Beyond the introduction of the spider line it is unnecessary to mention the various steps by which the Gascoigne micrometer assumed the modern forms now in use, or to describe in detail the suggestions of Hooke, 4 Wren, Smeaton, Cassini, Bradley, Maskelyne, Herschel, Arago, Pearson, Bessel, Struve, Dawes, &c., or the successive productions of the great artists Ramsden, Troughton, Fraunhofer, Ertel, Simms, Cooke, Grubb, Clarke and Repsold.
Sir William Herschel was the first astronomer who measured position angles; the instrument he employed is described in Phil.
While still an undergraduate he formed a league with John Herschel and Charles Babbage, to conduct the famous struggle of "d-ism versus dot-age," which ended in the introduction into Cambridge of the continental notation in the infinitesimal calculus to the exclusion of the fluxional notation of Sir Isaac Newton.
The treatises on physical geography by Mrs Mary Somerville and Sir John Herschel (the lattewritten for the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica) showed the effect produced in Great Britain by the stimulus of Humboldt's work.
Herschel marshals the evidence which can be collected on this point.