Scotland
Scotland is a country, part of the United Kingdom. Sharing a border with England to the southeast, Scotland is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, by the North Sea to the northeast and by the Irish Sea to the south. In addition to the mainland, situated on the northern third of the island of Great Britain, Scotland has over 790 islands, including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides; the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, thus forming a personal union of the three kingdoms. Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain; the union created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. In 1801, the Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland enacted a political union to create a United Kingdom.
The majority of Ireland subsequently seceded from the UK in 1922. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles and other royal symbols of statehood specific to the pre-union Kingdom of Scotland; the legal system within Scotland has remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland. The continued existence of legal, educational and other institutions distinct from those in the remainder of the UK have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and national identity since the 1707 union with England; the Scottish Parliament, a unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, was established in 1999 and has authority over those areas of domestic policy which have been devolved by the United Kingdom Parliament. The head of the Scottish Government, the executive of the devolved legislature, is the First Minister of Scotland. Scotland is represented in the UK House of Commons by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs.
Scotland is a member of the British–Irish Council, sends five members of the Scottish Parliament to the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland is divided into councils. Glasgow City is the largest subdivision in Scotland in terms of population, with Highland being the largest in terms of area. "Scotland" comes from the Latin name for the Gaels. From the ninth century, the meaning of Scotia shifted to designate Gaelic Scotland and by the eleventh century the name was being used to refer to the core territory of the Kingdom of Alba in what is now east-central Scotland; the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass most of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages, as the Kingdom of Alba expanded and came to encompass various peoples of diverse origins. Repeated glaciations, which covered the entire land mass of modern Scotland, destroyed any traces of human habitation that may have existed before the Mesolithic period, it is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, as the ice sheet retreated after the last glaciation.
At the time, Scotland was covered in forests, had more bog-land, the main form of transport was by water. These settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, the first villages around 6,000 years ago; the well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period. Neolithic habitation and ritual sites are common and well preserved in the Northern Isles and Western Isles, where a lack of trees led to most structures being built of local stone. Evidence of sophisticated pre-Christian belief systems is demonstrated by sites such as the Callanish Stones on Lewis and the Maes Howe on Orkney, which were built in the third millennium BCE; the first written reference to Scotland was in 320 BC by Greek sailor Pytheas, who called the northern tip of Britain "Orcas", the source of the name of the Orkney islands. During the first millennium BCE, the society changed to a chiefdom model, as consolidation of settlement led to the concentration of wealth and underground stores of surplus food.
The first Roman incursion into Scotland occurred in 79 AD. After the Roman victory, Roman forts were set along the Gask Ridge close to the Highland line, but by three years after the battle, the Roman armies had withdrawn to the Southern Uplands; the Romans erected Hadrian's Wall in northern England and the Limes Britannicus became the northern border of the Roman Empire. The Roman influence on the southern part of the country was considerable, they introduced Christianity to Scotland. Beginning in the sixth century, the area, now Scotland was divided into three areas: Pictland, a patchwork of small lordships in central Scotland; these societies were based on the family unit and had sharp divisions in wealth, although the vast majority were poor and worked full-time in subsistence agriculture. The Picts kept slaves through the ninth century. Gaelic influence over Pictland and Northumbria was facilitated by the large number of Gaelic-speaking clerics working as missionaries. Operating in the sixth ce
William Derham
William Derham FRS was an English clergyman, natural theologian, natural philosopher and scientist. He produced the earliest, reasonably accurate estimate of the speed of sound. William Derham was the son of Thomas Derham, he was born in Worcestershire, England. He was educated at Blockley, Gloucestershire and at Trinity College, Oxford from 1675 to 1679, he was ordained on 29 May 1681. In 1682, he became vicar of Wargrave and from 1689 to 1735 he was Rector at Upminster, Essex. While at Upminster, in 1716 he became a Canon of Windsor and the vestry minutes show that thereafter he divided his time between those two places; the parish registers of Upminster record his burial at St. Laurence's in 1735. However, the precise site of his grave is unknown and, in accordance with his wishes, there is no memorial to him in the church. In 1696, he published his Artificial Clockmaker; the best known of his subsequent works are Physico-Theology, published in 1713. All three of these books are teleological arguments for the being and attributes of God, were used by William Paley nearly a century later.
However, these books include quantities of original scientific observations. For example, Physico-Theology contains his recognition of natural variation within species and that he knew that Didelphis virginialis was the only marsupial in North America, it includes one of the earliest theoretical descriptions of a marine chronometer, accompanied by a discussion of the use of vacuum seals to reduce inaccuracies in the operation of timepieces. He is the first person known to have used the word chronometer. Astro-Theology includes several newly identified nebulae, his 16-feet long telescope was at the top of the tower of St Laurence's Church, where the necessary doors are still in place. On 3 February 1703, Derham was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, he was Boyle lecturer in 1711–1712. His last known work, entitled A Defence of the Church's Right in Leasehold Estates, appeared as early as 1731, but besides the works published in his own name, Derham contributed a variety of papers to the Transactions of the Royal Society.
He revised the Miscellanea Curiosa. He edited the correspondence and wrote a biography of John Ray, whose'physico-theology' tradition he continued, making him an early parson-naturalist, he edited Eleazar Albin's Natural History, published some of the manuscripts of the scientist Robert Hooke. His meteorological observations at Upminster are amongst the earliest series in England. In 1709 Derham published a more accurate measure of the speed of sound, at 1,072 Parisian feet per second. Derham used a telescope from the tower of the church of St Laurence, Upminster to observe the flash of a distant shotgun being fired, measured the time until he heard the gunshot with a half second pendulum. Measurements were made of gunshots from a number of local landmarks, including North Ockendon church; the distance was known by triangulation, thus the speed that the sound had travelled was calculated. The Artificial Clockmaker --- Physico-theology, or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God Christo-Theology: Or, a Demonstration of the Divine Authority of the Christian Religion Astro-theology: or, A demonstration of the being and attributes of God, from a Survey of the Heavens William Derham The artificial clock-maker - digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library
India
India known as the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by area and with more than 1.3 billion people, it is the second most populous country as well as the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia; the Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE. In the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, Buddhism and Jainism arose. Early political consolidations took place under the Gupta empires. In the medieval era, Zoroastrianism and Islam arrived, Sikhism emerged, all adding to the region's diverse culture.
Much of the north fell to the Delhi Sultanate. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal Empire. In the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, in the mid-19th under British Crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance and led to India's independence in 1947. In 2017, the Indian economy was the world's sixth largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the fastest-growing major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption and inadequate public healthcare. A nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the second largest standing army in the world and ranks fifth in military expenditure among nations. India is a federal republic governed under a parliamentary system and consists of 29 states and 7 union territories.
A pluralistic and multi-ethnic society, it is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindush, equivalent to the Sanskrit word Sindhu, the historical local appellation for the Indus River; the ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as "The people of the Indus". The geographical term Bharat, recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations, it is a modernisation of the historical name Bharatavarsha, which traditionally referred to the Indian subcontinent and gained increasing currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India. Hindustan is a Middle Persian name for India, it was introduced into India by the Mughals and used since then. Its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety; the name may refer to either the northern part of India or the entire country.
The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago. Nearly contemporaneous human rock art sites have been found in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, including at the Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh. After 6500 BCE, evidence for domestication of food crops and animals, construction of permanent structures, storage of agricultural surplus, appeared in Mehrgarh and other sites in what is now Balochistan; these developed into the Indus Valley Civilisation, the first urban culture in South Asia, which flourished during 2500–1900 BCE in what is now Pakistan and western India. Centred around cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Kalibangan, relying on varied forms of subsistence, the civilization engaged robustly in crafts production and wide-ranging trade. During the period 2000–500 BCE, many regions of the subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic cultures to the Iron Age ones; the Vedas, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism, were composed during this period, historians have analysed these to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region and the upper Gangetic Plain.
Most historians consider this period to have encompassed several waves of Indo-Aryan migration into the subcontinent from the north-west. The caste system, which created a hierarchy of priests and free peasants, but which excluded indigenous peoples by labeling their occupations impure, arose during this period. On the Deccan Plateau, archaeological evidence from this period suggests the existence of a chiefdom stage of political organisation. In South India, a progression to sedentary life is indicated by the large number of megalithic monuments dating from this period, as well as by nearby traces of agriculture, irrigation tanks, craft traditions. In the late Vedic period, around the 6th century BCE, the small states and chiefdoms of the Ganges Plain and the north-western regions had consolidated into 16 major oligarchies and monarchies that were known as the mahajanapadas; the emerging urbanisation gave rise to non-Vedic religious movements, two of which became independent religions. Jainism came into prominence during the life of Mahavira.
Buddhism, based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha, attracted followers from all social classes excepting the middle
Automated airport weather station
Automated airport weather stations are automated sensor suites which are designed to serve aviation and meteorological observing needs for safe and efficient aviation operations, weather forecasting and climatology. Automated airport weather stations have become part of the backbone of weather observing in the United States and Canada and are becoming more prevalent worldwide due to their efficiency and cost-savings. In the United States, there are several varieties of automated weather stations that have somewhat subtle but important differences; these include the Automated Surface Observing System. The Automated Weather Observing System units are operated and controlled by state or local governments and other non-Federal entities and are certified under the FAA Non-Federal AWOS Program; the FAA completed an upgrade of the 230 FAA owned AWOS and former Automated Weather Sensor Systems systems to the AWOS-C configuration in 2017. The AWOS-C is the most up-to-date FAA owned AWOS facility and can generate METAR/SPECI formatted Aviation Weather Reports.
The AWOS-C is functionally equivalent to the ASOS. FAA owned AWOS-C units in Alaska are classified as AWOS-C IIIP units while all other AWOS-C units are classified as AWOS III P/T units. AWOS systems disseminate weather data in a variety of ways: A computer-generated voice message, broadcast via radio frequency to pilots in the vicinity of an airport; the message is updated at least once per minute, this is the only mandatory form of weather reporting for an AWOS. Optionally, a computer-generated voice message, available over a telephone dial-up modem service; the message is updated at least once per minute. Optionally, AWOS messages may be transmitted to the FAA for national dissemination via computer; these messages are in METAR format, typical reporting frequencies are once every 20 minutes. This option is only available for AWOS IV systems; the following AWOS configurations are defined below in terms of what parameters they measure: AWOS A: barometric pressure and altimeter setting. AWOS I: wind speed and wind gusts, wind direction and variable wind direction and dew point, altimeter setting and density altitude.
AWOS II: all AWOS I parameters, plus visibility and variable visibility. AWOS III: all AWOS II parameters, plus sky condition, cloud ceiling height, liquid precipitation accumulation. AWOS III P: all AWOS III parameters, plus precipitation type identification. AWOS III T: all AWOS III parameters, plus thunderstorm detection. AWOS III P/T: all AWOS III parameters, plus precipitation type identification and thunderstorm detection. AWOS IV Z: all AWOS III P/T parameters, plus freezing rain detection via a freezing rain sensor. AWOS IV R: all AWOS III P/T parameters, plus runway surface condition. AWOS IV Z/R: all AWOS III P/T parameters, plus freezing rain detection and runway surface condition. Custom configurations such as AWOS AV are possible. Non-certified sensors may be attached to AWOS systems, but weather data derived from those sensors must be identified as "advisory" in any voice messages and may not be included in any METAR observations; as of January 31, 2015, the following manufacturers provide FAA-certified, non-Federal AWOS systems: All Weather Inc.
Belfort Instrument Company Mesotech International Vaisala Inc. Coastal Environmental Systems, Inc. Cherokee Nation Industries The Automated Surface Observing System units are operated and controlled cooperatively in the United States by the NWS, FAA, DOD. After many years of research and development, the deployment of ASOS units began in 1991 and was completed in 2004; these systems report at hourly intervals, but report special observations if weather conditions change and cross aviation operation thresholds. They report all the parameters of the AWOS-III, while having the additional capabilities of reporting temperature and dew point in degrees Fahrenheit, present weather, lightning, sea level pressure and precipitation accumulation. Besides serving aviation needs, ASOS serves as a primary climatological observing network in the United States, making up the first-order network of climate stations; because of this, not every ASOS is located at an airport. The FAA has converted all Automated Weather Sensor System units to AWOS IIIP/T units.
There are no AWSS systems remaining in the National Airspace System. Automated airport weather stations use a variety of sophisticated equipment to observe the weather. A majority of older automated airport weather stations are equipped with a mechanical wind vane and cup system to measure wind speed and direction; this system is simple in design: the wind spins three horizontally turned cups around the base of the wind vane, providing an estimation of the wind's speed, while the vane on top turns so that the face of the vane offers the least resistance to the wind, causing it to point in the direction the wind is coming from and thus providing the wind direction. The new generation of sensors use sound waves to measure wind direction; the measurement is based on the time it takes for an ultrasonic pulse to travel from one transducer to another, wh
Tropical cyclone
A tropical cyclone is a rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain. Depending on its location and strength, a tropical cyclone is referred to by different names, including hurricane, tropical storm, cyclonic storm, tropical depression, cyclone. A hurricane is a tropical cyclone that occurs in the Atlantic Ocean and northeastern Pacific Ocean, a typhoon occurs in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. "Cyclone" refers to their winds moving in a circle, whirling round their central clear eye, with their winds blowing counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. The opposite direction of circulation is due to the Coriolis effect. Tropical cyclones form over large bodies of warm water, they derive their energy through the evaporation of water from the ocean surface, which recondenses into clouds and rain when moist air rises and cools to saturation.
This energy source differs from that of mid-latitude cyclonic storms, such as nor'easters and European windstorms, which are fueled by horizontal temperature contrasts. Tropical cyclones are between 100 and 2,000 km in diameter; the strong rotating winds of a tropical cyclone are a result of the conservation of angular momentum imparted by the Earth's rotation as air flows inwards toward the axis of rotation. As a result, they form within 5° of the equator. Tropical cyclones are unknown in the South Atlantic due to a strong wind shear and a weak Intertropical Convergence Zone; the African easterly jet and areas of atmospheric instability which give rise to cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, along with the Asian monsoon and Western Pacific Warm Pool, are features of the Northern Hemisphere and Australia. Coastal regions are vulnerable to the impact of a tropical cyclone, compared to inland regions; the primary energy source for these storms is warm ocean waters, therefore these forms are strongest when over or near water, weaken quite over land.
Coastal damage may be caused by strong winds and rain, high waves, storm surges, the potential of spawning tornadoes. Tropical cyclones draw in air from a large area—which can be a vast area for the most severe cyclones—and concentrate the precipitation of the water content in that air into a much smaller area; this continual replacement of moisture-bearing air by new moisture-bearing air after its moisture has fallen as rain, which may cause heavy rain and river flooding up to 40 kilometres from the coastline, far beyond the amount of water that the local atmosphere holds at any one time. Though their effects on human populations are devastating, tropical cyclones can relieve drought conditions, they carry heat energy away from the tropics and transport it toward temperate latitudes, which may play an important role in modulating regional and global climate. Tropical cyclones are areas of low pressure in the troposphere, with the largest pressure perturbations occurring at low altitudes near the surface.
On Earth, the pressures recorded at the centers of tropical cyclones are among the lowest observed at sea level. The environment near the center of tropical cyclones is warmer than the surroundings at all altitudes, thus they are characterized as "warm core" systems; the near-surface wind field of a tropical cyclone is characterized by air rotating around a center of circulation while flowing radially inwards. At the outer edge of the storm, air may be nearly calm; as air flows radially inward, it begins to rotate cyclonically in order to conserve angular momentum. At an inner radius, air begins to ascend to the top of the troposphere; this radius is coincident with the inner radius of the eyewall, has the strongest near-surface winds of the storm. Once aloft, air flows away from the storm's center; the mentioned processes result in a wind field, nearly axisymmetric: Wind speeds are low at the center, increase moving outwards to the radius of maximum winds, decay more with radius to large radii.
However, the wind field exhibits additional spatial and temporal variability due to the effects of localized processes, such as thunderstorm activity and horizontal flow instabilities. In the vertical direction, winds are strongest near the surface and decay with height within the troposphere. At the center of a mature tropical cyclone, air sinks rather than rises. For a sufficiently strong storm, air may sink over a layer deep enough to suppress cloud formation, thereby creating a clear "eye". Weather in the eye is calm and free of clouds, although the sea may be violent; the eye is circular in shape, is 30–65 km in diameter, though eyes as small as 3 km and as large as 370 km have been observed. The cloudy outer edge of the eye is called the "eyewall"; the eyewall expands outward with height, resembling an arena foo
Time
Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in irreversible succession through the past, in the present, the future. Time is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compare the duration of events or the intervals between them, to quantify rates of change of quantities in material reality or in the conscious experience. Time is referred to as a fourth dimension, along with three spatial dimensions. Time has long been an important subject of study in religion and science, but defining it in a manner applicable to all fields without circularity has eluded scholars. Diverse fields such as business, sports, the sciences, the performing arts all incorporate some notion of time into their respective measuring systems. Time in physics is unambiguously operationally defined as "what a clock reads". See Units of Time. Time is one of the seven fundamental physical quantities in both the International System of Units and International System of Quantities.
Time is used to define other quantities – such as velocity – so defining time in terms of such quantities would result in circularity of definition. An operational definition of time, wherein one says that observing a certain number of repetitions of one or another standard cyclical event constitutes one standard unit such as the second, is useful in the conduct of both advanced experiments and everyday affairs of life; the operational definition leaves aside the question whether there is something called time, apart from the counting activity just mentioned, that flows and that can be measured. Investigations of a single continuum called spacetime bring questions about space into questions about time, questions that have their roots in the works of early students of natural philosophy. Temporal measurement has occupied scientists and technologists, was a prime motivation in navigation and astronomy. Periodic events and periodic motion have long served as standards for units of time. Examples include the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, the swing of a pendulum, the beat of a heart.
The international unit of time, the second, is defined by measuring the electronic transition frequency of caesium atoms. Time is of significant social importance, having economic value as well as personal value, due to an awareness of the limited time in each day and in human life spans. Speaking, methods of temporal measurement, or chronometry, take two distinct forms: the calendar, a mathematical tool for organising intervals of time, the clock, a physical mechanism that counts the passage of time. In day-to-day life, the clock is consulted for periods less than a day whereas the calendar is consulted for periods longer than a day. Personal electronic devices display both calendars and clocks simultaneously; the number that marks the occurrence of a specified event as to hour or date is obtained by counting from a fiducial epoch – a central reference point. Artifacts from the Paleolithic suggest that the moon was used to reckon time as early as 6,000 years ago. Lunar calendars were among the first to appear, with years of either 13 lunar months.
Without intercalation to add days or months to some years, seasons drift in a calendar based on twelve lunar months. Lunisolar calendars have a thirteenth month added to some years to make up for the difference between a full year and a year of just twelve lunar months; the numbers twelve and thirteen came to feature prominently in many cultures, at least due to this relationship of months to years. Other early forms of calendars originated in Mesoamerica in ancient Mayan civilization; these calendars were religiously and astronomically based, with 18 months in a year and 20 days in a month, plus five epagomenal days at the end of the year. The reforms of Julius Caesar in 45 BC put the Roman world on a solar calendar; this Julian calendar was faulty in that its intercalation still allowed the astronomical solstices and equinoxes to advance against it by about 11 minutes per year. Pope Gregory XIII introduced a correction in 1582. During the French Revolution, a new clock and calendar were invented in attempt to de-Christianize time and create a more rational system in order to replace the Gregorian calendar.
The French Republican Calendar's days consisted of ten hours of a hundred minutes of a hundred seconds, which marked a deviation from the 12-based duodecimal system used in many other devices by many cultures. The system was abolished in 1806. A large variety of devices have been invented to measure time; the study of these devices is called horology. An Egyptian device that dates to c. 1500 BC, similar in shape to a bent T-square, measured the passage of time from the shadow cast by its crossbar on a nonlinear rule. The T was oriented eastward in the mornings. At noon, the device was turned around so. A sundial uses a gnomon to cast a shadow on a set of markings calibrated to the hour; the position of the shadow marks the hour in local time. The idea to separate the day into smaller parts is credited to Egyptians because of their sundials, which operated on a duodecimal system; the importance of the number 12 is due to the number of lunar cycles in a year and the number of stars used to count the passage of night.
The most precise timekeeping device of the ancient
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
Philosophical Transactions, titled Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society from 1776, is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society. In its earliest days, it was a private venture of the Royal Society's secretary, it became an official society publication in 1752. It was established in 1665, making it the first journal in the world devoted to science, therefore the world's longest-running scientific journal; the use of the word philosophical in the title refers to natural philosophy, the equivalent of what would now be called science. In 1887 the journal expanded and divided into two separate publications, one serving the physical sciences and the other focusing on the life sciences. Both journals now publish themed issues and issues resulting from papers presented at the Discussion Meetings of the Royal Society. Primary research articles are published in the sister journals Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biology Letters, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Interface Focus.
The first issue, published in London on 6 March 1665, was edited and published by the Society's first secretary, Henry Oldenburg, four-and-a-half years after the Royal Society was founded. The full title of the journal, as given by Oldenburg, was Philosophical Transactions, Giving some Account of the present Undertakings and Labours of the Ingenious in many considerable parts of the World; the society's council minutes dated 1 March 1664 ordered that "the Philosophical Transactions, to be composed by Mr Oldenburg, be printed the first Monday of every month, if he have sufficient matter for it, that that tract be licensed by the Council of this Society, being first revised by some Members of the same". Oldenburg published the journal at his own personal expense and seems to have entered into an agreement with the society's council allowing him to keep any resulting profits, he was to be disappointed, since the journal performed poorly from a financial point of view during his lifetime, just about covering the rent on his house in Piccadilly.
Oldenburg put out 136 issues of the Transactions before his death in 1677. The familiar functions of the scientific journal – registration, certification and archiving − were introduced at inception by Philosophical Transactions; the beginnings of these ideas can be traced in a series of letters from Oldenburg to Robert Boyle: "We must be careful as well of regist'ring the person and time of any new matter, as the matter itselfe, whereby the honor of the invention will be reliably preserved to all posterity" "...all ingenious men will thereby be incouraged to impact their knowledge and discoverys" The council minutes of 1 March 1665 made provisions for the tract to be revised by members of the council of the Royal Society, providing the framework for peer review to develop, becoming systematic as a process by the 1830s. The printed journal replaced much of Oldenburg's letter-writing to correspondents, at least on scientific matters, as such can be seen as a labour-saving device. Oldenburg described his journal as "one of these philosophical commonplace books", indicating his intention to produce a collective notebook between scientists.
Issue 1 contained such articles as: an account of the improvement of optic glasses. The final article of the issue concerned "The Character, Lately Published beyond the Seas, of an Eminent Person, not Long Since Dead at Tholouse, Where He Was a Councellor of Parliament"; the eminent person in question was Pierre de Fermat, although the issue failed to mention his last theorem. Oldenburg referred to himself as the "compiler" and sometimes "Author" of the Transactions, always claimed that the journal was his sole enterprise – although with the Society's imprimatur and containing reports on experiments carried out and communicated by of many of its Fellows, many readers saw the journal as an official organ of the Society, it has been argued that Oldenburg benefitted from this ambiguity, retaining both real and perceived independence and the prospect of monetary gain, while enjoying the credibility afforded by the association. The Society enjoyed the benefits of ambiguity: it was able to communicate advances in natural philosophy, undertaken in its own name, without the worry that it was directly responsible for its content.
In the aftermath of the Interregnum, the potential for censorship was real. The tone of the early volumes was set by Oldenburg, who related things he was told by his contacts, translated letters and manuscripts from other languages, reviewed books, always being sure to indicate the provenance of his material and to use this to impress the reader. By reporting ongoing and unfinished scientific work that may otherwise have not been reported, the journal
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