Built from Lockyer’s 1870 lectures at the Royal Institution, this book tells the history of astronomy through its tools. It begins with the pre-telescopic age of Hipparchus, Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe, then explains the refraction of light, the making of telescopes and their mounting, clocks and circles, and how observers fix the positions of stars.
A clear Victorian guide to how astronomers came to measure the sky, by the founder of Nature. Download the free EPUB.