Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities

Next Stop . . . Planet Hershel

Posted in Beinecke Library, Modern General Collection by beineckepoetry on September 4, 2012

A late 18th century guide to astronomy listing the most recent observations.
Included in the list of known planets is a then-recent discovery, a planet named “Hershel” –
what is today known as Uranus. Discovered in 1781 by the German polymath, Sir Frederick William Herschel,
the planet was first known as “The Georgian Star”, for Britain’s King George III.
Due to the King’s lack of popularity in France, that country used the name “Hershel”.

Prévost, de S. A. L’astronomie Mise a La Portée De Tout Le Monde: Contenant Un Traité De La Sphère, Un Traité D’astronomie & Un Traité D’uranographie. A Saint Maixent: Chez François Lainé, Imprimeur, 1792.

One Response

Subscribe to comments with RSS.

  1. Stéphane Elbaz said, on September 30, 2012 at 5:02 pm

    Nice Pierre Simon Fournier typography


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: