Observatories of Jai Singh. 18th Century Observatories of Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II ruled the state of Jaipur in Rajasthan, India from 1699 to 1743. In 1728 he founded the capital city of Jaipur about 200 km southwest of Delhi. As a scholar he read the works of Ptolemy, Euclid and Persian astronomers. Wanting to improve the Indian calendar and the ability to precisely locate the Sun, for purposes of map making, he built five astronomical observatories in India, at Delhi, Jaipur, Varanasi (or Benares), Ujjain and Mathura. The instruments at these observatories, based on Moslem design, perhaps copies of the large 15th century instruments at Samarkand, Uzbekistan built by Ulugh Beg, were large masonry structures equipped with protractors and marked grids to aid in the precise measurements of the location of celestial objects.
Observatory at Jaipur The Jantar Mantar, or "House of Instruments" at Jaipur is the largest of the observatories and contains eighteen instruments. See For Yourself. JANTAR MANTAR HISTORY | History of World. Built in : 1724 Built by : Sawai Jai Singh II Location : Delhi Jantar Mantar is an important landmark of Delhi and a unique edifice. It is an observatory built by Sawai Jai Singh II, the erstwhile ruler of the princely state of Amber and a contemporary of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. The various abstract structures within the Jantar Mantar are, in fact, instruments that were used for keeping track of celestial bodies. Nevertheless, the Jantar Mantar is not only a timekeeper of celestial bodies: it also tells a lot about the technological achievements under the Rajput kings and their endeavor to unravel the mysteries pertaining to astronomy.....
The Jantar Mantar of Delhi is only one of the five observatories built by Sawai Jai Singh II, the other four being located at Jaipur, Varanasi, Ujjain and Mathura. During this period of chaos, Muhammad Shah ascended the throne of the Mughal Empire. This unique observatory was completed in 1724 and remained operational only for seven years. Jantar Mantar. Babbage's steampunk computer takes step toward reality | After Hours. London's Science Museum has begun work to underpin the creation of Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a steam-powered prototype computer first imagined 170 years ago.
The Science Museum is to help digitise the original plans for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Only part of the machine (above) was completed as a trial model at the time of his death in 1871. Photo credit: Science Museum On Wednesday, self-confessed "crazed Charles Babbage fan" John Graham-Cumming announced the museum is in the process of digitising Babbage's technical plans and notebooks, as a step towards realising the Victorian mathematician's vision of creating an Analytical Engine. The machine is being researched and built by Plan 28, a charity being set up by Graham-Cumming and Doron Swade, the museum's curator of computing.
The general-purpose computer would have been programmable via punched card, and would have conformed in several ways with the computers that arose in the 20th century. The Analytical Engine Table of Contents. All documents, programs, and downloadable software associated with The Analytical Engine are linked to entries in the following table of contents. Introduction Historical Documents “Sketch of the Analytical Engine” by L. F. Menabrea, translated and with extensive commentary by Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace.
This 1842 document is the definitive exposition of the Analytical Engine, which described many aspects of computer architecture and programming more than a hundred years before they were “discovered” in the twentieth century. If you have ever doubted, even for a nanosecond, that Lady Ada was, indeed, the First Hacker, perusal of this document will demonstrate her primacy beyond a shadow of a doubt. Acknowledgements. Sketch of The Analytical Engine. By L. F. MENABREAof Turin, Officer of the Military Engineers from the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, October, 1842, No. 82 With notes upon the Memoir by the Translator ADA AUGUSTA, COUNTESS OF LOVELACE Those labours which belong to the various branches of the mathematical sciences, although on first consideration they seem to be the exclusive province of intellect, may, nevertheless, be divided into two distinct sections; one of which may be called the mechanical, because it is subjected to precise and invariable laws, that are capable of being expressed by means of the operations of matter; while the other, demanding the intervention of reasoning, belongs more specially to the domain of the understanding.
Struck with similar reflections, Mr. I must first premise that this engine is entirely different from that of which there is a notice in the ‘Treatise on the Economy of Machinery,’ by the same author. Such is the nature of the first machine which Mr. We deduce Note A F(x, y, z, &c. Plan 28: Building Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.