44 Quotes by Simon Newcomb

In the summer of 1851, when I had passed the age of sixteen, we lived in a little school district a mile or two from the town of Yarmouth, N. S.

In the latter part of 1869 I had carried forward the work with the transit circle as far as it could be profitably pursued under existing conditions.

In 1854 I availed myself of my summer vacation to pay my first visit to the national capital, little dreaming that it would ever be my home.

The great fire practically put an end to the activity of the Chicago Observatory and forced its director to pursue his work in other fields.

A few years later the Naval Academy was founded at Annapolis, and a similar course was pursued to provide it with a corps of instructors.

Ten decimal places of π are sufficient to give the circumference of the earth to a fraction of an inch, and thirty decimal places would give the circumference of the visible universe to a quantity imperceptible to the most powerful microscope.

Construction of an aerial vehicle which can carry even a single man . . . requires the discovery of some new metal or force. Even with such a discovery, we could not expect one to do more than carry its owner.

As the existence of a corps of professors of mathematics is peculiar to our navy, as well as an apparent, perhaps a real, anomaly, some account of it may be of interest.

Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope.