The Antarctic Foxes
Abstract Between 1838 and 1839, Britain’s leading science elites, including John Herschel, William Whewell, and Edward Sabine, successfully lobbied the British government to undertake a magnetic survey of the world. Specifically, they demanded funding for a Royal Navy expedition to Antarctica to mag...
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| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford University PressOxford
2023
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198890959.003.0005 https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/58157163/oso-9780198890959-chapter-5.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract Between 1838 and 1839, Britain’s leading science elites, including John Herschel, William Whewell, and Edward Sabine, successfully lobbied the British government to undertake a magnetic survey of the world. Specifically, they demanded funding for a Royal Navy expedition to Antarctica to magnetically chart the southern seas and locate the south magnetic pole. In 1839, James Clark Ross led this expedition, comprised of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, and armed with two of the latest of Robert Were Fox’s dipping needles with which to obtain magnetic data and locate the pole for Britain. This chapter examines how these instruments were selected for this venture, based on trials throughout 1838 and 1839 on the Atlantic. It then examines the performance of Fox’s dipping needles on the Antarctic Expedition, between 1839 and 1843. This shows the importance of reliable instrumentation in what marked the inauguration of the British Magnetic Scheme. When, in 1841, Ross calculated the location of the south magnetic pole, it was with a Fox-type instrument, securing the device unprecedented scientific and popular acclaim. |
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