“Mea culpa” on Myanmar gravity
I imagine that anyone trying to write a history of anything is all too aware of the probability (near certainty) that something important will have been left out. Sometimes new documents will emerge after the book or paper has been finalised, sometimes things just get...The scandal of Henry Browne
In 1823 Basil Hall, a British naval officer who became the first person to measure gravity in the Galapagos Islands, advised anyone who might imitate him by taking gravity pendulums overseas to recognise the “….advantage which … would arise from having the whole experiment performed in England, by the person who is afterwards to repeat it abroad, not under the hospitable roof of Mr. BROWNE … but in the fields, and with no advantages save those he could carry with him…”