July 22, 2019 • 33 mins
Harriot's story is tied to SO MANY other notable historic things, including a lot of business with Sir Walter Raleigh. He’s really not a household name like many of his contemporaries, even though he was neck-and-neck with them in terms of discoveries.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm so hey everybody.
On July this year, that was just a few days ago,
it was the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo eleven moon landing,
(00:23):
and last December, the Museum of Flight had reached out
to us to see if we wanted to participate in
a pod crawl that they have been doing as part
of the celebration, And of course we said yes, because
space history area in which I think is safe to
say I have some rabies in the good sense. True, true,
I'm a rabbid fan of space history. But since some
of the other shows on their list were probably going
(00:44):
to hit some of the great history of the space
program that's a little more recent, we thought that it
might be fun if we reached farther back, way back,
so far back yeah, to the sixteenth century, uh and
into the seventeenth century and talk about Thomas Harriet, who
was a mathematician and astronomer who made some very significant
telescopic observations, some of which related to the moon. But
(01:08):
his story is also tied to so many other notable
historic things, including a lot of business with Sir Walter Rawleigh. Uh.
And he is really not a household name like a
lot of his contemporaries are, even though he was neck
and neck with them in terms of discoveries. And we're
going to talk a little bit about why that's the
case at the end of the episode, and we'll give
you more information on that pod crawl at the end
(01:29):
of the episode in case you want to check out
the other work that people have been doing to celebrate
this fiftieth anniversary. A lot of cool podcasts right about now.
So Harriet was born in Oxford, England, probably in fifteen
sixty during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First, but
we don't know much at all about the first twenty
years of his life. This is the case a lot
(01:51):
of people from that long ago. His parents probably were commoners,
and then he kind of pops up in the historical
record when he entered school at the Universe the of
Oxford at the age of seventeen. He graduated with his
degree in eight in fifteen eighty, and with an education
in mathematics and astronomy, he jumped right into working life,
and the job that he found right out of school
(02:12):
was working for none other than Sir Walter Raleigh as
a math tutor and in various other tasks as needed.
And one of his first projects under Raleigh was the
composition of a book which was titled arct com which
was apparently a navigational text. And I have to say apparently,
because no copy of that writing survives, so we don't
really know entirely what was included there. At this point
(02:32):
in history, soldier and explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who was
Raleigh's half brother, was seen as something of an expert
on the so called New World of North America. Although
most of his expeditions had failed, they had slowly drained
off his coffers. By the time Gilbert died in fifteen
eight three, Thomas Harriet had convinced Raleigh to continue England's
(02:53):
exploration of North America. Harriet was instrumental in helping Raleigh
to prepare for his colonizing expedition in We're gonna talk
about this a little bit more. But there's also more
information about these things than the previous Sir Walter Raleigh episode.
Peogle want that? Yeah? Uh? Yeah, that's ah, It's not
as though Raleigh had no interest. And then Thomas Harriet
(03:13):
was like, we could do that. He was definitely interested,
but Harriet was like, yes, dude, we can do this
for real. I will help you. When Raleigh's Virginia expedition
of that year set out from Plymouth that was on
April nine, Harriet was aboard as the ship's scientific advisor,
which included some working cartography as well as giving navigational advice,
(03:33):
and he was also there as Raleigh's representative, as Raleigh
himself could not make the trip, so in addition to
his advisory role on route, once the ship arrived in
North America, Harriet was to take stock of the land's
economic potential, and Raleigh also asked Harriet to similarly assess
the indigenous peoples that the expedition encountered. Harriet, along with
(03:54):
another man named John White, carried out all these tasks.
White mapped and sketched the land that they traveled, and
Harriet made notes on all of it. White also made
drawings of the native population, and Harriet gathered plants along
the way. As part of his report. He tried to
note which ones could be monetized, and we'll talk a
little bit more about conclusions he came to in just
a moment. Harriet, for his part, seems to have had
(04:17):
some pretty good relations with the indigenous populations. He was
really adept at learning languages. Some of the like brief
like blurbs about him will also say that he was
like a linguist or language scholar because that was something
that served him throughout his life. He kind of came
to it because it made things easier as he could
then consult various texts in whatever his subject of interest
(04:38):
was without needing to seek out translations. And he had
picked up some Algonquin language from two Native Americans who
had traveled to England before Harriet made his trip across
the Atlantic, and then once he was in North America,
he continued to improve his knowledge, specifically of Carolina Algonquin
that was spoken along the eastern coast in the areas
they were exploring. By the time assist And arrived at
(05:00):
the Virginia Colony in the form of Sir Francis Drake's
fifteen eighties six expedition, things with that fifteen eighty five
group had become really tenuous, and Harriet and White were
really eager to get back home, which they did in
a hurry as soon as Drake could arrange it. While
Raleigh arranged additional expeditions to the colonies, he moved Harriet
onto other projects instead of sending him across the Atlantic again. Yeah,
(05:22):
that colonization effort was considered a failure. Uh. An account
of Harriet's experiences in Raleigh's expedition, A Brief and True
Report of the Newfoundland of Virginia, was printed in Fight.
As we all know, I love the crazy long nutty
titles history, and this one is a doozy. So the
full name of that book is a Brief and True
(05:44):
Report of the Newfoundland of Virginia, of the commodities and
of the nature and manners of the natural inhabitants discovered
by the English Colony. They're seated by Sir Richard Grenville
Knight in the year fifteen eighty five, which remained under
the government of twelve months at the special charge and
direction of the Honorable Sir Walter Raleigh Night, Lord Warden
of the standardis who they're in hath been favored and
(06:07):
authorized by Her Majesty and her letters patents, And then
it had the after attribution. This four book is made
in English by Thomas Harriet, servant to the above named
Sir Walter, a member of the colony, and they're employed
in discovering I'm tired after getting through that whole name.
It's really um. It tickles me to look at the
(06:29):
title page for that book because it is just the
busiest thing you can imagine. Despite the fact that Thomas Harriet,
who I feel like we should point out, you'll see
his name spelled a variety of ways if you go
looking for it. Um. But despite his many writings and
accomplishments that he made throughout his years, that was the
only book of his that was published during his lifetime.
(06:50):
So White illustrated this book and it details the basics
of their journey and includes discussion of what caused that
colony effort to fail. Most of that boils down to
the people involved really not being ready for just how
difficult it was going to be, which we've had a
lot of that story. While for many this failure was
(07:12):
really damning to Raleigh's colonization efforts, Harriet makes the case
that future efforts could address the problems from voyage and
that future attempts should be allowed to continue, and the
book also delivers on the promise to report on the
financial potential of colonizing in North America. The first part
of the book is called of Merchantable Commodities, and in
(07:32):
it Harriet breaks down the properties of a variety of
resources that were observed on the journey, and he includes
entries on grass, silk worm, silk, flax and hemp alum,
red clay, pitch tar, resonant, turpentine, sassafras, cedar, wine, oil,
and furs. And in the wine entry he mentioned specifically
two types of grapes that grow naturally in Virginia that
(07:55):
could be used to make wine, and under the fur
entry he specifically mentions otters, which is a little abu.
He continues on with deer skins, iron copper pearls, sweet gums,
dyes of diverse kinds, and sugar canes. The section concludes
with the possibility of importing other commodities that could be
planted in Virginia and thrive, and the high likelihood that
(08:15):
there are also other potential resources native to the area
which surely had not yet been discovered. The second section
of the book is titled of such commodities as Virginia
is known to yield for vittle and sustenance of man's life,
usually fed upon by the natural inhabitants, as also by
us during the time of our abroad, and first of
(08:37):
such as are sewed and husbanded. The section is not
about goods to be exported or traded, but the resources
that could be counted on to sustain a colony, and
these included beans, peas, gourds, and various herbs, as well
as root vegetables and fruits. Strawberries, mulberrious chestnuts, walnuts, and
acorns are all mentioned. Harriet also described the planting practices
(08:58):
he observed is carried out by the indigenous pepulation and
ways that those could be replicated on a larger scale.
Later on in this section is a discussion of the
wild game that could be caught in the area, including
deer coney's, which some debate on whether that just meant
like slightly different rabbits, squirrels, and bears. And there's a
second part of the beasts section that is just about birds,
(09:20):
including turkeys, doves, partridges, cranes, swans, and geese. He also
mentions parrots, falcons and hawks, of which he writes, quote,
although with us they be not used for meat, yet
for other causes, I thought good to mention. And then uh,
there are seafood options that he mentions, including various fish, crustaceans,
and mollusks. Uh. I know that there are lots of
(09:41):
people who call rabbits coney's. So yeah, but then sometimes
if you look it up, people will say, no, it's
like a related rodent, but not exactly around it. Really,
it was just a word that got used a lot,
and as a consequence that has brewed some debate. We'll
talk about the final section of the book, as well
as its impact on both with America and Europe, after
(10:01):
we first pause for a quick sponsor break. The third
section of Harriet's book is called of such other things
as behooful for those which shall plant and inhabit, to
know of with a description of the nature and manners
(10:22):
of the people of the country, And that is exactly
what you might expect. It's a guide of sorts for
anyone trying to make a go of it in the colonies.
It offers, for example, insights into what trees might be
good for lumber, and also what to expect from the
native population, and on and on. Harriet's characterization of the
indigenous people's is important because though he absolutely makes it
(10:43):
clear that he finds them to quote show excellence of wit,
he also mentions a lot of ideas that really telegraph
the future for relations between the European colonists and North
America's indigenous population. Here is the passage that really illustrates
this quote. If their fall out any wars between us
and them, what their fight is likely to be? We
(11:05):
having advantages against them so many manner of ways. Is
by our discipline, are strange weapons and devices, else, especially
by ordinance great and small. It might be easily imagined
by the experience we have had in some places the
turning up of their heels against us in running away
was their best defense. Yeah. He states pretty plainly that
(11:25):
although he can recognize that the Native Americans exhibit their
own ingenuity, they also seemed to be in awe of
the Europeans mechanical achievements, and that that is something that
could be used to advantage by white settlers. One of
the reasons we're talking in such detail about Harriett's book,
and in particular these characterizations, is because this writing was
(11:45):
hugely influential. It was published in multiple languages, and it
became the informational text about North America for Europeans. So
does some degree really laid the groundwork for the ways
in which indigenous populations were viewed and subsequently treated by
the colonists. Republished in so many different places, included in
(12:06):
larger volumes of work about colonization and world exploration, like
it would be plopped in as a chapter. It really
really was read by anyone interested in any kind of
exploration from Europe into North America. And after Harriet returned
from North America, he settled for a while in Ireland
in an abbey on land that was owned by Sir
(12:27):
Walter Raleigh, and that is where he worked on the
manuscript of a brief entry report. He also surveyed Raleigh's
Irish property claims. At this point, England was also colonizing
Ireland after a particularly brutal land grab. Sir Humphrey Gilbert
that we mentioned earlier in particular, had been really incredibly
ruthless when it came to killing non combatants during the
(12:48):
campaigns there as a means to victory and in order
to seize more Land, while working for Raleigh. During this time,
Harriet also expanded his efforts in map making. He worked
alongside famed English maker Emriy Molanu and with a Belgian
map maker, gerardis Mercator, to assist in refining their efforts
to be more accurate. In the fifteen nineties, after more
(13:09):
than fifteen years in Sir Walter Raleigh's employee, Harriett moved
to work instead for Henry Percy, ninth, Earl of Northumberland,
who was a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh. And this
was due to the fact that Sir Walter Raleigh was
mired in his own issues. His colony projects, both in
Ireland in North America had not really gone terribly well,
and his secret marriage to best Rock Morton led Raleigh
(13:31):
to fall out of favor with the Queen. We talked
about all of this in our Beheading of Walter Raleigh
episode if you want to get the whole scoop on
that um. And though Sir Walter Raleigh was able to
regain his position at court eventually it kind of get
his favor back, the instability of his fortunes just led
Harriet to seek work elsewhere. But the two men did
not seem to have any ill will between them over
(13:51):
this change and employment. They stayed close friends for the
rest of their lives. Harriet moved once again to land
and a home that was granted to him by his hatron.
Percy gave Thomas Harriet an estate in Durham, England, as
well as a home just west of London. He used
the house that was conferred upon him as his workplace home,
and he set up a lab there for his research.
(14:12):
He continued to study mathematics and astronomy. Many of the
areas in which he researched and experimented where things he
had started while he was in Raleigh's employ But in
this new lab, with a regular annual pension that was
granted him by Percy, he was able to explore these
ideas more fully. This is really the point at which
he becomes a set man like. He doesn't have to
(14:32):
worry about money, he doesn't have to worry about taking
care of things. He can just focus on his work.
And one thing that really starts to emerge when you
look at Harriet's work is how one thing that he
was interested tended to lead to another as his curiosity
became his guide so, for example, he had done some
work studying ballistics in part of his work for Sir
Walter Raleigh, where they were planning for uh potential military engagements,
(14:57):
and that led him to then consider the physics of falling,
the laws of motion, and these particular efforts actually paralleled
the work that was being done by Galileo in Italy
at the same time. This is the case with a
lot of Harriet's work. He and Galileo were kind of
like onto a lot of the same concepts, and the
story goes that it was his work figuring out the
best way to stack cannonballs on a ship's deck, which
(15:18):
was an assignment that Raleigh had given to him, that
led him to think about the structure of matter. He
was onto the idea that matter was made up of
smaller component parts, and that led him to be regarded
with suspicion in certain circles as early as the fifteen nineties.
Being associated with Sir Walter Raleigh caused Raleigh's critics to
seek out any possible scandal that they could regarding Harriet,
(15:40):
and the best that they could clamp onto was the
fact that he was an atomist. This idea that all
things could be analyzed to their distinct elementary components. Atomism
was seen by many at this time as an affront
to Christianity, and soon a rumor began that Harriet was
a conjuror and an atheist. Harriet himself never seemed to
(16:00):
make any conclusive statement or include any notes in his
known writing that he was anti Christian or pro atheism,
but it was kind of the decision of the rumor mill. Yeah,
it's like the rumors that maybe people were secretly Catholic.
Right In sixteen o three, after Queen Elizabeth the First died,
(16:22):
Sir Walter Raley was imprisoned in the Tower of London
under orders from King James the First after being found
guilty of conspiring to overthrow the new monarch, and Henry
Percy also found himself in the Tower under King James
the First rule Percy was implicated in a tertiary way
in the Gunpowder plot, which was a failed effort to
assassinate James the First. Henry Percy's cousin, Thomas Percy, was
(16:45):
an active conspirator in that plot, and it had been
Henry who had appointed Thomas as a gentleman pensioner without
express permission to do so from the King, and that
had given Thomas traction in London to move forward with
his plot. And for that misstep, Henry Percy stayed in
the Tower of London for sixteen years and paid a
hefty fine. Naturally, with his two primary benefactors in hot Water, Thomas,
(17:09):
Harriet was also looked on with a lot of suspicion.
He was detained briefly under the charge of having cast
the King's horoscope, but he was released after being only
briefly imprisoned. After he regained his freedom, he served as
a connection from Raleigh and Percy to the outside world.
He also continued to live at Science House, in the
home that Percy had given him outside of London. While
(17:29):
Raleigh was imprisoned, Harriet helped him with his massive History
of the World writing project, and he looked after the
education of Algernon Percy. Sir Henry Percy's firstborn son. He
was the tenth Earl of Northumberland. I think it was
his third child, but first son. Uh And while his
name is not as commonly known as many of his
contemporaries to today's years, Harriet was very well known and
(17:51):
respected in his own lifetime in part because of that
book he wrote about North America, but also in the
scientific community. He and johann As Kepler corresponded about lenses
and optics beginning in sixteen o six, as the two
of them worked concurrently on unlocking the understanding of light refraction,
and during this time Harriet developed the formula that would
(18:12):
eventually come to be known as Snell's law or the
Snell Descarte law, which is defined as a relationship between
the path taken by a ray of light in crossing
the boundary or surface of separation between two contacting substances,
and the refractive index of each. Although it wasn't Harriet's
version of that equation that became famous, uh that law
(18:33):
is attributed to the Dutchman will Abroard Snell for discovering
it in se Harriet was completely onto it a decade earlier,
although he was not the first either. Persian mathematician Ibn
Salt described the universal relationship for refraction using ratios and
the sign law all the way back in beating both
of the Europeans by a very wide six year margin.
(18:55):
On September sixteen oh seven, Harriet used a cross staff
instrument to observe of the passing of what would later
come to be known as Halley's comment. Though Sir Edmund
Halley wasn't born yet and would see the commet himself
and its next pass in this further stoked his interest
in optics. We're going to talk in just a moment
about Harriet's unpublicized astronomical discoveries, but first we're going to
(19:18):
hear from one of the sponsors that keeps this show going. Unsurprisingly,
all of that interest in light refraction and optics that
we talked about before the break was part of an
increased interest in telescopes. By sixteen o nine, Harriet had
started working in earnest with telescopes, both acquiring them and
(19:41):
making his own, and for the next four years in particular,
he made a great number of significant astronomical observations with them.
One of the most important things that Harriet did, and
wasn't fully accredited until recently, was to observe the Moon
through a telescope and then make drawings of the lunar
surface while he was working to try to make sense
of it. His earliest known drawing of the Moon is
(20:02):
from July sixteen o nine on the Julian calendar. That
date is significant because it puts Harriet's work on the
Moon's observation a few months ahead of Galileo's. Although Galileo
is usually credited with being the first to be fair,
Harriet's lunar drawings are incredibly rudimentary. If you just looked
at them and you did not have the context of
(20:23):
someone saying that is the moon, it might be something
you couldn't figure out. They all just kind of look
like circles with mystery squiggles scrawled on them. But by
six thirteen he had produced too much more detailed moon maps,
which may be the first instances of astronomical cartography. I
will also tell you that I decided while researching this,
(20:45):
and I am getting one of those is a tattoo. Awesome. Yeah,
if you uh, they are much more recognizably the Moon
than the earlier drawings. Yeah. And even so, I mean,
he those are criticized as not really getting the top
hat graphy exactly right, but it's still like the first
time someone tried to capture it in map form. Yeah.
(21:06):
In December of sixteen ten, Harriet was the first person
to observe sun spots through a telescope, and this too
happened at about the same time that Galileo was making
similar observations. Harriet's drawings of these are similar to his
moon sketches. They're almost inscrutable in terms of what they
are supposed to be. If you don't know that these
are sun spots, they just sort of look like blourpy
(21:28):
dots in a circle. You would think somebody's built something
on that. There. Really there's no detail. Well, and sometimes
sun spots do just look like somebody, right, So without
any context, Yeah, if somebody just held it up to
you with no you'd be like, I don't did somebody?
I don't know what that is? Do you find it somewhere? Um.
(21:48):
It is unclear exactly why Harriet didn't publicize his work,
particularly these various pieces of potentially history making astronomy. One
common theory is that because he was in pretty and
financial standing, he just did not have the compulsion or
the need to seek attention for his work, which would
have come with financial benefit. Galileo, on the other hand,
(22:08):
kind of needed the cash. Uh and the fact that
his two high profile friends and benefactors were both in
prison at the time may have also been a factor
as well. He might have wished to minimize public attention
for fear that it would just stir up problems, either
that he would be seen as suspicious again, or that
it would cause problems for the two of them. In
sixteen thirteen, Thomas Harriet developed an ulcer on his left nostril,
(22:31):
and then the problem progressed over the next two years,
with ulcers developing on his lips and nose. The King's physician,
Sir Theodore Turquette Demyerne, saw Harriet to examine the problem
on May sixteen, fifteen and diagnosed it as cancer. The
doctor noted that the patient seemed melancholy and made mention
in his rite up that Harriet was the person who
(22:52):
first brought tobacco from Virginia. This is possibly the first
time somebody made the connection between tobacco use and cancer,
at least in a writing. Yeah, it was notable that
he kind of was discussing this particular problem and then
brought up the tobacco thing. It's uh, it's an interesting
connection that I think. I don't know if he was
particularly insightful or other doctors who are thinking similar things,
(23:13):
but this is one of the first evidences we have
of someone actually writing it down. In sixteen eighteen, Harriet
watched as his friend and supporter, Sir Walter Raleigh was
executed by beheading. Harriet's health had continued to worsen, so
that by that year the only things that he really
noted in his personal papers. And this was a man
that kept a lot of notes throughout his life. Where
(23:34):
the death of Raleigh and the observation of a comet
in SI one, Harriet succumbed to skin cancer. He died
on July two in the home of Thomas Buckner and
never married or had any children, and he was buried
in the Church of St Christopher le Stocks on thread
Needle Street, near Buckner's London residence. The Great Fire of
sixteen sixty six destroyed this grave site, and today it's
(23:56):
the Bank of England's headquarters. Yeah. That always cracks me up.
It shows up in almost anything you read where they're like,
he was buried here, Now it's the Bank of England. Uh.
Harriet bequeathed his telescopes to his executors and his scientific
papers to Henry Percy, with a note that they should
be edited and prepared for publication by a long time acquaintance,
(24:17):
Nathaniel Torporli. He wanted most of his non scientific personal
notes related to Raleigh and other deceased persons to be buried.
While Harriet asked to have his work published after he died,
he unfortunately hadn't really prepared his research to that end.
This is just a really big ask and it did
not really happen. With one exception. This is really a
pity because he not only had a four decade long career,
(24:41):
but the mathematicians and scientists who survived him weren't able
to then build on his work without having access to
his notes. He had assembled a manuscript for a book
titled Application of the Analytical Art to Solving Algebraic Equations.
That book was published ten years after his death and
introduced the greater than and less than some bulls, as
well as that long horizontal brace that covers terms that
(25:04):
are affected by a radical sign the Some histories attribute
these symbols to Harriet, although others say that these elements
were inclusions from the editor that prepared the manuscript for publication,
rather than things that Harriet himself developed. Yeah, he sometimes
that that book will also be credited with inventing like
the dot between two things as a multiplication symbol. But
(25:28):
there's that also, may just be a different way that
numbers were separated for clarity. Um so maybe maybe not.
When the Royal Society of London was founded in sixteen
sixty one of its first initiatives was an effort to
recover the lost work of Harriet, because again, he was
known in his lifetime, so people were cognizant of the
(25:48):
fact that when he had died forty years before that
they had lost some important research. For seven years, from
the time that Society received its Royal charter from Charles
the Second in sixteen sixty two up until sixteen sixty nine,
the whereabouts of Harriet's notes were investigated. There were a
lot of inquiries made, but it was a fruitless effort
and eventually that project was abandoned. At that point it
(26:10):
was believed that Harriet's work was gone, and that remained
the belief of the scientific community for more than a century.
In seventeen eighty four, though, there was a surprise breakthrough
of sorts. Hungarian born astronomer Franz Xaver Baron von Zack
had traveled to England to work for the Saxon ambassador
in London. That was John Maurice, Count of Brule, and
(26:31):
that happened in seventy three. And while he was at
Pentworth Castle in Sussex, von Zach's found a number of
Thomas Harriet's manuscripts at the bottom of a trash pile
and a stable. Yeah, that property was still owned by
Henry Percy's descendants. Uh so presumably those papers had just
been shuffled around for a while and someone who didn't
(26:51):
know what they were just tossed him aside. And this
find was of course significant because von Zack saw that
Harriet's work had put him ahead of other astronomers of
his time, including Kepler and Galileo, and the Baron parlayed
his discovery into a tour of Europe where he talked
about Harriet, but he never really took the work to
the next level to do an in depth analysis of
(27:11):
what he had found, like he never published a paper
on it, and the excitement over finding these these papers
in manuscripts died down with no new revelations or write ups,
and von Zack took a new job working for the
Royals of sax Gotha in seventy six, and at that
point he seems to have moved on from his Harriet interest.
So while other interested parties made some efforts at really
(27:33):
studying Harriet's work, it was not until the twentieth century
that the insights he had and the observations he made
really came into their own. It became the focus of study,
so much so that there have been numerous Thomas Harriet
symposia going on since the late nineteen sixties. In July
two thousand nine, Harriet's lunar drawings were part of an
exhibit at the West Sussex Record Office in Chichester, and
(27:55):
the lunar maps are cared for by the West Sussex
Record Office. They keep them pretty much full time though
they are the property of one of Henry Percy's descendants,
so we mentioned up at the top of the podcast.
This episode is part of the Apollo Pod Crawl that
was organized by the Museum of Flight in Seattle as
part of their celebration of the first Crude Moon landings
fiftieth anniversary. You can check out our show notes for
(28:18):
links to the other participating podcasts, including the Museum's own
Flight Deck podcast. I Think We're probably the last episode
of this pod crawl coming out, so all the others
should be available by the time we get to this point.
I think so and hope so um, I mean, I
hope that's accurate. So, but that is as the of
(28:38):
the moment we record it. We're still waiting on a
couple of groups to report in. So uh yeah, but
those are all going to be super fun to check out.
If you are into space history, which I know many
of our listeners are because we always get great responses
to our space episodes and our discussions of NASA and
space exploration in astronomy, then you probably want to check
(29:00):
those out. Yeah. I might make for a fun day
of just having spacetime. I love it. Um. I have
two postcards and one of them is going to blow
Tracy's mind. I'm not even letting her see it. She's
in the studio with me today, which is not often
the case since we work separately in different cities. But
(29:21):
it is from our listener, Kendra, and some of her
stuff is obscured on her postcard, but the postcard itself
is spectacular. She writes, I recently listened to your podcast
about Marie Lawrence Son and I was so surprised to
hear her work was from the early twentieth century. I
have recently seen her work in an online forum and
it honestly would fit in basically amongst beautifully amongst today's
(29:44):
crowd of insta artists. I agree. Thank you so much
for sharing her awesome background. And then it looks like
some water damage on the postcard. Here's it's amazing. Kendra
did a watercolor for the postcard what in the style
of Marie Lawrencen and it's portraits of us. Oh my goodness,
(30:06):
and it's awesome upside down. That's so great. It's really fabulous.
There's a kitty on it too. There is also her cat.
That is her cat Dinah, which I wonder if that's
named after the Dinah in Alice in Wonderland who was
also a kitty. I love it. It's really really spectacularly fun. Yeah,
thank you so much for sharing your art with us, Kendra,
(30:29):
because this is just one of those you know we
talked about on the episode. Art is great. It touches people,
um and I love it. We also got a really
really fun cute postcard from Yellowstone National Park, which is
from our listener Amanda June. She writes, Hello girls, My
mom and I took a trip to Yellowstone and I
introduced her to your podcast on the drive. Your podcast
is one of my favorites and it was a joy
(30:50):
to get to share it with my mom. That's just
super sweet, and I love that you are spreading the
history love. And also again, every time somebody's on a
trip and they write us a postcard, very touched by
it because I never have my act together to send
postcards to people I know and love in my life,
so it's very meaningful to me that someone would make
that effort. Yeah. Um, I am not often in this office,
(31:12):
and one of the things that I have done on
this trip to this office since I'm never here, I
don't have my own permanent desk anymore, and so I
had to go through the things that had been boxed
up from my desk, and I was just overwhelmed by
I mean, there were so many uh, postcards and letters
and little like little trinkets and things that um, I
(31:33):
had not I had. In some cases I had seen
them and had put them to the side, and in
some cases I had not seen them yet. I was
just totally blown away by all of these things. So
thank you so much everybody who has sent us all
of these things over the years. There were a couple
of things that were things I had put aside from
like five years ago that I had not looked at
since then. It's just really incredible and humbling. Yeah. I'm
(31:59):
an try to remember to put a picture of this,
uh handpainted postcard on our show page along with our
our links to the Apollo pod crawl. Uh. If I don't,
you can bug us on social media and remind me. Yeah. Um.
If you would like to write to us, you can
do so at History podcast at how Stop works dot com.
If you would like to bug us on social media
(32:20):
and go, hey, Holly, you forgot to put that picture
in there, Uh, that's missed in History is our handle
pretty much everywhere. You can also visit our homepage, which
is missed in history dot com, and there every episode
of the show that has ever been made exists together,
as well as show notes for any of the episodes
Tracy and I have worked on together. You can also
subscribe to the podcast it seems like a cool thing
to do. You can do that on the I Heart
(32:43):
Radio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is that
you like to listen. Stuff you Missed in History Class
is a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app. App podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm so hey everybody.
On July this year, that was just a few days ago,
it was the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo eleven moon landing,
(00:23):
and last December, the Museum of Flight had reached out
to us to see if we wanted to participate in
a pod crawl that they have been doing as part
of the celebration, And of course we said yes, because
space history area in which I think is safe to
say I have some rabies in the good sense. True, true,
I'm a rabbid fan of space history. But since some
of the other shows on their list were probably going
(00:44):
to hit some of the great history of the space
program that's a little more recent, we thought that it
might be fun if we reached farther back, way back,
so far back yeah, to the sixteenth century, uh and
into the seventeenth century and talk about Thomas Harriet, who
was a mathematician and astronomer who made some very significant
telescopic observations, some of which related to the moon. But
(01:08):
his story is also tied to so many other notable
historic things, including a lot of business with Sir Walter Rawleigh. Uh.
And he is really not a household name like a
lot of his contemporaries are, even though he was neck
and neck with them in terms of discoveries. And we're
going to talk a little bit about why that's the
case at the end of the episode, and we'll give
you more information on that pod crawl at the end
(01:29):
of the episode in case you want to check out
the other work that people have been doing to celebrate
this fiftieth anniversary. A lot of cool podcasts right about now.
So Harriet was born in Oxford, England, probably in fifteen
sixty during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First, but
we don't know much at all about the first twenty
years of his life. This is the case a lot
(01:51):
of people from that long ago. His parents probably were commoners,
and then he kind of pops up in the historical
record when he entered school at the Universe the of
Oxford at the age of seventeen. He graduated with his
degree in eight in fifteen eighty, and with an education
in mathematics and astronomy, he jumped right into working life,
and the job that he found right out of school
(02:12):
was working for none other than Sir Walter Raleigh as
a math tutor and in various other tasks as needed.
And one of his first projects under Raleigh was the
composition of a book which was titled arct com which
was apparently a navigational text. And I have to say apparently,
because no copy of that writing survives, so we don't
really know entirely what was included there. At this point
(02:32):
in history, soldier and explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who was
Raleigh's half brother, was seen as something of an expert
on the so called New World of North America. Although
most of his expeditions had failed, they had slowly drained
off his coffers. By the time Gilbert died in fifteen
eight three, Thomas Harriet had convinced Raleigh to continue England's
(02:53):
exploration of North America. Harriet was instrumental in helping Raleigh
to prepare for his colonizing expedition in We're gonna talk
about this a little bit more. But there's also more
information about these things than the previous Sir Walter Raleigh episode.
Peogle want that? Yeah? Uh? Yeah, that's ah, It's not
as though Raleigh had no interest. And then Thomas Harriet
(03:13):
was like, we could do that. He was definitely interested,
but Harriet was like, yes, dude, we can do this
for real. I will help you. When Raleigh's Virginia expedition
of that year set out from Plymouth that was on
April nine, Harriet was aboard as the ship's scientific advisor,
which included some working cartography as well as giving navigational advice,
(03:33):
and he was also there as Raleigh's representative, as Raleigh
himself could not make the trip, so in addition to
his advisory role on route, once the ship arrived in
North America, Harriet was to take stock of the land's
economic potential, and Raleigh also asked Harriet to similarly assess
the indigenous peoples that the expedition encountered. Harriet, along with
(03:54):
another man named John White, carried out all these tasks.
White mapped and sketched the land that they traveled, and
Harriet made notes on all of it. White also made
drawings of the native population, and Harriet gathered plants along
the way. As part of his report. He tried to
note which ones could be monetized, and we'll talk a
little bit more about conclusions he came to in just
a moment. Harriet, for his part, seems to have had
(04:17):
some pretty good relations with the indigenous populations. He was
really adept at learning languages. Some of the like brief
like blurbs about him will also say that he was
like a linguist or language scholar because that was something
that served him throughout his life. He kind of came
to it because it made things easier as he could
then consult various texts in whatever his subject of interest
(04:38):
was without needing to seek out translations. And he had
picked up some Algonquin language from two Native Americans who
had traveled to England before Harriet made his trip across
the Atlantic, and then once he was in North America,
he continued to improve his knowledge, specifically of Carolina Algonquin
that was spoken along the eastern coast in the areas
they were exploring. By the time assist And arrived at
(05:00):
the Virginia Colony in the form of Sir Francis Drake's
fifteen eighties six expedition, things with that fifteen eighty five
group had become really tenuous, and Harriet and White were
really eager to get back home, which they did in
a hurry as soon as Drake could arrange it. While
Raleigh arranged additional expeditions to the colonies, he moved Harriet
onto other projects instead of sending him across the Atlantic again. Yeah,
(05:22):
that colonization effort was considered a failure. Uh. An account
of Harriet's experiences in Raleigh's expedition, A Brief and True
Report of the Newfoundland of Virginia, was printed in Fight.
As we all know, I love the crazy long nutty
titles history, and this one is a doozy. So the
full name of that book is a Brief and True
(05:44):
Report of the Newfoundland of Virginia, of the commodities and
of the nature and manners of the natural inhabitants discovered
by the English Colony. They're seated by Sir Richard Grenville
Knight in the year fifteen eighty five, which remained under
the government of twelve months at the special charge and
direction of the Honorable Sir Walter Raleigh Night, Lord Warden
of the standardis who they're in hath been favored and
(06:07):
authorized by Her Majesty and her letters patents, And then
it had the after attribution. This four book is made
in English by Thomas Harriet, servant to the above named
Sir Walter, a member of the colony, and they're employed
in discovering I'm tired after getting through that whole name.
It's really um. It tickles me to look at the
(06:29):
title page for that book because it is just the
busiest thing you can imagine. Despite the fact that Thomas Harriet,
who I feel like we should point out, you'll see
his name spelled a variety of ways if you go
looking for it. Um. But despite his many writings and
accomplishments that he made throughout his years, that was the
only book of his that was published during his lifetime.
(06:50):
So White illustrated this book and it details the basics
of their journey and includes discussion of what caused that
colony effort to fail. Most of that boils down to
the people involved really not being ready for just how
difficult it was going to be, which we've had a
lot of that story. While for many this failure was
(07:12):
really damning to Raleigh's colonization efforts, Harriet makes the case
that future efforts could address the problems from voyage and
that future attempts should be allowed to continue, and the
book also delivers on the promise to report on the
financial potential of colonizing in North America. The first part
of the book is called of Merchantable Commodities, and in
(07:32):
it Harriet breaks down the properties of a variety of
resources that were observed on the journey, and he includes
entries on grass, silk worm, silk, flax and hemp alum,
red clay, pitch tar, resonant, turpentine, sassafras, cedar, wine, oil,
and furs. And in the wine entry he mentioned specifically
two types of grapes that grow naturally in Virginia that
(07:55):
could be used to make wine, and under the fur
entry he specifically mentions otters, which is a little abu.
He continues on with deer skins, iron copper pearls, sweet gums,
dyes of diverse kinds, and sugar canes. The section concludes
with the possibility of importing other commodities that could be
planted in Virginia and thrive, and the high likelihood that
(08:15):
there are also other potential resources native to the area
which surely had not yet been discovered. The second section
of the book is titled of such commodities as Virginia
is known to yield for vittle and sustenance of man's life,
usually fed upon by the natural inhabitants, as also by
us during the time of our abroad, and first of
(08:37):
such as are sewed and husbanded. The section is not
about goods to be exported or traded, but the resources
that could be counted on to sustain a colony, and
these included beans, peas, gourds, and various herbs, as well
as root vegetables and fruits. Strawberries, mulberrious chestnuts, walnuts, and
acorns are all mentioned. Harriet also described the planting practices
(08:58):
he observed is carried out by the indigenous pepulation and
ways that those could be replicated on a larger scale.
Later on in this section is a discussion of the
wild game that could be caught in the area, including
deer coney's, which some debate on whether that just meant
like slightly different rabbits, squirrels, and bears. And there's a
second part of the beasts section that is just about birds,
(09:20):
including turkeys, doves, partridges, cranes, swans, and geese. He also
mentions parrots, falcons and hawks, of which he writes, quote,
although with us they be not used for meat, yet
for other causes, I thought good to mention. And then uh,
there are seafood options that he mentions, including various fish, crustaceans,
and mollusks. Uh. I know that there are lots of
(09:41):
people who call rabbits coney's. So yeah, but then sometimes
if you look it up, people will say, no, it's
like a related rodent, but not exactly around it. Really,
it was just a word that got used a lot,
and as a consequence that has brewed some debate. We'll
talk about the final section of the book, as well
as its impact on both with America and Europe, after
(10:01):
we first pause for a quick sponsor break. The third
section of Harriet's book is called of such other things
as behooful for those which shall plant and inhabit, to
know of with a description of the nature and manners
(10:22):
of the people of the country, And that is exactly
what you might expect. It's a guide of sorts for
anyone trying to make a go of it in the colonies.
It offers, for example, insights into what trees might be
good for lumber, and also what to expect from the
native population, and on and on. Harriet's characterization of the
indigenous people's is important because though he absolutely makes it
(10:43):
clear that he finds them to quote show excellence of wit,
he also mentions a lot of ideas that really telegraph
the future for relations between the European colonists and North
America's indigenous population. Here is the passage that really illustrates
this quote. If their fall out any wars between us
and them, what their fight is likely to be? We
(11:05):
having advantages against them so many manner of ways. Is
by our discipline, are strange weapons and devices, else, especially
by ordinance great and small. It might be easily imagined
by the experience we have had in some places the
turning up of their heels against us in running away
was their best defense. Yeah. He states pretty plainly that
(11:25):
although he can recognize that the Native Americans exhibit their
own ingenuity, they also seemed to be in awe of
the Europeans mechanical achievements, and that that is something that
could be used to advantage by white settlers. One of
the reasons we're talking in such detail about Harriett's book,
and in particular these characterizations, is because this writing was
(11:45):
hugely influential. It was published in multiple languages, and it
became the informational text about North America for Europeans. So
does some degree really laid the groundwork for the ways
in which indigenous populations were viewed and subsequently treated by
the colonists. Republished in so many different places, included in
(12:06):
larger volumes of work about colonization and world exploration, like
it would be plopped in as a chapter. It really
really was read by anyone interested in any kind of
exploration from Europe into North America. And after Harriet returned
from North America, he settled for a while in Ireland
in an abbey on land that was owned by Sir
(12:27):
Walter Raleigh, and that is where he worked on the
manuscript of a brief entry report. He also surveyed Raleigh's
Irish property claims. At this point, England was also colonizing
Ireland after a particularly brutal land grab. Sir Humphrey Gilbert
that we mentioned earlier in particular, had been really incredibly
ruthless when it came to killing non combatants during the
(12:48):
campaigns there as a means to victory and in order
to seize more Land, while working for Raleigh. During this time,
Harriet also expanded his efforts in map making. He worked
alongside famed English maker Emriy Molanu and with a Belgian
map maker, gerardis Mercator, to assist in refining their efforts
to be more accurate. In the fifteen nineties, after more
(13:09):
than fifteen years in Sir Walter Raleigh's employee, Harriett moved
to work instead for Henry Percy, ninth, Earl of Northumberland,
who was a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh. And this
was due to the fact that Sir Walter Raleigh was
mired in his own issues. His colony projects, both in
Ireland in North America had not really gone terribly well,
and his secret marriage to best Rock Morton led Raleigh
(13:31):
to fall out of favor with the Queen. We talked
about all of this in our Beheading of Walter Raleigh
episode if you want to get the whole scoop on
that um. And though Sir Walter Raleigh was able to
regain his position at court eventually it kind of get
his favor back, the instability of his fortunes just led
Harriet to seek work elsewhere. But the two men did
not seem to have any ill will between them over
(13:51):
this change and employment. They stayed close friends for the
rest of their lives. Harriet moved once again to land
and a home that was granted to him by his hatron.
Percy gave Thomas Harriet an estate in Durham, England, as
well as a home just west of London. He used
the house that was conferred upon him as his workplace home,
and he set up a lab there for his research.
(14:12):
He continued to study mathematics and astronomy. Many of the
areas in which he researched and experimented where things he
had started while he was in Raleigh's employ But in
this new lab, with a regular annual pension that was
granted him by Percy, he was able to explore these
ideas more fully. This is really the point at which
he becomes a set man like. He doesn't have to
(14:32):
worry about money, he doesn't have to worry about taking
care of things. He can just focus on his work.
And one thing that really starts to emerge when you
look at Harriet's work is how one thing that he
was interested tended to lead to another as his curiosity
became his guide so, for example, he had done some
work studying ballistics in part of his work for Sir
Walter Raleigh, where they were planning for uh potential military engagements,
(14:57):
and that led him to then consider the physics of falling,
the laws of motion, and these particular efforts actually paralleled
the work that was being done by Galileo in Italy
at the same time. This is the case with a
lot of Harriet's work. He and Galileo were kind of
like onto a lot of the same concepts, and the
story goes that it was his work figuring out the
best way to stack cannonballs on a ship's deck, which
(15:18):
was an assignment that Raleigh had given to him, that
led him to think about the structure of matter. He
was onto the idea that matter was made up of
smaller component parts, and that led him to be regarded
with suspicion in certain circles as early as the fifteen nineties.
Being associated with Sir Walter Raleigh caused Raleigh's critics to
seek out any possible scandal that they could regarding Harriet,
(15:40):
and the best that they could clamp onto was the
fact that he was an atomist. This idea that all
things could be analyzed to their distinct elementary components. Atomism
was seen by many at this time as an affront
to Christianity, and soon a rumor began that Harriet was
a conjuror and an atheist. Harriet himself never seemed to
(16:00):
make any conclusive statement or include any notes in his
known writing that he was anti Christian or pro atheism,
but it was kind of the decision of the rumor mill. Yeah,
it's like the rumors that maybe people were secretly Catholic.
Right In sixteen o three, after Queen Elizabeth the First died,
(16:22):
Sir Walter Raley was imprisoned in the Tower of London
under orders from King James the First after being found
guilty of conspiring to overthrow the new monarch, and Henry
Percy also found himself in the Tower under King James
the First rule Percy was implicated in a tertiary way
in the Gunpowder plot, which was a failed effort to
assassinate James the First. Henry Percy's cousin, Thomas Percy, was
(16:45):
an active conspirator in that plot, and it had been
Henry who had appointed Thomas as a gentleman pensioner without
express permission to do so from the King, and that
had given Thomas traction in London to move forward with
his plot. And for that misstep, Henry Percy stayed in
the Tower of London for sixteen years and paid a
hefty fine. Naturally, with his two primary benefactors in hot Water, Thomas,
(17:09):
Harriet was also looked on with a lot of suspicion.
He was detained briefly under the charge of having cast
the King's horoscope, but he was released after being only
briefly imprisoned. After he regained his freedom, he served as
a connection from Raleigh and Percy to the outside world.
He also continued to live at Science House, in the
home that Percy had given him outside of London. While
(17:29):
Raleigh was imprisoned, Harriet helped him with his massive History
of the World writing project, and he looked after the
education of Algernon Percy. Sir Henry Percy's firstborn son. He
was the tenth Earl of Northumberland. I think it was
his third child, but first son. Uh And while his
name is not as commonly known as many of his
contemporaries to today's years, Harriet was very well known and
(17:51):
respected in his own lifetime in part because of that
book he wrote about North America, but also in the
scientific community. He and johann As Kepler corresponded about lenses
and optics beginning in sixteen o six, as the two
of them worked concurrently on unlocking the understanding of light refraction,
and during this time Harriet developed the formula that would
(18:12):
eventually come to be known as Snell's law or the
Snell Descarte law, which is defined as a relationship between
the path taken by a ray of light in crossing
the boundary or surface of separation between two contacting substances,
and the refractive index of each. Although it wasn't Harriet's
version of that equation that became famous, uh that law
(18:33):
is attributed to the Dutchman will Abroard Snell for discovering
it in se Harriet was completely onto it a decade earlier,
although he was not the first either. Persian mathematician Ibn
Salt described the universal relationship for refraction using ratios and
the sign law all the way back in beating both
of the Europeans by a very wide six year margin.
(18:55):
On September sixteen oh seven, Harriet used a cross staff
instrument to observe of the passing of what would later
come to be known as Halley's comment. Though Sir Edmund
Halley wasn't born yet and would see the commet himself
and its next pass in this further stoked his interest
in optics. We're going to talk in just a moment
about Harriet's unpublicized astronomical discoveries, but first we're going to
(19:18):
hear from one of the sponsors that keeps this show going. Unsurprisingly,
all of that interest in light refraction and optics that
we talked about before the break was part of an
increased interest in telescopes. By sixteen o nine, Harriet had
started working in earnest with telescopes, both acquiring them and
(19:41):
making his own, and for the next four years in particular,
he made a great number of significant astronomical observations with them.
One of the most important things that Harriet did, and
wasn't fully accredited until recently, was to observe the Moon
through a telescope and then make drawings of the lunar
surface while he was working to try to make sense
of it. His earliest known drawing of the Moon is
(20:02):
from July sixteen o nine on the Julian calendar. That
date is significant because it puts Harriet's work on the
Moon's observation a few months ahead of Galileo's. Although Galileo
is usually credited with being the first to be fair,
Harriet's lunar drawings are incredibly rudimentary. If you just looked
at them and you did not have the context of
(20:23):
someone saying that is the moon, it might be something
you couldn't figure out. They all just kind of look
like circles with mystery squiggles scrawled on them. But by
six thirteen he had produced too much more detailed moon maps,
which may be the first instances of astronomical cartography. I
will also tell you that I decided while researching this,
(20:45):
and I am getting one of those is a tattoo. Awesome. Yeah,
if you uh, they are much more recognizably the Moon
than the earlier drawings. Yeah. And even so, I mean,
he those are criticized as not really getting the top
hat graphy exactly right, but it's still like the first
time someone tried to capture it in map form. Yeah.
(21:06):
In December of sixteen ten, Harriet was the first person
to observe sun spots through a telescope, and this too
happened at about the same time that Galileo was making
similar observations. Harriet's drawings of these are similar to his
moon sketches. They're almost inscrutable in terms of what they
are supposed to be. If you don't know that these
are sun spots, they just sort of look like blourpy
(21:28):
dots in a circle. You would think somebody's built something
on that. There. Really there's no detail. Well, and sometimes
sun spots do just look like somebody, right, So without
any context, Yeah, if somebody just held it up to
you with no you'd be like, I don't did somebody?
I don't know what that is? Do you find it somewhere? Um.
(21:48):
It is unclear exactly why Harriet didn't publicize his work,
particularly these various pieces of potentially history making astronomy. One
common theory is that because he was in pretty and
financial standing, he just did not have the compulsion or
the need to seek attention for his work, which would
have come with financial benefit. Galileo, on the other hand,
(22:08):
kind of needed the cash. Uh and the fact that
his two high profile friends and benefactors were both in
prison at the time may have also been a factor
as well. He might have wished to minimize public attention
for fear that it would just stir up problems, either
that he would be seen as suspicious again, or that
it would cause problems for the two of them. In
sixteen thirteen, Thomas Harriet developed an ulcer on his left nostril,
(22:31):
and then the problem progressed over the next two years,
with ulcers developing on his lips and nose. The King's physician,
Sir Theodore Turquette Demyerne, saw Harriet to examine the problem
on May sixteen, fifteen and diagnosed it as cancer. The
doctor noted that the patient seemed melancholy and made mention
in his rite up that Harriet was the person who
(22:52):
first brought tobacco from Virginia. This is possibly the first
time somebody made the connection between tobacco use and cancer,
at least in a writing. Yeah, it was notable that
he kind of was discussing this particular problem and then
brought up the tobacco thing. It's uh, it's an interesting
connection that I think. I don't know if he was
particularly insightful or other doctors who are thinking similar things,
(23:13):
but this is one of the first evidences we have
of someone actually writing it down. In sixteen eighteen, Harriet
watched as his friend and supporter, Sir Walter Raleigh was
executed by beheading. Harriet's health had continued to worsen, so
that by that year the only things that he really
noted in his personal papers. And this was a man
that kept a lot of notes throughout his life. Where
(23:34):
the death of Raleigh and the observation of a comet
in SI one, Harriet succumbed to skin cancer. He died
on July two in the home of Thomas Buckner and
never married or had any children, and he was buried
in the Church of St Christopher le Stocks on thread
Needle Street, near Buckner's London residence. The Great Fire of
sixteen sixty six destroyed this grave site, and today it's
(23:56):
the Bank of England's headquarters. Yeah. That always cracks me up.
It shows up in almost anything you read where they're like,
he was buried here, Now it's the Bank of England. Uh.
Harriet bequeathed his telescopes to his executors and his scientific
papers to Henry Percy, with a note that they should
be edited and prepared for publication by a long time acquaintance,
(24:17):
Nathaniel Torporli. He wanted most of his non scientific personal
notes related to Raleigh and other deceased persons to be buried.
While Harriet asked to have his work published after he died,
he unfortunately hadn't really prepared his research to that end.
This is just a really big ask and it did
not really happen. With one exception. This is really a
pity because he not only had a four decade long career,
(24:41):
but the mathematicians and scientists who survived him weren't able
to then build on his work without having access to
his notes. He had assembled a manuscript for a book
titled Application of the Analytical Art to Solving Algebraic Equations.
That book was published ten years after his death and
introduced the greater than and less than some bulls, as
well as that long horizontal brace that covers terms that
(25:04):
are affected by a radical sign the Some histories attribute
these symbols to Harriet, although others say that these elements
were inclusions from the editor that prepared the manuscript for publication,
rather than things that Harriet himself developed. Yeah, he sometimes
that that book will also be credited with inventing like
the dot between two things as a multiplication symbol. But
(25:28):
there's that also, may just be a different way that
numbers were separated for clarity. Um so maybe maybe not.
When the Royal Society of London was founded in sixteen
sixty one of its first initiatives was an effort to
recover the lost work of Harriet, because again, he was
known in his lifetime, so people were cognizant of the
(25:48):
fact that when he had died forty years before that
they had lost some important research. For seven years, from
the time that Society received its Royal charter from Charles
the Second in sixteen sixty two up until sixteen sixty nine,
the whereabouts of Harriet's notes were investigated. There were a
lot of inquiries made, but it was a fruitless effort
and eventually that project was abandoned. At that point it
(26:10):
was believed that Harriet's work was gone, and that remained
the belief of the scientific community for more than a century.
In seventeen eighty four, though, there was a surprise breakthrough
of sorts. Hungarian born astronomer Franz Xaver Baron von Zack
had traveled to England to work for the Saxon ambassador
in London. That was John Maurice, Count of Brule, and
(26:31):
that happened in seventy three. And while he was at
Pentworth Castle in Sussex, von Zach's found a number of
Thomas Harriet's manuscripts at the bottom of a trash pile
and a stable. Yeah, that property was still owned by
Henry Percy's descendants. Uh so presumably those papers had just
been shuffled around for a while and someone who didn't
(26:51):
know what they were just tossed him aside. And this
find was of course significant because von Zack saw that
Harriet's work had put him ahead of other astronomers of
his time, including Kepler and Galileo, and the Baron parlayed
his discovery into a tour of Europe where he talked
about Harriet, but he never really took the work to
the next level to do an in depth analysis of
(27:11):
what he had found, like he never published a paper
on it, and the excitement over finding these these papers
in manuscripts died down with no new revelations or write ups,
and von Zack took a new job working for the
Royals of sax Gotha in seventy six, and at that
point he seems to have moved on from his Harriet interest.
So while other interested parties made some efforts at really
(27:33):
studying Harriet's work, it was not until the twentieth century
that the insights he had and the observations he made
really came into their own. It became the focus of study,
so much so that there have been numerous Thomas Harriet
symposia going on since the late nineteen sixties. In July
two thousand nine, Harriet's lunar drawings were part of an
exhibit at the West Sussex Record Office in Chichester, and
(27:55):
the lunar maps are cared for by the West Sussex
Record Office. They keep them pretty much full time though
they are the property of one of Henry Percy's descendants,
so we mentioned up at the top of the podcast.
This episode is part of the Apollo Pod Crawl that
was organized by the Museum of Flight in Seattle as
part of their celebration of the first Crude Moon landings
fiftieth anniversary. You can check out our show notes for
(28:18):
links to the other participating podcasts, including the Museum's own
Flight Deck podcast. I Think We're probably the last episode
of this pod crawl coming out, so all the others
should be available by the time we get to this point.
I think so and hope so um, I mean, I
hope that's accurate. So, but that is as the of
(28:38):
the moment we record it. We're still waiting on a
couple of groups to report in. So uh yeah, but
those are all going to be super fun to check out.
If you are into space history, which I know many
of our listeners are because we always get great responses
to our space episodes and our discussions of NASA and
space exploration in astronomy, then you probably want to check
(29:00):
those out. Yeah. I might make for a fun day
of just having spacetime. I love it. Um. I have
two postcards and one of them is going to blow
Tracy's mind. I'm not even letting her see it. She's
in the studio with me today, which is not often
the case since we work separately in different cities. But
(29:21):
it is from our listener, Kendra, and some of her
stuff is obscured on her postcard, but the postcard itself
is spectacular. She writes, I recently listened to your podcast
about Marie Lawrence Son and I was so surprised to
hear her work was from the early twentieth century. I
have recently seen her work in an online forum and
it honestly would fit in basically amongst beautifully amongst today's
(29:44):
crowd of insta artists. I agree. Thank you so much
for sharing her awesome background. And then it looks like
some water damage on the postcard. Here's it's amazing. Kendra
did a watercolor for the postcard what in the style
of Marie Lawrencen and it's portraits of us. Oh my goodness,
(30:06):
and it's awesome upside down. That's so great. It's really fabulous.
There's a kitty on it too. There is also her cat.
That is her cat Dinah, which I wonder if that's
named after the Dinah in Alice in Wonderland who was
also a kitty. I love it. It's really really spectacularly fun. Yeah,
thank you so much for sharing your art with us, Kendra,
(30:29):
because this is just one of those you know we
talked about on the episode. Art is great. It touches people,
um and I love it. We also got a really
really fun cute postcard from Yellowstone National Park, which is
from our listener Amanda June. She writes, Hello girls, My
mom and I took a trip to Yellowstone and I
introduced her to your podcast on the drive. Your podcast
is one of my favorites and it was a joy
(30:50):
to get to share it with my mom. That's just
super sweet, and I love that you are spreading the
history love. And also again, every time somebody's on a
trip and they write us a postcard, very touched by
it because I never have my act together to send
postcards to people I know and love in my life,
so it's very meaningful to me that someone would make
that effort. Yeah. Um, I am not often in this office,
(31:12):
and one of the things that I have done on
this trip to this office since I'm never here, I
don't have my own permanent desk anymore, and so I
had to go through the things that had been boxed
up from my desk, and I was just overwhelmed by
I mean, there were so many uh, postcards and letters
and little like little trinkets and things that um, I
(31:33):
had not I had. In some cases I had seen
them and had put them to the side, and in
some cases I had not seen them yet. I was
just totally blown away by all of these things. So
thank you so much everybody who has sent us all
of these things over the years. There were a couple
of things that were things I had put aside from
like five years ago that I had not looked at
since then. It's just really incredible and humbling. Yeah. I'm
(31:59):
an try to remember to put a picture of this,
uh handpainted postcard on our show page along with our
our links to the Apollo pod crawl. Uh. If I don't,
you can bug us on social media and remind me. Yeah. Um.
If you would like to write to us, you can
do so at History podcast at how Stop works dot com.
If you would like to bug us on social media
(32:20):
and go, hey, Holly, you forgot to put that picture
in there, Uh, that's missed in History is our handle
pretty much everywhere. You can also visit our homepage, which
is missed in history dot com, and there every episode
of the show that has ever been made exists together,
as well as show notes for any of the episodes
Tracy and I have worked on together. You can also
subscribe to the podcast it seems like a cool thing
to do. You can do that on the I Heart
(32:43):
Radio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is that
you like to listen. Stuff you Missed in History Class
is a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app. App podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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