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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Herschel
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Distinguished family of astromomers. William Herschel (1738–1822, kt 1816) was born in Hanover and came to England in 1757 as a professional musician. His private interest lay in constructing ever larger telescopes with which to view the heavens. With one of these he observed in 1781 the first new planet to be added to the five known since classical times; he called it Georgium sidus (the Georgian star) in honour of the king, but it became known as Uranus. His subsequent discoveries included the existence of double stars revolving round each other, the broad dimensions of the Milky Way, and the movement of the solar system through space.
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His son, John Herschel (1792–1871, kt 1831), spent 1834–8 at the Cape of Good Hope cataloguing the nebulae, star clusters and double stars of the southern hemisphere as his father had done for the north. He was also a brilliant chemist and an important pioneer of photography. The earliest surviving glass negative is his; it was he who introduced hypo (hyposulphite) to fix the image; and he coined the terms 'negative' and 'positive'.
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