Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie

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Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie , 1853-1942, English archaeologist, a noted Egyptologist. He excavated ancient remains in Britain (1875-80), Egypt (1880-1924), and Palestine (1927-38) and was (1892-1933) professor of Egyptology at University College, London. In 1894 he founded the Egyptian Research Account, which became (1905) the British School of Archaeology in Egypt. His most important excavations were at Memphis, but he made many other outstanding discoveries. Among these are the sites of Greek settlements at Naucratis (1885) and Daphnae (1886); tombs of the first dynasty at Abydos (1899); the stele of Merneptah at Thebes (1896), inscribed with the earliest known Egyptian reference to Israel; and ruins of 10 cities at Tel-el-Hesy (S of Jerusalem). His writings include many works on ancient Egypt, Methods and Aims in Archaeology (1904), and Seventy Years in Archaeology (1931). He edited A History of Egypt (6 vol., rev. ed. 1923-27), of which he wrote the first three volumes. A tireless and meticulous excavator, Petrie was responsible for greatly advancing the methodology of archaeology. He was particularly innovative in the interpretation of deeply stratified deposits, undertaking the seriation of undecorated pottery and demonstrating how ceramics from Egypt could be used to establish the age of archaeological strata outside Egypt, a technique known as cross-dating.

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magnetic compass

The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea | 2006 | © The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea 2006, originally published by Oxford University Press 2006. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

magnetic compass, a compass which depends for its directive property on the horizontal component of the earth's magnetic field. Its origins are obscure and although the earliest references to its use at sea are Chinese (before 1050), there is no direct evidence that it came to the West from China, nor that Arab ships were instrumental in bringing it. The earliest recorded mention of its use in the West was in 1180, although there are grounds for thinking it was in use well before that. No one person has been credited with the invention of the magnetic compass but it is clear that, in the West, it first appeared in the Mediterranean (by local legend in Amalfi).

The forerunner of the modern magnetic compass consisted of a magnetized needle thrust into a straw or piece of cork which floated freely in a basin of water. On settling, the marked end of the needle indicated the direction of magnetic north. In later times a primitive pivoted needle or needle system was used to serve the same purpose, and later still a compass card, on which the points of the compass were drawn, was attached to a needle magnetized by the oxide of iron lodestone, and the whole was enclosed in a suitable bowl to afford protection, the bowl in turn being mounted in gimbals in a binnacle.

The magnetic compass was an imperfect instrument until after the time when the first iron ship appeared. The magnetism inherent in an iron ship's structure caused considerably difficulty in the early days, to such an extent that it was suggested seriously that such ships would never be successful for they would be quite unsafe in the absence of well-behaved compasses.

On wooden vessels the directive power of a magnetic compass is dependent, apart from relatively minor effects of ironwork fittings in its vicinity, on the earth's magnetism. Nevertheless, as far back as the beginning of the 19th century, Matthew Flinders, the British navigator and explorer, discovered that the compass needle might be deviated from the direction of magnetic north as a result of local attraction, as it was termed, of the ship's iron. He demonstrated that this deviation was at a maximum with ships' courses of east or west by compass and disappeared when a ship steered north or south. He also showed how the ship's magnetic effect could be neutralized by means of an unmagnetized rod of iron placed vertically near the compass. This form of corrector is still universally used and is named a Flinders bar.

With the advent of iron and steel ships, a great deal of study was directed to the nature of ship magnetism with the object of devising a method of neutralizing it at the compass position. Among those who engaged themselves in this important work was the Astronomer Royal, Sir G. B. Airy, who had the iron steamer Rainbow placed at his disposal in 1838. From his careful examination of the vessel's magnetic condition, he introduced a method of neutralizing a ship's magnetism by placing magnets and pieces of unmagnetized iron, or correctors, in the vicinity of the compass. To find what correctors are needed to neutralize a ship's magnetism it is necessary to swing every vessel fitted with a magnetic compass, including yachts.

See also Thomson, William.

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Free newspaper and magazine articles

Free Article The style and development of ancient Egyptian furniture.(Decoration and Embellishment, part 2)
Magazine article from: The Magazine Antiques; 9/1/1997

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GET OUTTA HERE! TIPS FOR ROAMING THE ROCKIES
Newspaper article from: The Gazette; 8/19/2007; 700+ words ; ...of centuries were plundered. One explorer, Sir William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942), braved these dangerous conditions...Great Discoveries from Ancient Egypt: Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie," is scheduled at 5:30 p.m. Friday...
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Newspaper article from: The Washington Post; 12/15/1989; ; 700+ words ; ...it seems, there was a kinder, gentler Egypt. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942), the father of modern Egyptian...The expedition leaders pay generous tribute to Flinders Petrie, whose patient pot-sorting created a chronological...
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Newspaper article from: The Sun, San Bernardino, Calif.; 1/7/2009; ; 661 words ; ...antiquities in the world, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology...Amelia Edwards and named after Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, a professor of Egyptian archaeology...archaeology and Egyptology. The Petrie Museum holds more than 80,000...
Museum's pyramid sell
Newspaper article from: The Scotsman; 3/16/2001; ; 346 words ; ...treasures from the collection of Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, regarded as the Indiana Jones of the Victorian era. Petrie's work broke new ground in...spells. However, last night the Petrie Museum, based at University...
Anniversaries
Newspaper article from: The Independent - London; 7/26/1997; 598 words ; ...and politician, 1802; Sir Richard Wallace, founder...poet, 1895; Paul William Gallico, writer, 1897...Borrow, writer, 1881; Sir James Augustus Henry...chemist, 1844; Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, Egyptologist, 1942...
Treasures beyond belief
Newspaper article from: The Scotsman; 10/13/2001; 700+ words ; ...Egypt: Digging For Dreams - Treasures from the Petrie Museum of Archaeology The Burrell Collection, until...many for the first time, from the collection of Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the father of British Egyptology and the man who...
TOMB WITH A VIEW; Egyptologist Kent Reid Weeks Found a Window on the Past
Newspaper article from: The Washington Post; 6/15/1995; ; 700+ words ; In 1896, it is said, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie used to fuel his search for tombs in Egypt's Valley...says Kent Reid Weeks, savoring the story. Petrie "left them buried from year to year and didn...
IN THE BEGINNING ...
Newspaper article from: The Record (Bergen County, NJ); 4/26/1997; ; 700+ words ; ...her book to include miniprofiles of some of the premier archaeologists -- from legends like Sir Leonard Woolley and Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the so-called "father of modern archaeology," to modern masters like the late Yohanan...
Raiders of the faux ark - Biblical archeology is too important to leave to crackpots and ideologues. It's time to fight back.
Newspaper article from: The Boston Globe; 9/30/2007; ; 700+ words ; ...geography of Palestine. Others soon followed, including Sir Charles Warren, a British general who explored and...more scientific, thanks to the efforts of men like Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, who introduced into archeology the dual concepts...
THEME FOR THE DAY.
Newspaper article from: The Birmingham Post (England); 6/3/2000; 700+ words ; ...The Dutch were defeated by the English fleet at the Battle of Lowestoft; 1853: Birth of archeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, who excavated the Egyptian pyramids and the temples of Gizeh; 1899: W G Grace became the first man to...

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