Quick Announce

It is to a great worker in science in Italy that we owe the invention of the vernier, the important little instrument without which it would be so difficult to make many of the exact observations of all kinds in laboratories. Until comparatively recent years the invention of this extremely useful appliance has been attributed to Vernier the French man after whom it is named, though the claims of Nonius have been insisted on. Brencing has, however, pointed out in the Astronomische Nachrichten that “we are indebted to no other than Clavius the papal astronomer who corrected the calendar for Pope Gregory Xin for the theory of Vernier subdivision as well for linear as for circular measurement.” He then quotes in full the passages in Father Clavius works which prove his assertion and which in some inaccountable way have been overlooked. Clavius was of course a German by birth, but he did all his important work in Italy, finding down there the encouragement and patronage which enabled him to accomplish to best advantage the great achievements his genius suggested.

Galileo’s inventions alone would do credit to any country. He observed the oscillations of the swinging lamp in the Cathedral of Pisa and utilized the isochronism which he noted for an astronomical clock. He suggested its use for the measuring of successive intervals of time and his studies on the pendulum led to its employment for many scientific purposes. He threw out a hint for the study of the human pulse by it, an important factor for modern medicine. He established the laws of falling bodies as they are still formulated, demonstrated the laws of projectiles, and largely anticipated the laws of motion as finally established by Newton. We have from him a series of telescopic discoveries and inventions relating to astronomy. He could have accomplished all this only in the midst of encouragement and liberal patronage and quite contrary to the usually accepted notion of bitter persecution “Galileo s long life” as Bertrand the Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences declared, “must when considered as a whole be looked upon as one of the most serene and enviable in the history of science.”

###