the place, there are occasions where we know very little about his personal private life. It can be very irritating because we'd like to know a lot more than we do We know at this stage the Royal Society saw him as a very useful person to have around decided to send him off to Poland. to visit Johannes Savilius, who was a Polish astronomer carrying out a similar sort of survey too. John Flamsteed. and the Royal Society wanted to get an idea of exactly what he was doing it and how he was doing it. So We do know he spent about eight weeks in Poland before returning to London When he got back to London, we do know that he went on an extended holiday in France and Italy When he was in France, he went to Paris where he met Giovanni Cassini who is the famous Italian astronomer. time was in charge of the Paris Observatory And then When you got back to England after that was early sixteen eighty two We do know that he married a young lady by the name of Mary Took But this is where it does get infuriating because we have no idea When he met Mary Took. where he met her how long they'd known each other for when they got engaged where she came from in the first place None of this information do we have All we know is they got married in april sixteen eighty two. and went to live in a house in Islington which at that time obviously was just a little village just outside London. Yes, and I imagine the name Mary took is sufficiently common to very hard to trace through the records Nobody's ever managed to come up with anything significant about her, No, I'm afraid not. Very annoying, but there we are No It's a couple of years later that we get to the famous coffee shop meeting that I mentioned at the start with Hallie Rennan Hook So take me up until that point. What was at stake? An awful lot was at stake. We aren't absolutely certain it took place in a coffee house. It does seem to be far and away the most likely venue because there's no sign of it having happened at the Royal Society And the winter of sixteen eighty three four. An absolutely freezing cold winter. Oh yes, that was the one where they roasted an ox on the Thames, I remember? That's exactly it. The Thames froze over to such a depth that you could do whatever you liked on the Thames. They had these ice fairs and so on. It's highly unlikely that they met in the open air anywhere, so a coffee shop seems the obvious venue and most people seem to think that's probably where it was And before I tell you exactly what they discussed, I'm afraid I do have just for a second to go back to Johannes Kepler not only discovered his three laws of planetary motion He also asked himself the question Why was it P planets moved round the Sun at all B, he speculated. there was some sort of force emanating from the sun which somehow pushed the planets around in their orbits Now He was actually the first person in human history to think up this idea and he deserves a great deal of credit for it hisis ideas about how this force emanating from the sun might actually work It has to be said, we're completely wrong But Basic idea remained Was there a force somehow emanating from the suun which moved the planets in their orbits. And Kepler died in sixteen thirty, but the idea stuck peopleeople began to say Maybe this force emanating from the sun follows an inverse square law. The intensity of light, for example, follows an inverse square or the intensity of light drops off on inverse square basis depending on how far away you are from the light source. So if say you've got two planets A and B B is twice as far from the suun as Planet A. then Planet B would experience one quarter of the force of Planet A B is actually three times as far away then planet B would experience one ninth of the force that Penyay is experiencing So people had this idea that would seem to fit nicely if this force from the sun was an inverse square law. Critical question then became Could you demonstrate mathematically an inverse square law would result in Kepler's elliptical orbits And that is what nobody so far had managed to do And this is what the coffee shop meeting, if that's where it was all about. Christopher Wren was mathematician, astronomer architect, general or around genius, he had obviously tried to find a mathematical proof of this and failed And the three of them were discussing this whole problem. and Ren decided to offer the other two prize of a book worth forty shillings either of them could come up with this mathematical proof. And hook who actually wasn't a very good mathematician said, Oh yeah, I can manage that easily. but the fact is that he never did Edmund Halley recognized also, I think that he couldn't do it But he thought he knew somebody who could He thought that there was this rather eccentric professor of mathematics at Cambridge University by the name of Isaac Newton. who might be able to crack it for him It would probably have gone to see Newton pretty quickly after that meeting, but didn't Yeahes, so Let's talk about that delay. Is it true that it's something to do with He's father possibly being murdered I'm afraid so, yes. march sixteen eighty four, Ellie's father his house in London as presumably he normally did. and never came back and was never seen alive again by any of his family. and His body was found seven or eight weeks later some considerable distance away somewhere in Kent. and It's a mystery that nobody has ever got to the bottom of. The inquest concluded He had indeed been murdered. but nobody was ever able to establish a motive, let alone somebody who might have done it. It was a big mystery. keep Hally in London for a lot of sixteen eighty four. when he might otherwise have gone to visit Newton a lot sooner than he did Howdy, Howdy Ho and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fan Girls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson. And I'm Steven, your bookish internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy. And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Missborn. But here's the catch. Stehven here has not read Missborn before. That's right, hey hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chap. And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert, he'll be wrong. News Flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find fantasy fan feellllows wherever you get your p I'm pretty confident talking into a mic. Hey, I'm doing it right now But home projects. I second guess everything Is that noise normal Is that water damage Who do I even call That's where thumback comes in. Just upload a photo or voice notote and it uses AI powered search to match you with the right top rated local pro. So instead of guessing, eag get clarity and can hire with confidence. For your next home project, try Thumbtack Hire the R proro today Evening by his remorse Buy a new car I'll be moving in Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyer' rejoice I guuess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carbana. Limitations exlusions may apply S here S sevay return policy, cararbana She loves it breezing She loves it, huh Paod byy Eat Sleep ends the arrtement for good, with independent temperature zones that keep both of you sleeping deeper Try it at eightleep. com When he visited Newton, he realized that he really was the man for the job. and Hardry is often credited with making sure that one of the most important works in scientific history was published. Can we talk about that? How critical was Halley? Absolutely critical. I don't think there's any doubt about it He went to see Newton in August And he just put to him the question sort of orbit would result from an inverse square law of gravitational attraction To which Newton replied apparently immediately, Why, of course, it would be an ellipse Hally was delighted but said Well, yeah, well, can you prove that mathematically And Newton said, Yes, actually, I already have done. I've got the proof here somewhere And at this point, he must have shuffled around in his papers but then very apologetically said, I'm sorry, I can't find it at the moment. I know I've got it here somewhere I will dig it out and I will send it to you when you're back in London. Hie had two very impatiently, I'm sure Go back to London and wait Newton was as good as his word A couple of months later, He sent Halle a mathematical proof that an inverse square law would result in Kepler's elliptical orbits. He did better than that also provided a mathematical proof planet in its elliptical orbit r the Sun would indeed move more quickly when it was close to the sun and more slowly when it was further away from the sun And he did better than that again because he also mathematically demonstrated simply using the inverse square low Eckler's third law would also be true His third one sounds a bit complicated, but yeah I promise you it isn't really The third law simply states that average cube of the distance of a planet from the suun. divided by the square of the time to go once round the sun is equal to a constant And it's a constant, which is the same figure for all the planets. So Newton had done was What Kepler had seen as three isolated, unconnected, almost random laws Newton had demonstrated All three of those laws were an inevitable mathematical consequence of an inverse square law And this was a massive achievement this was a huge advance in celestial mechanics and When Hie got it He was absolutely delighted and he showed it to other members of the Royal Society, who were equally delighted So Allie felt it worthwhile to go back to Newton again and say, well, look, this is absolutely brilliant, Isaac. Can you do any more than this? becausecause this is already a huge step forward in our understanding of of the laws that govern what happens in the heavens Newton seems to have been very willing to respond to that because he spent the next year and a half constructing what we now know as Pringcipia. and he threw in various other extra ideas, all of which were very important to Bringipia For example He threw in the idea that this force of gravitation It was not simply something coming out of the sun In fact, Newton realized at some stage Every body in the solar system attracts every other body. with a force that's proportional to their masses and inversely proportional the square of the distance between them we notice it much more for the sun because the sun contains roughly ninety nine percent of the mass in the solar system. so It has a much bigger effect on everything Nevertheless, the effect is there. between every other body in the solar system And Newton also threw in his laws of motion. combination of what is now a universal law of gravitation, not just solar gravitation and these three laws of motion. really were quite revolutionary. He was able to explain a whole load of phenomena. previously had not been explicable at all. And I hope we can get on to those at some stage, but I should return to the publication process to show how vital Alie's presence was. When Hallie got this early sixteen eighty six, this draft of Principia books one and two. He was, you know, even more delighted and he showed it to a number of members of the Royal Society who were equally happy with it with one exception. one exception was Robert Hook And Robert Hook was really cross because he said He had made this suggestion that an inverse square law might produce elliptical orbits. He'd made the suggestion to Newton many years before. And yet Newton had made no acknowledgement whatsoever in Brincipia that Hook had thought of the idea first And so he just went into a big sulk about it When Newton heard that Hook was in a sulk He responded in like kind, I should say, in case anyone doesn't know that Newton was notoriously thin skinned. and he couldn't stand the least bit of criticism of anythingthing he said or did So when Hook started going on about demanding to have a bit of attention for his idea Newton just went into a big sulk himself pooor old Helly person to persuade Newton that carry on producing Prinkip here because Newton was talking in terms of not doing any more on this thing Halle finally did manage to persuade Newton to continue It's so interesting the role of someomebody like Hallie to bring out the ideas of someone else of genius is in itself a work of genius. you know, that role as a support and patron Absolutely. he could see the importance of Pringcipia. It really was revolutionary And that what you've just said leads to the next problem. He finally managed to smooth over Newton And the Principia was ready for publication Royal Society had said, well it would fund the publication Unfortunately, it turned out the Royal Society was broke They'd very unwisely invested a lot of money in a book called A History of Fishes which they thought would be a big success Apparently it was a dismal failure and they were left with dozens and dozens of unwanted copies of this book. and a big hole in their bank account. So Hlly to step forward and say okay, I Hy will fund publication. This is just too important and another aspect of his general brilliance is that He had to be the person who would proofread the book because There was hardly anyone around who could actually understand the maths in the book and Halleie was one of the few people who could But Eventually, the book was published Vanppia in mid sixteen eighty seven to virtually universal acclaim I think one can genuinely argue that it is the most important scientific text ever to have been produced And you alluded to this slightly earlier How did Newton's laws change the way scientists understood the cosmos in a variety of ways It's sort of difficult to know how to list them all, but one of the key things was that United celestial and terrestrial physics Up until then People had thought, well the laws that apply on planet Earth are obviously different from the laws that apply up there in the sky Galileo's laws that he had discovered rolling balls down planes to discover laws of motion here on the eararth were seen as separate from the three laws of planetary motion that Kepler had discovered But Newton showed that they were all the same, that actually celestial physics and terrestrial physics were one and the same thing So that for example, An apple. Falling from a tree in an orchard to the ground. is obeying exactly the same laws and is experiencing exactly the same forces as the Mon in its orbit round the Eth and in itself was a big breakthrough But it was also a big breakthrough that Newton was able to show that The universe is highly mathematic you can understand all the phenomena in the universe in terms of relatively simple mathematical laws. and his Pincipia and the laws that he had discovered basically dominated the physical sciences for the next couple of hundred years and In a way, they still do. teechnically they've been superseded Einstein's special and general theories of relativity In practice, Einstein only applies at the extremes as it were. In the normal way of things, Newton's zws are perfectly good. so When Artemist II went to the Moon and back a few weeks ago The calculations for its trajectory would have been done entirely in terms of Newton's laws He is still very valid How extraordinary? Absolutely. This is a chap by the name of Augustus de Morgan, who was a nineteenth century English mathematician with an interest in the history of science And what he said was this this miracle of energy for Halleie was nothing less. occupied himself Qestion of gravitation sought for information from hook Wen and Newton found out what the latter had done, induced him to begin the Pinpia. interesterested the Royal Society in its continuance Newton up to his engagement prevented him from mutilating it in disgust undertook to see the work through the press. paid the expense of printing made himself thoroughly master of its contents. the most difficult task of all for Helly all human probability work not have been thought of. nor when thought of, written, nor when written printed So yes,, Newton was the brains behind it all If it hadn't been for Hallie, it would never have seen the light of day And the history of science might well be very different He's the midwife of Newton's ideas Midwife is a very good expression. I wish I'd use that in my book Never mind And it's thanks to the Principia that Halleie could finally calculate The cometry orbits for which he's so famous with confidence, talkalk to me about Halle's own achievements in figuring out that a comet that had been observed in fifteen thirty one, sixteen oh seven, and sixteen ninety two were all the same Now that Principia was published for the first time You had the means to work out the orbits of comets, which wasn't really possible before Halley because he was something of a workaholic to put it miildly. looked back over commentary observations O the last two or three hundred years And wherever he possibly could, where there were sufficient observations He worked out the orbits. of about two dozen different comets and discovered that four of those comets actually seem to have remarkably similar orbits All four of them orbited in the same plane All four of them came into the inner Solar systemy from the same direction and left it in the same direction and all four of them seemed to have this closest approach to the sun that was much the same in each case and critically The four of them were all about seventy six years apart. He concluded These four separate comets where in fact One and the same comet He made his famous prediction and I'm using his actual words here I dare venture to foretell that it, the comet We return again in the year seventeen fifty eight And sure enough, it did return in seventeen fifty eight. It was first seen by an amateur German astronomer Christmas Day, seventeen fifty eight ever since then, It has been known as Hally's comet and quite rightly too If Allie had had the idea of extending backwards his seventy six year series which he may have done, but we don't actually have any historical records to show that he did He would have realized that his comid made an appearance in ten sixty six And lo and behold, if you look at the biode tapistry, Somewhere along that traapestry, there is an image of Hallie's Cet And I understand that the biot tapestry is going to be on display at the British Museum this September onwards So if any of your listeners do go along to see it Please can make a point of looking out for this image of Hally's comet. I was literally getting pennies using Wealthfront. Ching, There's this much that I'm getting an interest and I didn't have to do anything. 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From Tudor executioners and ancient Egyptian death rituals which trials and folklore feel transported back in time on after Dark out every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcast. And guess what? We're also now on YouTube After dark. A podcast from History Hit It's a wonderful story. What I want to know is How did this discovery, this prediction changed the way that comets were seen urally because for so much of the sixteenth century they seem to be Omless portense of disaster Does Halleie's discovery reshape that way of thinking Yes, absolutely. it did. rightight, up until that time Comets were seen as things that foretold doom and destruction in some way I remember doing Julius Caesar as my Shakespeare set book for a level There's that wonderful quote by Calpurnia when Beggars die, there are no comets seen. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. And that, of course, was written by Shakespeare. was it much the same period And that is a very good summary of the way a lot of people thought about comets They were not things for scientific study They were you know, they were foretelling doom and destruction in some way That attitude was beginning to change in Halleie's time but he actually demonstrated These things could be studied scientifically And if ever they did appear immediately before some terrible disaster, This was just coincidence an awful lot of the time ppeared and there were no associated disasters Yes He was one of the people who brought about the change to a more scientific view Comments. Definitely And he also, in doing that, he made it far more difficult for anybody to say that Pringcipia was not a valid way of looking at the universe because Halle had used the results in Greinghippia predict the return of the comet. And nobody else had ever managed to do that before was set. see change in attitude towards comets that Hey was indeed partly responsible for Now that's not his only achievement then they weren't all heated tell me about the worst naval disaster in British history and How Hally was not listened to on that occasion. Yeah, this disaster, which was pretty dreadful could have been avoided if Hellie's advice had been taken, which it wasn't But this concerns poor old Admiral Sir Cloudsley Shovel What's a name? Yeah, Isn't it a lovely name? Yes. was in charge of a fleet of twenty or so ships conducting a military campaign somewhere in the Mediterranean And the campaign came to an end And it was time to go back home So They sailed out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic. and started sailing north And on the eighteenth of october seventeen oh seven turned eastwards in order to sail up the English channel and back home to Portsmouth Then the disaster struck on the twenty second of October And that's in terms of the Julian calendar you can make it more vivid by pointing out that under the Gregorian calendar, which England was frankly pathetically slow to take up That would have been the first or second of November, which gives you an indication that they were now entering very much a wintery period and the weather was becoming a lot worse And in fact on the twenty second of October The sky had been covered with thick clouds all day along with persistent drizzle and strong winds The thick clouds meant that it was impossible to get a decent value for their latitude which This particularly important They also for the reasons to discussed weren't able to get their longitude with any accuracy Worse than that. They were dealing with dangerously inaccurate charts because all the charts at the time showed the silly Isles some considerably way to the north, ten miles or even twenty miles to the north of where the Silly Isles actually were justust in case anyone doesn't know the silly Iss of this group of islands off the southwest coast of Cornwall Not only that, it's probable purposes on board ship weren't working terribly well partly because an examination of campuses subsequently to the disaster by the admiralty discovered that a full eighty percent of their compasses weren't working terribly well largely because of rust They may also have been getting inaccurate readings on the campuses anyway because of this thing called ' variation you want to know from a compass is the direction of true North And of course what you actually get is magnetic North And in that particular part of the world at that time There was a difference of something like seven degrees between the two So if they didn't know that and they were dealing with dodgery campuses Their idea of the direction of north wouldn't have been terribly good It couldn't have been worse. They didn't know their latitude very well, they didn't know their longitude very well. They had inaccurate charts, the compasses probably weren't working well. The weather was lousy and it was dark If Cloud' shovel had had any sense, he would have said, let's drop anchor here and wait until the weather gets a bit better but they for some reason plowed on And the result was that they hit the Gildstone Rocks, which is a group of rocks, off the island of St. Agnes, which is one of the larger of the Silly Isles And the first four ships went down with the loss of deepending on whose figures you believe, something between thirteen hundred men two thousand men. So an enormous cost in terms of life. One person survived person managed to cling to a rock all night and was rescued the next day. But Cloudsley Shovel was amongst those who drowned, he and A group of senior officers apparently tried to get away in a rowing boat At some stage the rowing boat must have overturned and they were all drowned because their bodies were found on the beach at St. Mary's Island quite some way away the following day. Overall, an absolutely massive disaster which perhaps might have been avoided if people had taken notice of Hallie. Hie had been up and down the English channel on a number of occasions And he was never one just to sit around on the deck sunning himself He had obviously taken the opportunity on at least one occasion to measure the most southerly extent of the Silly Isles, and he discovered that the most suvely extinct was forty nine degrees and fifty minutes, which was As I implied earlier ten miles or twenty miles south of what all the charts at the time said So he recommended to anyone who would listen, this was all published in a paper for the Royal Society in sailing along the English channel Nobody should go north of forty nine degrees and forty minutes. giving them extra latitude in case of error Either Claifflely Shovel had never heard that advice or If he did, he decided to ignore it I just get the impression that if Halleie had been in charge instead of Cloudsley Shovel The accident would never have happened And yes, that is the sorry story of Sir Coudsley shuffle Thank you for sharing it with goodness me I to ask you a little bit about Hallie's relationship with some of the other people we call scientists at the time. you alluded earlier to the fact that there was a period at which he and Flamsteed were great friends as if that didn't continue for all time. So were there rivalries or collaborations with people like Flamsteed and Hook in general It's very true to say that Hallie was well liked by most people. He seems to have had that warm personality and a genuine liking for other people and a genuine interest in other people Most people liked that and therefore most people liked him The one huge exception was John Flamsteed. Now they started off as good friends when Halleie was an eager young man who could help Flamsteed out with his observations And the relationship seems to have soured in the sixteen eighties Nobody knows exactly why At least part of the reason may well have been that Flamsty suffered from ill health. a lot Whereas Hlly hardly had a day's illness in his whole life. And this must have grated a little bit, I think, with Flamsteed Flamsteed also was narrowly religious in the worst sense of the word Whereas Halle was known for his liberal skeptical attitudes towards religion. Flanstey would not have liked that at all So a combination of those sorts of factors Flamsteed was forever writing rude letters to people saying what an awful man Halle was And Hallie tried to come to some sort of reconciliation with Flamsteed, but they never really succeeded And I think Famseed towards the end of his life, he died in seventeen nineteen still as the first astronomer rooyal. He would have been rather upset at knowing that almost certainly Halleie would be asked to take over as the second astronomer rooyal, as indeed he was that He must have felt quite bitter about that, but there we are Other people generally got un well with Hllie. For example, Isaac Newton Even though Newton tended to dislike people the least little thing. Somehow their relationship was very good prractically all the time So to end then give me a sense of How Hallie was received at the time whether his ideas were popular or controversial and also just hint at some of the other topics that he published or wrote about because we known him for his comment, but what else should we know of him Oh he