Bulletin - United States National Museum (1959) (20481431946)

Title: Bulletin - United States National Museum
Identifier: bulletinunitedst2181959unit (find matches)
Year: 1877 (1870s)
Authors: United States National Museum; Smithsonian Institution; United States. Dept. of the Interior
Subjects: Science
Publisher: Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, (etc. ); for sale by the Supt. of Docs. , U. S. Govt Print. Off.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries



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European clocks should have protnplrd them to open their doors, previously so carefully and for so long kept closed against the foreign barbarians. Mechanized Astronomical Models Now that we have seen the manner in which mech- anized astronomical models developed in China, we can detect a similar line running from Hellenistic time, through India and Islam to the medieval Europe that inherited their learning. There are many diffcr- Figure 4.—Astronomical Clock Tower of .Su Sgun in K'ai-feng, ca. A. D. logo, from an original drawing by John Christiansen. (Courtesy of Cam- bridge University Press.) enccs, notably because of the especial development of that peculiar characteristic of the West, mathematical astronomy, conditioned by the almost accidental con- flux of Babylonian arithmetical methods with those of Greek geometry. However, the lines are surpris- ingly similar, with the exception only of the crucial in\ention of the escapement, a feature which seems to be replaced by the influx of ideas connected with per- petual motion wheels. 88 BULLETIN 218: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNONOGY