Groklaw: A History of Free and Open Source--Introduction
Mar 28, 2005, 16:45 (0 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Peter H. Salus)
"The activities of a distributed and unorganized band of
scholars led to the conceptual revolution that produced the modern
world. For example, Copernicus (1473-1543) observed the heavens and
recorded his measurements. In 1563, Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) noted
that Copernicus' figures weren't quite right, so, from 1577 to
1597, Tycho recorded extraordinarily accurate astronomical
measurements. In 1599 Tycho moved from Denmark to Prague, where
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was his assistant, until he succeeded
him in 1601, when Tycho died.
"Copernicus established heliocentricity. Tycho found that
circular orbits just didn't work, and devoted decades to better
measurements, which Kepler later used to determine that the orbits
were ellipses, not circles..."
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