Africa has the world's oldest record of human technological achievement: the oldest stone tools in the world have been found in eastern Africa, and later evidence for tool production by our hominin ancestors has been found across West, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. The history of science and technology in Africa since then has, however, received relatively little attention …

Astronomy was the first natural science to reach a high level of sophistication and predictive ability, which it achieved already in the second half of the 1st millennium bce. The early quantitative success of astronomy, compared with other natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, and meteorology (which were also cultivated in antiquity but which did not …

The concept of engineering has existed since ancient times as humans devised fundamental inventions such as the pulley, lever, and wheel.Each of these inventions is consistent with the modern definition of engineering, exploiting basic mechanical principles to develop useful tools and objects.. The term engineering itself has a much more recent etymology, deriving from the …

The famous 5.08-metre (200 in) Hale Telescope of Palomar Observatory saw first light on 26 January 1949, targeting NGC 2261 under the direction of American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble.The image was published in many magazines and is available on Caltech Archives. [citation needed]The Isaac Newton Telescope had two first lights: one in England in 1965 with …

This article deals with the history of classical mechanics Precursors to classical mechanics Antiquity. Aristotle's laws of motion. In ... Except with respect to the acceptance of Copernican astronomy, Galileo’s direct influence on science in the 17th century outside Italy was probably not very great. Although his influence on educated laymen ...

History. The term "centroid" is of recent coinage (1814). [citation needed] It is used as a substitute for the older terms "center of gravity" and "center of mass" when the purely geometrical aspects of that point are to be emphasized.The term is peculiar to the English language; the French, for instance, use "centre de gravité" on most occasions, and others use terms of …

Webster's Dictionary is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758–1843), as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in honor. "Webster's" has since become a genericized trademark in the United States for English dictionaries, and is widely used in …

This definition makes the speed of light, defined as exactly 299 792 458 m/s, equal to exactly 299 792 458 × 86 400 ÷ 149 597 870 700 or about 173.144 632 674 240 au/d, some 60 parts per trillion less than the 2009 estimate.. Usage and significance. With the definitions used before 2012, the astronomical unit was dependent on the heliocentric gravitational constant, that is …

Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of …

Stephen Hawking incorporates the saying into the beginning of his 1988 book A Brief History of Time: A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.