"Writers, Thinkers and Fox Hunters". Educational Theory in the Almanacs of Eighteenth-Century Colonial America

FROM THE TIME the first American edition issued forth from the pioneer Cambridge press of Stephen Daye in 1639, (i) the was destined to play a significant role in the education of the American people. Indeed, an had played a not inconsiderable supporting role in the discovery of America itself, as it was one of the chief navigational aids of one Christopher Columbus. This particular was the 1474 Ephemerides ab Anno (1474-1506), the work of Johann Miller, a pupil of the astronomer Purbach, who wrote under the nom-de-plume of Regiomontanus. It was a vital instrument of navigation for the mariner, as the only method known of ascertaining longitude in the days of Columbus was by timing an eclipse. The Ephemerides contained predictions for eclipses for thirty years after its publication, so . . having a Regiomontanus Ephemerides with him, which gave the time of the eclipse at Nuremburg, he [Columbus] was able to make a rough calculation of longitude.... (2) Although the almanac, per se, was primarily a calendar, as the name implies (the word almanac is apparently derived from the Arabic almanakh, which was in turn taken from the Greek almenichiakon, or calendar), it very quickly acquired an important secondary function-as an instrument of informal education

Archaeology · Colonialism · Sociology · American Literature and Humor Studies · Anthropology · History

• Don't Speak to me, but Write on this”

  Michael Eamon, Michael J Eamon•The New England Quarterly•2012

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