Beschreibung
London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1761. 4to, pp. [viii], 459-977, [1, erratum], [23, index], with 14 folding engraved plates and 3 folding tables (paper label at foot of title page recto, private library stamp to verso). Contemporary half-calf and marbled boards, lettering-piece on spine (extremities rubbed). FIRST EDITION OF THE FOUNDATION WORK OF MODERN SEISMOLOGY. This was the first work to propose that earthquakes were caused by seismic waves through the earth and that tsunamis were the result of undersea earthquakes. In 1760 English natural philosopher and geologist John Michell (1724-93) published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society LI (1760) Conjectures concerning the Cause and Observations upon the Phaenomena of Earthquakes … In this paper Michell suggested that earthquakes were experienced as seismic waves of elastic compression travelled through the Earth. He was able to estimate both the epicentre and focus of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake. He may have been the first to suggest that a Tsunami is caused by a subterranean earthquake (historyofinformation.com). The ancients attributed earthquakes to supernatural powers; indeed, a write in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, as late as 1750, deemed if expedient to apologize to those who are apt to be offended at any attempt to give a natural account of earthquakes. Notwithstanding, stubborn facts of earthquake effects continued to accumulate, especially in the wake of the disastrous Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Finally it was firmly established in 1760 by John Michell that earthquakes originate within the earth. He declared that earthquakes were waves set up by the shifting masses of rock miles below the surface … the motion of the earth in earthquakes is partly tremulous and partly propagated by waves after the Lisbon earthquake had travelled outward at 530 m/sec (Historical Encyclopedia of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, p. 2656). In 1760, the year in which he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, Michell finished writing Conjectures Concerning the Cause, and Observations upon the Phænomena of Earthquakes, in which he presented the conclusions from his study of the disastrous Lisbon earthquake of 1755. He showed that the focus of that earthquake was underneath the Atlantic Ocean, and he proposed erroneously that the cause of earthquakes was high-pressure steam, created when water comes into contact with subterranean fires. His contributions to astronomy included the first realistic estimate of the distance between the Earth and a star and the suggestion, later verified by the English astronomer John Herschel, that binary stars are physically close to and in orbit around each other. Michell became Woodwardian Professor of Geology at the University of Cambridge in 1762 and rector of Thornhill in 1767. In 1750 he had published a major work on artificial magnets. He may have conceived the principle of the torsion balance independently of the French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb. He hoped to use this instrument to determine the mean density of the Earth [but] died before finishing his work (Britannica). In a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1783, Michell was the first to propose the idea of a black hole . He wrote: If the semi-diameter of a sphere of the same density as the Sun in the proportion of five hundred to one, and by supposing light to be attracted by the same force in proportion to its [mass] with other bodies, all light emitted from such a body would be made to return towards it, by its own proper gravity. . Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers ABE-18755663375
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