Sir edward sabine biography of alberta

Like Ross, Parry did not find the passage, but he did set a new record for the "furthest west," which stood for several decades. In order to alleviate the tedium of the long Arctic winter, Sabine produced a weekly newspaper for the amusement of the crew. During this expedition, which lasted until November , Sabine noted that changes in magnetic intensity had taken place since his previous visit.

He attributed such changes to either a fluctuation in the Earth's magnetic intensity or the shifting positions of the terrestrial magnetic poles. Sabine next turned his attention to geodesy , which had already engaged his attention during the first of his Arctic voyages and in particular the determination of the length of the seconds pendulum.

By measuring the length of a seconds pendulum in different latitudes, one can calculate the " oblateness " of the Earth - i. Attempts to do this had been made in the eighteenth century, but it was not until Sabine's lifetime that precision instruments were available to allow sufficiently accurate measurements to be made. Sabine threw himself into the task with his usual diligence.

Between and he travelled halfway around the world with his pendulums and carried out innumerable measurements at many different latitudes [ 5 ] including the intertropical coasts of Africa and the Americas. He also returned to the Arctic, journeying up the eastern coast of Greenland with Captain Douglas Clavering on Parry's old ship the Griper.

Sabine Island was named in his honour during this expedition. The results of his research were published in They represented the most accurate assessment of the figure of the earth that had ever been made. Not content to rest on his laurels, Sabine conducted further pendulum experiments throughout the s, determining the relative lengths of the second's pendulum in Paris, London, Greenwich and Altona.

On 31 December he was promoted 1st captain. Between and , the Duke of Wellington granted Sabine general leave of absence from the army [ 5 ] on the understanding "that he was usefully employed in scientific pursuits". He acted as one of the secretaries of the Royal Society. In he was appointed a scientific adviser to the Admiralty, following the abolition of the Board of Longitude.

Political agitation in Ireland necessitated an increased military presence in the country and in Sabine was recalled to military duty. He remained in his native land for the next seven years, but he did not allow his new military duties to interrupt his scientific endeavours. He continued his pendulum investigations and in commenced a systematic magnetic survey of Ireland—the first of its kind in what was then the United Kingdom.

It was extended to Scotland in and to England the following year. On the abolition of the Board of Longitude in , it was arranged that three scientific advisers to the Admiralty should be nominated from the council of the Royal Society. Sabine, Michael Faraday and Thomas Young were chosen. Sabine's appointment was violently attacked by Charles Babbage in a pamphlet entitled Reflections on the Decline of Science in England and on Some of its Causes.

Sabine, however, refused to be drawn into the controversy. During the decades that the Royal Navy and Royal Society devoted much energy to magnetic variation and its problems, magnetism came to be seen as an eminently "British" science. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was widely recognized that the Earth's magnetic field was continually changing over time in a complicated way that interfered with compass readings.

It was a mystery which some scientists believed might be associated with weather patterns. To solve this mystery once and for all, a number of physicists recommended that a magnetic survey of the entire globe be carried out. Sabine was one of the instigators of this "Magnetic Crusade", urging the government to establish magnetic observatories throughout the empire.

A committee, of which Sabine was a prominent member, was established to work out the details. Suitable locations for the observatories were selected in both hemispheres and representations were made to dispatch an expedition to the Southern Ocean to carry out a magnetic survey of the Antarctic. In the spring of , the government approved the scheme.

Observatories were to be established at Toronto, St. Helena , Cape Town , Tasmania and at stations to be determined by the East India Company , while other nations were invited to co-operate. Sabine was appointed to superintend the entire operation. Most of these observatories were of limited size and were dismantled as soon as the initial survey was complete, but the one founded by Sabine at Toronto in is still in existence.

Originally housed in a modest building at the newly established University of Toronto , it was called the Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory. It was the first scientific institution in the country. The birthplace of Canadian astronomy was a simple log building held together with copper nails and brass fastenings. Non-magnetic materials were used to avoid the problem of "local attraction.

The modern stone observatory was erected in In the early years, there was no way to take continuous readings: everything had to be done by hand. Thousands of painstaking observations were taken by the staff— sometimes as frequently as every five minutes. These observations were all carefully scrutinised by Sabine back in Britain. By , photo-magnetographs had been developed by Francis Ronalds and Airy's associate Charles Brooke to continuously record the magnet's movements using the recent invention of photography.

Sir edward sabine biography of alberta

In , Sabine recognized from the Toronto records that magnetic variations could be divided into a regular diurnal cycle and an irregular portion. The irregularity correlated very closely with fluctuations in the number of sunspots , whose cyclic nature had been discovered in by the German amateur astronomer Heinrich Schwabe. Sabine was the first to recognize that solar disturbances affected the Earth's magnetic environment.

On 6 April , he announced that the Sun's year sunspot cycle was "absolutely identical" to the Earth's year geomagnetic cycle. The following year, Sabine also made a similar correlation with the Moon, establishing that that celestial body too had an influence on the Earth's magnetic field. The catalogue can be searched on line by going to the Picture Library Database and selecting the Enter Polar Pictures link.

Sir Edward Sabine collection. Expedition material 2 volumes correspondence 19 leaves, 4 microfilm Some of the material is on microfilm. Arrangement The collection is split into three sub-fonds comprising of expedition material and correspondence respectively. Access Information By appointment. Note Anyone wishing to consult material should ensure they note the entire MS reference and the name of the originator.

Additional finding aids are available at the Institute. Conditions Governing Use Copying material by photography, electrostat, or scanning device by readers is prohibited. Accruals Further accessions possible. Related Material The Scott Polar Research Institute holds a number of photographs, film and other illustrative material in the Picture Library, which includes images of Sabine.

Subjects Magnetism -- Experiments. In he had been the first to demonstrate the correlation of magnetic variations on a chart. In he began work on a magnetic survey of Great Britain; his old arctic companion James Clark Ross joined him in the enterprise. In he led the British Association for the Advancement of Science in urging the government to sponsor an antarctic expedition in search of the south magnetic pole, and further lobbying contributed to the appointment of J.

Ross, discoverer of the north magnetic pole, as commander of the British antarctic expedition of Sabine also became the key figure in the establishment of a chain of colonial magnetic observatories, including the Toronto observatory, from which John Henry Lefroy, on Sabine's orders, undertook his marathon magnetic survey of the Canadian Northwest.

Sabine returned to England in August , and as a supernumerary was able to pursue his scientific interests, especially magnetism, astronomy, and ornithology. Sabine performed experiments on the length of the seconds pendulum, noting variations in the period of the vibrations of the pendulum at different latitudes, and thus obtained information about the shape of the earth.

He had also alleviated the tedium of the Arctic winter by editing and writing much of the North Georgia Gazette, and Winter Chronicle , published on board the Hecla , which ran to 21 numbers. Between and Sabine continued to travel extensively, conducting further pendulum experiments at many different latitudes. On 31 Dec. In he was appointed one of three scientific advisers to the Admiralty, following the abolition of the Board of Longitude.

Moreover, he believed that the soundness of these theories would be revealed by a systematic and world-wide survey of terrestrial magnetism. In Sabine was posted to Ireland with his company; he was, however, able to continue his scientific work, and in began work on what was to be the first complete magnetic survey of the British Isles. Sabine and Lloyd visited Berlin in to consult with Alexander von Humboldt, who in had written to the president of the Royal Society urging the establishment of magnetic observatories throughout the British empire.

The observations on land were to be undertaken by the Royal Artillery, initially at observatories at St Helena, the Cape of Good Hope, and Toronto, for a period of three years. The Toronto observatory was headed by Charles James Buchanan Riddell; Sabine undertook the general superintendence of the enterprise. Sabine was especially active in promoting magnetic observations in Canada.

In July Riddell wrote to him that magnetic and meteorological observations at Toronto had been underway since May. The survey was certainly comprehensive. Sabine ordered Lefroy to go north and west of Toronto on magnetic expeditions. In , in his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sabine claimed that the magnetic surveys of North America, sponsored by the British government, had been completed, but this statement was premature and he remained involved in scientific endeavours in British North America.

Geophysical and other world-wide studies of natural phenomena had many advocates in the mid 19th century.