74westy
September 14, 2017, 9:41pm
41
I think it was suspected at the time that gravity followed an inverse square law. Before Newton, no one had been able to do the math to show that an inverse square law would imply that planetary orbits were elliptical. They, of course, couldn’t do the math because Newton hadn’t invented it yet.
In 1684 Dr Halley came to visit him at Cambridge. After they had been some time together, the Dr asked him what he thought the curve would be that would be described by the planets supposing the force of attraction towards the sun to be reciprocal to the square of their distance from it. Sir Isaac replied immediately that it would be an ellipse. The Doctor, struck with joy and amazement, asked him how he knew it. Why, saith he, I have calculated it . Whereupon Dr Halley asked him for his calculation without any farther delay. Sir Isaac looked among his papers but could not find it, but he promised him to renew it and then to send it him…
bonzer
September 14, 2017, 10:46pm
42
DPRK:
Okay as far as the obscure trivia goes, but, as all schoolchildren learn, Isaac Newton is most renowned for the invention of … the cat flap.
Almost certainly a myth. To quote the letter published in The Independent on May 7th 2003 by Nigel Palmer, a professor of German at Oxford:
Sir: You are guilty in your leading article (“Shortsighted”, 3 May) of a serious historical error when you attribute the invention of the cat flap to Newton, and quite correct when you go on to say that next “they’ll say that isn’t true either”.
The version attributed to Newton is obviously a variant on the general absent-minded professor trope, fairly or otherwise.
An Apple IIE?
Funny, I thought this thread was going to be about the old Apple Newton tablets…fun times.