Talk:Gabriel Mouton

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[edit] Dispute

A dispute tag has been placed here by User:Rktect but no discussion of this dispute has been forthcoming on this discussion page.... Ian Cairns 00:03, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I've moved the tags here to enable any discussion to take place. Ian Cairns 13:24, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I removed the tags and will just edit the articleRktect 13:28, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

I have now added a dispute tag, since the article is now in accordance to the views of User:rktect, where he has removed information from cited sources. I have no interest in engaging in an edit war, and untill such time that the arbitration against rktect is settled with a satisfactory result, I will just keep a copy of the article in my user pages, User:Egil/Sandbox/Gabriel_Mouton. Since the outcome of the VfD seems to be keep, I see no other way. The disputed issues can be found one this talk page (if you can find your way around it) and by comparing the two articles or by examining the rktekt changes [1]. There is additional comment about the references on the user talk page. -- Egil 18:39, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm not interested in any edit war either but I've reverted to Ian Cairns' last version minus VfD. However, I've left the disputed tag in anticipation of the next edit by Rktect. Jimp 7Oct05

[edit] Measures

I've removed the comparisons to ancient Greek and Roman measures, because there is no indication that Abbé Mouton (or anyone at the time) was using them. Please provide a specific cite if they are added back. Ken talk|contribs 14:43, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Responded on your talk page to the effect that there was considerable evidence Abbe Mouton and others were using them Rktect 09:52, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
At that time fluency in Greek and Latin and a familiarity with the writings of the Greeks and Romans was considered necessary for any well educated person. See also the references to Vitruvious and Palladio Rktect 10:37, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
  • However, when the Royal Society was established in 1662, one of the first tasks it sets to itself was that of determining the length of the pendulum that beats the second; to this purpose John Evelyn, one of the founders, in his trip to Italy, not only took the usual measurernents of standards of the Roman foot, but also of the braccio of Florence and of the braccio of Bologna, used respectively by Galileo and Riccioli in the calculation of the pendulum. But under the influence of the Academie des Sciences and the Academie des Inscriptions, established in the same decade as the Royal Society, the matter of fixed standard was settled in France by reforming the pied de roi, so as to make it 12/11 of Roman foot.
  • [Galileo and Riccoli]
  • "Riccioli conducted free fall experiments in which he dropped balls of different weights from different heights. Riccioli found that the heavier ball actually does land a bit sooner, but that the time to fall is not directly proportional to weight. His results confirmed Galileo's claim that weight is only a secondary factor, but showed that weight had more of an effect than Galileo believed it would. Riccioli also provided evidence for the 1, 3, 5, ¼ progression; his values were 15 Roman feet in the first second, 60 feet in the second, 135 in the third, and 240 in the fourth."
Rktect 04:41, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] references placed on Ken's page

In your edits of the above article, you specifically left the values 1 virga = 0.001 minutes of arc = 1.85 m etc intact, even though the article originally specified that the virga of Mouton was ~2.04 m. Is there a special reason for this? You also left intact the statement What's interesting about this is that Mouton was proposing that there be a relation between time and space.. Is there a special reason for this? Is this sentence in your opinion meaningfull and relevant? -- Egil 17:42, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Honestly, I simply did a little cleanup, in particular removing the references to Greek and Roman units of measure, for which I can find no evidence of use at that time. If you have a good reference for the 2.04 meter value, by all means change it. As for Abbé Mouton proposing a relation between time and space, that happens to be exactly what he did, IMO. His method of establishing the relationship was shaky, in that there are many variables not taken into account that affect the swing of a pendulum, but by saying that a particular unit was exactly the length required for a pendulum to swing with a particular frequency, he effectively did establish that relationship. If you can think of a better way to phrase it, though, please do so.
And please, don't abandon the article. It's not hopeless at all... Ken talk|contribs 18:18, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
First, no you shouldn't remove the VfD tags. The decision will certainly be Keep, so the article won't be going away. But once an article has been tagged, it's up to the closing admin to remove the tags.
Second, you've been told this before, but I'll tell you again. Don't intercalate your comments into someone else's on talk pages, and pay attention to indents. I understand why you do it, but it makes following the conversation almost impossible. See Wikipedia:Talk page and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines for the usual ettiquette. I have fixed this conversation this time, but I'm getting tired of it. This is part of the problem people have with you, BTW. By continuing with an idiosyncratic style on talk pages, it's as if you're intentionally making it difficult to understand you.
Third, I challenged the relevance of some material you added to Gabriel Mouton and removed it.

Without addressing the relevance you added that material back in, along with a bunch more material that looks irrelevant. I'm not questioning the conversions from one system to another, I'm questioning why anyone looking for information on Mouton would care how many pes make up a milliare.

The references you provide above are very nice (particularly Palladio), but they also don't address the relevance. So, here's a simple request: Please provide one or more specific cites that indicate that Mouton was working with the Greek or Roman measuring systems, not the ones that were in common use in France and Italy at the time. If a particular piece of information isn't relevant to Mouton, it just shouldn't be in an article about him.

Ken talk|contribs 02:56, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • your Responses 1 and 2 are constructive criticism so no response from me is required other than to attempt to comply with your wishes.
  • Response 3A might have worked better if you asked why, waited for response then decided what to do.
  • I don't think you should judge what is irrelevant without asking first. (Myle for example).
  • Response 3B Mouton doesn't base his system on the milliare or make it 10 stadiums such that the Roman Milliare is 8 by some sort of coincidence. Its important for people not to confuse Greek and Roman stadia. Both are 185 m but the Greek stadion has 600 pous and the Roman stadium has 625 pes.
  • That's a very dumbed down answer because there are several Greek pous, remen, cubits and even nibw or ellen that become the basis of some famous geographers stadia. I have gone into detail regarding stadia on other pages so I won't repeat myself here. A lot of this is kind of basic for anyone familiar with the subject matter and arcane and confusing for anyone who isn't so excuse me if I do a data dump with the references.
  • 3C his units are increments of Greek and Roman measuring systems as I indicated. Please put back whatever you removed Rktect 04:41, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • Here we have Stecchini chastising (Reference 4)Petries pyramidite ideology of the pendulum because he knows that the Egyptian foot is not based on the pendulum its related to body measures and agricultural units. In this article he talks about Gallileo and Riccoli (Reference 2) influencing Mouton with their value for the Roman foot or pes (Reference 3).
  • Though I find the worst thing about Stecchini to be his run on sentences, I'm probably just as bad.
  • "A special aspect of the pyramidite ideology is the problem of the pendulum. After Burattini was robbed of the not he had taken in Egypt, he suggested that his metro cattolico should be based on the length of the pendulum that beats the second.
  • This idea of Burattini was implemented by Jonas Moor, one of the original members of the Royal Society, who calculated that the metrum catholicum equal to 1/3 of the length of the pendulum that beats the second at the latitude of London, to be 4/3 of palmo of Genova (1089 /1000 of English foot or 331.9268 mm., reckoning by the English foot of 1824;that is essentially a trimmed barley foot.
  • The pendulum that beats the second at the latitude of London reduced to sea level has a length of 995.1806 mm.
  • For a period the standard of Moore was considered the solution to the problem of the fixed standard of length; but soon it was found out that this method of establishing a standard, first suggested by Gabriel Mouton, on the basis of Riccioli’s calculations, while perfect in theory, was most difficult to apply in practice, since the length of the pendulum not only varies according to latitude, but is substantially affected by the elevation above sea level, the presence of dense landmasses, and the difference between physical and mathematical pendulum. For this reason, the standard of the new Toise du Châtelet imposed itself as the scientific standard of Europe.
  • However, when the Royal Society was established in 1662, one of the first tasks it sets to itself was that of determining the length of the pendulum that beats the second; to this purpose John Evelyn, one of the founders, in his trip to Italy, not only took the usual measurernents of standards of the Roman foot, but also of the braccio of Florence and of the braccio of Bologna, used respectively by Galileo and Riccioli in the calculation of the pendulum. But under the influence of the Academie des Sciences and the Academie des Inscriptions, established in the same decade as the Royal Society, the matter of fixed standard was settled in France by reforming the pied de roi, so as to make it 12/11 of Roman foot.Rktect 04:41, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Reference 2

  • [Galileo and Riccoli]
  • "Riccioli conducted free fall experiments in which he dropped balls of different weights from different heights. Riccioli found that the heavier ball actually does land a bit sooner, but that the time to fall is not directly proportional to weight. His results confirmed Galileo's claim that weight is only a secondary factor, but showed that weight had more of an effect than Galileo believed it would. Riccioli also provided evidence for the 1, 3, 5, ¼ progression; his values were 15 Roman feet in the first second, 60 feet in the second, 135 in the third, and 240 in the fourth."

Reference 3

brought by the colonists from England. These measures had their origins in a variety of cultures –Babylonian, Egyptian, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman French. The ancient "digit," "palm," "span" and "cubic" units of length slowly lost preference to the length units "inch," "foot," and "yard."

  • "Roman contributions include the use of 12 as a base number (the foot is divided into 12 inches)

and the words from which we derive many of our present measurement unit names. For example, the 12 divisions of the Roman "pes," or foot were called unciae. Our words "inch" and "ounce" are both derived from that Latin word."

  • "Tradition holds that King Henry I decreed that a yard should be the distance from the tip of his nose to the end of his outstretched thumb. The length of a furlong (or furrow-long) was established by early Tudor rulers as 220 yards. This led Queen Elizabeth I to declare in the 16th century, that henceforth the traditional Roman mile of 5000 feet would be replaced by one of 5280 feet, making the mile exactly eight furlongs and providing a convenient relationship between the furlong and the mile."
  • "The need for a single worldwide coordinated measurement system was recognized over 300 years

ago. Gabriel Mouton, Vicar of St. Paul's Church in Lyons and an astronomer, proposed in 1670 a comprehensive decimal measurement system based on the length of one minute of arc of a great circle of the Earth. Mouton also proposed the swing length of a pendulum with a frequency of one beat per second as the unit of length. A pendulum with this beat would have been fairly easily reproducible, thus facilitating the widespread distribution of uniform standards. Other proposals were made, but more than a century elapsed before any action was taken."

Reference 4

  • "the archaeologist Flinders Petrie, who wrote to Nature that very same year:

If we take the natural standard of one day divided by 105, the pendulum would be 29.157 inches at lat 30 degrees. Now this is exactly the basis of Egyptian land measures, most precisely known through the diagonal of that squared, being the Egyptian double cubit. The value for this cubit is 20.617 inches, while the best examples in stone are 20.620±0.005inches. On this basis, Petrie suggests that the Egyptians were responsible for inventing both the time pendulum and metric divisions of the day."

[edit] Comments regarding the references

Please see User talk:Egil/Sandbox/Gabriel Mouton. -- Egil 12:20, 29 August 2005 (UTC) (I put them on my user pages as an attempt to avoid having them distorted)

  • Since Egil insists on misrepresenting what the mainstream academic thought is regarding Mouton, its probably best to list some of the facts here.
  • Moutons's work doesn't come out of a vacuum. He was influenced by Galileo and Riccioli who were as most well educated scholars of the time fluent in greek and latin and conversant with both the pous and pes. Riccioli used the Roman pes or foot for measurement and so did Mouton.
  • Consequently it is germane to the discussion that the value of the Greek stadion which was 600 pous, and the Roman stadium which was 625 pes were both 185 meters in length.
  • It is raised as an objection by some that the value of the pous and pes in meters is irrelevant as they did not exist yet. Mouton's system and his value for the arc of the earths great circle are based on decimal multiples and divisions of a length of 185 m equal to the Greek and Roman stadia.
  • Mouton used what is known as a second pendulum. He did not invent it but he used it. Petrie "The father of Modern Egyptology" has proposed the antiquity of the second pendulum goes back to the use of plumb bobs. It is at any rate certain that second pendulums were known and used before the time of Mouton and continued in use for a long time after his death being incorporated into grandfather clocks.
  • It is also germane that he proposed it could define its own length. This concept relates time, space and gravity. Rktect 12:47, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
The Bologna foot Riccioli and Mouton used was different from the pes Rktect used. Gene Nygaard
    • "Riccioli and Gosselin calculate the pes Cossutianus as 130.6 Paris lines. Greaves took this foot as the standard Roman one and calculated it as something more than 293.968 mm"

[Roman foot]

    • The pes Cossutianus is about 2 mm less
    • The Bologna pes is 1 mm less
    • The range of accuracy and precision in making pes rules varies.
    • At 625 pes to a stadium the variation is about 2 feet in a stadium.
    • At 600 stadia to a degree the variation is about 1200 feet in a degree
    • in 1 minute of arc the variation is 20 feet
    • "A clear illustration of the use of the Roman foot as a septenary unit is provided by builder’s markings on the Roman aqueduct of Bologna. Some Egyptian archeologists have paid attention to the marks made by builders In measuring constructions, obtaining thereby absolutely certain evidence for the units of measure used, but scholars of Roman archeology have completely neglected this datum. The only exception I know of is due to the alertness of a French scholar, E. Pélagaud, who happened to be in Bologna in 1879, when the Roman aqueduct was being cleaned and restored in order to supply the city. He noted that for a great length the inside mortar coating of the aqueduct is marked by lines made with a sharp metal point. On one wall the marks are spaced 295 mm.,"

Rktect 21:03, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vote for Deletion

This article survived a Vote for Deletion. The discussion can be found here. -Splash 02:10, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comments about the references

The references used for this article have certain discrepancies which should be mentioned. Some of this material may belong in the article proper. (See also User_talk:Egil/Sandbox/Gabriel_Mouton):

  1. Connor and Robertson claims that the milliare unit is based on the degree, but this is most likely an error. It is contrary to all other sources, and does also not match the pendulum definition or the similarity to the toise.
  2. Bigourdan says that the virgula pendulum would oscillate 3959.2 times in half an hour (une demi-heure). If one interprets oscillation as full cycle, which is the current understanding, this would make the length of the pendulum ~5.1 cm, which is clearly incorrect. The likely explanation is that oscillation should be interpreted as change of direction, i.e. twice the number of cycles, just like the historical one second pendulum which has a period of 2 seconds. In this case, the resulting pendulum length becomes ~20.5 cm, which matches other findings.
  3. The NASA/NIST document with John Quincy Adams on the history of measures in its previous form claims Mouton used a one second pendulum, but other sources, including Bigourdan, who writes about Mouton in much more detail, says otherwise. Using a one second pendulum would complicate matters, since the length of a one second pendulum would correspond to 4.846 virgulas, which would make construction of a virgula standard beam based on a pendulum hard to do with a high level of accuracy. Using the pendulum described by Bigourdan, one would arrive at the desired length directly. (The NASA document is now updated).
  4. The pendulum calculation presented is based on a g of 9.80665, which is a standard for 45.542 degrees of latitude [2]. The city of Lyon (the location of the Saint-Paul cathedral where Moutone worked) is very close to this latitude (at 45°46′1″N, 4°50′3″E), and at suffiently low altitude to make the result accurate to more than 4 digits.
  5. There are sources that claims that a virgula is 18.5 cm. This seems to be a case of a historian's fallacy. It would have been a likely value if Moutons definition was made at a time when the Earths circumference was known to a high accuracy. But as Bigourdan points out, the figure Mouton used was from Riccioli, and the pendulum used as the practical embodiment confirms the length of Moutons virgula as ~20.5 cm. The virgula lived only as a proposal, and there has been no attempt to redefine the virgula after Mouton.
  6. Ferdinand Hoefer: Historie de l'astronomie, Paris 1873, confirms that the error of Ricicoli was more than 10000 meters per degree [3]. Assuming a Bologna foot is 38 cm, Ricicolis result was 122 km per degree (compared to 111 km), which matches this claim well. One can say that Mouton was unfortuneate to have used the figures from Riccioli, which turned out to be ~10% in error. But again, this is hindsight. At the time, the results of Riccoli, published in Geographiae et hydrographiae reformatae libri (1661), must have appeared as the more authorative.
  7. Arthur D. Butterfield: A History of the Determination of the Figure of the Earth from Arc Measurements, Davis Press in Worcester, Massachusetts 1906, quotes an Earth radius of 4265.9 miles for Riccioli, which would result in a virgula of ~19.97 cm. It has been noted that Butterfields unit conversion factors are not always very accurate [4].
  8. The Galileo project at Rice says this about Moutons suggestion [5]:
    A fraction of the terrestrial meridian would be adopted as the universal unit of length. The measuring procedures at the time were too unsatisfactory. The topic wouldn't be taken up again until 1790.

  -- Egil 07:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dispute tag removed

Based on the findings of the arbitration commity (see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Rktect#Remedies), it seems consensus is reached with regards to this article, and I have thus removed the disputed tag. -- Egil 16:54, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

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