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5 unusual facts about Jesse Ramsden


Hans Moritz von Brühl

Brühl built (probably in 1787) a small observatory at his villa at Harefield, and set up there, about 1794, a two-foot astronomical circle by Jesse Ramsden, one of the first instruments of the kind made in England.

Jesse Ramsden

His most celebrated work was a 5-feet vertical circle, which was finished in 1789 and was used by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo in constructing his catalogue of stars.

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He was the first to carry out in practice a method of reading off angles (first suggested in 1768 by the Duke of Chaulnes) by measuring the distance of the index from the nearest division line by means of a micrometer screw which moves one or two fine threads placed in the focus of a microscope.

Observatory Inlet

Vancouver also named three headlands at the entrance of Observatory Inlet: Maskelyne Point, for Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, Wales Point, for William Wales, the mathematical master who sailed with James Cook, and Ramsden Point, after the famed mathematical instrument-maker Jesse Ramsden.

Salterhebble

Jesse Ramsden - Eighteenth-century scientific instrument-maker.


Keratometer

It was invented by the German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz in 1880, although an earlier model was developed in 1796 by Jesse Ramsden and Everard Home.


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