SYSTEM OF THE WORLD. BY P. S. LAPLACE, MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY J. POND, F.R.S. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED FOR RICHARD PHILLIPS, Bridge STREET, BLACKFRIARS, 1809. ADVERTISEMENT. In this work I shall adopt the division of the quadrant into a hundred degrees, each degree being divided into a hundred minutes, and each minute into an hundred seconds. Temperature will be referred to the mercurial thermometer divided into one hundred degrees from the freezing to the boiling point of water, under a pressure equivalent to the weight of a column of mercury of the height of sixty-six centimetres. And I shall refer all linear measures to the metre, determined by the arc of the terrestrial meridian included between NOTE-BY THE TRANSLATOR. THE reader will find the angular measures and measures of time used by the author reduced in the margin to the sexigesimal system adopted in this country; this was thought better than altering the text of an original work of such import ance. ERRATA. VOL. I. r. 126, for sexigonal, read sexigesimal. |
