The Nuts and Bolts of Space and Time

Dennis Bacon is a full time writer of engineering textbooks and books on horology. Percy Seymour is Principal Lecturer in Astronomy at the Institute of Marine Studies, University of Plymouth. He has written articles on the use of astronomical models and clocks for teaching astronomy to navigators and hydrographic surveyors.

Introduction - Why Astronomy?; Calendar-making, time-keeping, direction finding and ancient navigation. Chapter 1 - Heavenly Cycles; The movements of the Sun, Moon, stars and planets as seen from Earth. Chapter 2 - Mechanical Skies; Aristotle's universe and the spheres of Eudoxus. Armillary spheres, celestial globes and astrolabes. Chapter 3 - Islam and the Astrolabe; The cosmic dimension of the Islamic faith. The lunar calendar. The astrolabe and the Qiblah indicator for finding the direction of Mecca. Chapter 4 - The Dondi Clock; The Ptolemaic spheres and the Dondi Clock; Chapter 5 - The Copernican Universe; The Copernican revolution and the first orreries. Later refinements to these devices. Chapter 6 - Galileo, the Pendulum and the Telescope; Galileo turns his telescope on the Sun, Moon, planets and stars. He also discovers the time keeping properties of the pendulum. Chapter 7 - The Mechanization of Time; Christian Huygens incorporates the pendulum principal into precision time-keepers. Opens the door to clockwork orreries and astronomical clocks. Chapter 8 - Clockwork Solar Systems; Various examples of clockwork orreries. Chapter 9 - The Geometrical Seaman; The use of astronomy to fix position at sea. Latitude and longitude. Devices for measuring the altitudes of the Sun, stars, Moon and planets. The instrument makes of Europe. The rise of nautical schools and colleges. Chapter 10 - Astronomical Clocks; Examples of astronomical clocks at various location in Europe. Astrolabe clocks. Tidal clocks. Chapter 11 - Theatre of the Stars; The invention and subsequent development of the projection planetarium. Chapter 12 - The Electronic Universe; Electronic simulations of celestial movements. Newer types of planetariums.