Wonders Beyond Numbers: A Brief History of All Things Mathematical by Johnny Ball

Author:Johnny Ball [Ball, Johnny]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 9.2

Unfortunately, the Italians and the British, unimpressed by Toscanelli’s map, turned Columbus down, as did the Portuguese, who had already put their money on sailing around Africa. The Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella, however, flush from their 1491 success in taking back Granada and at last ridding Spain of Muslim occupation, agreed to take a gamble, and financed the trip. So with three small ships and 120 men, mostly from local prisons, Columbus sailed west across the ocean blue, in 1492.

En route, he noted that his magnetic compass seemed to dip, as though seeking a point below the sea, or even the Earth’s surface. He told no one about this, however, in case they became afraid of mystical forces they did not understand. An explanation for this phenomenon would arrive about 60 years later, courtesy of English scientist William Gilbert.

With the crew growing fearful of the unknown and pleading to turn back, they at last sighted land. Columbus was overjoyed, certain he had arrived in the exotic Orient. But he was actually in the Bahamas, on the very eastern fringe of the Caribbean. In fact, he’d struck land at a point almost diametrically opposite the Philippines, and half a world away from where he thought he was. To reach Asia he would have had to travel another 12,000 miles – or four times as far as he’d already come, even assuming Central America hadn’t been in the way. Had Columbus known from the start how large the Earth really was, he would never have suggested making the trip in the first place, and history would have been very different.

As it was, over the next 10 years he made three more trips across the Atlantic. Always hemmed in by the Caribbean, however, he never realised that the vast Pacific Ocean even existed, or that it stretched halfway across the world.

Sadly, although he was a fine seaman, Columbus was a poor administrator: he died in poverty, still believing he had found Asia. But the lasting impact of his discovery of new land ensured his fame: King Ferdinand, at the last moment, decided to honour him with a stupendous funeral and a huge monumental tomb in Seville Cathedral. Columbus’s body, however, lies in a grave in the Dominican Republic.

Go West Young Men

When news of Columbus’s landfall in the New World arrived in Europe, the Portuguese insisted on their right to share any new discoveries with Spain. In 1494, ignoring all other countries, Pope Alexander VI drew up the Treaty of Tordesillas (which rhymes with ‘silly ass’) to divide the world between the two nations, simply by drawing on a very incomplete map a preposterous line of longitude 100 leagues west of the Azores. A league was about 3 miles, and the line turned out to be approximately 45 degrees west. But as they could not measure longitude, and had little idea just what had been or might be discovered anyway, the line was absolutely meaningless. As it turned out, all of the

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