William Bourne

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Bourne (probably 1535–1582) was a British mathematician , innkeeper and former Royal Navy soldier who was the first person to design a drivable submarine and to write important navigational instructions. He is also called William Bourne of Gravesend .

In 1574 he made a version of Martín Cortés de Albacar's Arte de Navegar , which he called " A Regiment for the Sea ". After becoming dissatisfied with some aspects of the original, he wrote his own instructions that were easier for seafarers to implement. He described the best way to observe the stars and sun using a Jacob's staff and how to plot a coastline from the ship using triangulation .

Life in Gravesend

Before Bourne created his design for a submarine, he was a church father in Gravesend . His name appears for the first time in Gravesend's first charter of June 5, 1562. His name appears a second time as the Church Father in the second Gravesend Charter, written on July 5, 1568. During the period of the second charter, all trade regulations are in his handwriting. That means that he ran a booth as a clerk in the market. He also worked as one of 14 innkeepers in Gravesend.

Inventions or Devises

The first page of "Inventions or Devises" by William Bourne, published 1578.

The work " Inventions or Devises " (German: "Inventions or devices") published in 1578 is Bourne's most important work. It offers a wide variety of guidelines and tools for seafarers , particularly when it comes to communicating and interacting with other ships. The device listed under number 21 is the earliest known draft of a log . He attributes the invention to Humfray Cole , an officer in the Royal Mint . Device number 75 is an early draft of a winker alphabet that can also be used at night. This requires a code made up of light signals and certain standing positions.

Entry number 110 appears to be a design for a telescope . The mathematician and surveyor Leonard Digges is said to have used it, whereupon Bourne was commissioned by the royal chief adviser William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley , to investigate it. In his depiction, one looked into a large curved mirror that reflected the image produced by a large lens (Bourne noted in his report that the device works but has a very narrow field of view, which makes it impractical for military applications). This "backward" reflective telescope preceded the earliest known working telescope by 30 years, but its unwieldy nature appears to have prevented its development for actual use.

Submarine design

Submarine by William Bourne, in Inventions or devices , 1578.

The draft he first published in the book Inventions or Devises from 1578 is one of the first drafts ever made for a buoyant submarine. His design stipulated that the ship would become submersible by reducing the overall volume (contrary to contemporary designs that use ballast tanks to be able to sink). The plan, to be understood more as a general draft, as a precise sketch, describes a wooden ship that is covered with water-repellent leather. Nonetheless, the design was implemented by the Dutchman Cornelius Drebbel in 1620 and by Nathaniel Symons in 1729: a “sinking boat” could be built for both of them, which used the principle of changing volume to submerge.

In the third season of the Canadian TV show The Re-Inventors , a modern reconstruction of the submarine was attempted in the episode “Bourne Submarine” (broadcast on September 12, 2009). The submarine had limited functionality at best, as the leather surface tore during a test dive, whereupon the boat sank.

Publications (selection)

  • An Almanac and Prognostication for Three Years . 1571.
  • William Bourns booke of artillery . 1572.
  • Treasure for Travelers . 1572.
  • Art of Shooting in Great Ordnance . 1572.
  • A Regiment for the Sea . 1574 (11 English editions from 1574 to 1631, at least 3 Dutch editions from 1594).
  • A Booke called the Treasure for Traueilers . 1578 (republished as A Mate for Mariners in 1641 ).
  • Inventions or Devises. Very Necessary for all Generalles and Captaines, as wel by Sea as by Land . 1578.
  • The Arte of Shooting in Great Ordinance . 1578 (also 1587 and 1643).
  • On optical glasses . In: James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (Ed.): Rara-mathematica: or, A collection of treatises on the mathematics and subjects connected with them, from ancient inedited manuscripts . London 1841 ( Bavarian State Library ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c G. L'E. Turner: Bourne, William (c.1535–1582). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
  2. ^ Patrick Moore: Eyes on the Universe. The Story of the Telescope . Springer, London 1997, p. 9 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-1-4471-0627-2 .
  3. ^ Fred Watson: Ian Stargazer: The Life and Times of the Telescope . Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest 2007, ISBN 978-1-74176-392-8 , pp. 40 ( books.google.de ).
  4. ^ The Re-Inventors. In: tvguide.com. CBS Interactive, accessed April 8, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Bourne, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bourn, William; Bourne of Gravesend, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English mathematician, innkeeper and author
DATE OF BIRTH around 1535
DATE OF DEATH around 1582