Hi, can anyone translate the birth details information for Nicolaus Copernicus from this 1551 old book?
There are some things google translate don’t give answers for.
Here it is:
Nicolaus Copernicus Torinensis, Prince-Bishop of Warmia, was born on 19th February 1473 at 4:48. He was in his prime about 1525, 1377 years after Ptolemaeus or about. Died in 1543.
P.S. It’s the first time I see “inclaruit” in the meaning of “floruit”.
Self correction: “scrup.” (scrupulus) means “a minute”, so he was born at 4:48.
Theatrum Latino-Germanico-Graecum (Reyher, 1712): “Scrupulus, est, sexagesima pars gradus, dicitur & minutum.” It can also be a measure of weight or length, but preceding “hora” leaves no room for such interpretations.
Thanks, Will! That’s what prevented me from answering this post-all I could find was 1/24 of a unit or 1/288, the first of which makes little sense with respect to time. 48/24ths of an hour makes no sense, although 48/288ths does amount to 10 minutes (16.7% of an hour). I should have checked your online dictionaries!
I am somewhat surprised at finding minutes in the temporal sense in a text from 1551. After all, time keeping was still in a state of relative infancy. According to this Wikipedia-article the minute hand was not added to watches before the late 17th century. So, the fact that the idea itself of expressing such an accurate time can be found in such an early text is quite unexpected.
Carolus Raeticus
Hi Carole,
After doing a fair amount of wiki reading, I found that the use of the minute goes back to 1000 CE, when Al-Biruni divided the hour into minutes, seconds, thirds and fourths:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minute
It occurs to me that although early clocks and timepieces may not have had minute hands, one could look at how far the hour hand had progressed from one hour division to the next and get a close idea of how many minutes had elapsed. Here’s a picture of an early (possibly first)mechanical clock:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=lBNAkpau&id=41A4B47C5AAF0615298E5BF671EC291B801A7915&thid=OIP.lBNAkpauUNr3Q0IhYNYCewHaFh&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.artfixdaily.com%2Fimages%2Fcache%2F30-1663_3.jpg&exph=763&expw=1024&q=First+Mechanical+Clock+Renaissance&simid=608009813212595850&ck=4A5B3191838C736815EB9406BCC26327&selectedindex=1&form=IRPRST&ajaxhist=0&vt=0&sim=11
There is also this from the “History of Timekeeping” wikipedia article:
“Early clock dials showed hours: the display of minutes and seconds evolved later. A clock with a minutes dial is mentioned in a 1475 manuscript,[121] and clocks indicating minutes and seconds existed in Germany in the 15th century.[122] Timepieces which indicated minutes and seconds were occasionally made from this time on, but this was not common until the increase in accuracy made possible by the pendulum clock and, in watches, by the spiral balance spring. The 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe used clocks with minutes and seconds to observe stellar positions.[121]”
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Speculum astrologiae (Giuntini, 1573):
Salve Aetos,
thank you for the detailed answer. Quite astounding. I’ll have to find out more about my own exact time of birth so that my tombstone (not too soon, please) can indicate nanoseconds (more or less the modern equivalent in accuracy desired)
Carolus Raeticus