著者

株本 訓久

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.59, no.293, pp.18-37, 2020 (Released:2021-01-24)

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The purpose of this paper is to identify who fabricated the three small Ikkanbari (一閑張) telescopes discovered by the author, and to estimate when these telescopes were fabricated from a historical perspective. Zenbei IWAHASHI (1756–1811) was one of the most famous Japanese telescope makers of the Edo period and fabricated many high-performance telescopes. After Zenbeiʼs death, his successors inherited his manufacturing technique and continued to fabricate Ikkanbari telescopes until the Meiji period. To date, telescopes fabricated by the IWAHASHI family have been investigated by the author, Makoto WATANABE and his colleagues, who have already identified 24 telescopes as having been fabricated by the IWAHASHI family. Most of these telescopes provided direct evidence of their origin, such as the IWAHASHI familyʼs original pattern Kuruma gata (車形), the inscription of the name IWAHASHI, and the IWAHASHI trademark. In this study, the author investigated three small Ikkanbari telescopes. There is no direct evidence that the telescopes were fabricated by the IWAHASHI family, except for one telescope that had IWAHASHI trademark on its case. However, the author concluded that a telescope can be considered as having been fabricated by the IWAHASHI family if its size is equal to that of the telescopes described in Saikutsumori-cho (『サイクツモリ□』帳) and if several of its patterns are the same as those of the telescopes known to have been fabricated by the IWAHASHI family. This result confirms M.WATANABEʼs opinion.

著者

株本 訓久

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.44, no.236, pp.203-224, 2005 (Released:2021-08-11)

著者

株本 訓久

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.40, no.220, pp.219-227, 2001 (Released:2021-08-16)

著者

株本 訓久

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.40, no.218, pp.97-103, 2001 (Released:2021-08-17)

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In this paper, the author investigated how S.Shinjyo established his conception of the nature of our Galaxy and of spiral nebulae. S.Shinjyo founded the Institute of Cosmical Physics at Kyoto Imperial University, the second laboratory of astronomy in Japan. From 1915 to 1927, he studied the theoretical stellar evolution and established the eccentric nucleus theory that explained how the Cepheid Variables changed their brightness. In his papers, he mentioned not only stellar evolution but also the nature of our Galaxy and of spiral nebulae. Many astronomers were doing similar work at this time. The author focuses our attention to 18 papers by S.Shinjyo. It is important not only to investigate his papers so as to track the establishment of his conception but also to look at other contemporary Japanese papers on conception of the nature of our Galaxy and spiral nebulae. In his 1915 paper, he wrote that our Galaxy has a diameter of 6,600 light years and a spiral structure, and that spiral nebulae is anoter Galaxy. The 1916 paper proposed that our Galaxy didn't have a spiral structure but an ellipse structure. In the 1922 paper, he extended our Galaxy's diameter to 30,000 light years and introduced Shapley's conception of the nature of our Galaxy. In 1925, S.Shinjyo applied Shapley's conception and showed that the spiral nebula is not another Galaxy but rather a large meteoric group. In 1927, S.Shinjyo introduced Hubble's study of M31 explaining that it is 1,000,000 light years away and 45,000 light years in diameter. This means that he agreed the spiral nebula was indeed another Galaxy. Shapley's and Hubble's works influenced S.Shinjyo's work on spiral nebulae. This didn't mean that S.Shinjyo only followed the tendency of international astronomy. He integrated these conceptions, because they were not incompatible with his stellar evolution. But, this literature review generally shows that observational astronomy in Japan depended on the research tendencies of large telescope observational astronomy in America.

著者

株本 訓久

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.40, no.218, pp.104-106, 2001 (Released:2021-08-17)

著者

株本 訓久

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.40, no.217, pp.12-23, 2001 (Released:2021-08-17)

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The purpose of this paper is the assessment of K. HIRAYAMA's study of Cepheid variable stars in Japanese and in the international trend of studying the variable stars. K. HIRAYAMA published four papers about variable stars in 1931 and in 1932, and he formed the contact theory which was one of the non-pulsation theories of Cepheid variable stars. S. SHINJYO, who was the Japanese researcher of Cepheid variable stars before K. HIRAYAMA, published five papers about variable stars from 1922 to 1926, and he formed the eccentric nucleus theory which was one of the non-pulsation theories of Cepheid variable stars. It was interesting to note that those researchers formed the non-pulsation theory after H. Shapley's study of the pulsation theory of Cepheid variable stars in 1914 and A.S. Eddington's study of the pulsation theory of Cepheid variable stars in 1919. S.SHINJYO and K.HIRAYAMA formed these non-pulsation theories in order to explain not only mechanism of the variable stars but also the energy source of stars and the stellar evolution. We concluded that their study of these non-pulsation theories was one of the evidence that the pulsation theory was established during 1930's at which the energy source of stars and the stellar evolution were established.

著者

株本 訓久

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.39, no.213, pp.20-29, 2000 (Released:2021-08-23)

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Kiyotugu HIRAYAMA's role in the history of Astronomy in Japan is examined in light of his work on the families of asteroid. In addition to this work, he also published two papers about stellar evolution in 1931. In these he suggested the capture hypothesis theory whereby a star gets mass and energy from the nebulae which captured it. This theory differed significantly from the accepted contemporary theory in two points related to energy source and evolution. The theory linked the source of the energy in stars with Mayer's fall theory and Helmholtz's contraction theory. HIRAYAMA thought that this theory could explain the formation of all stars, including binary stars and star clusters, and even the whole solar system. At that time in Japan, S, TAKEDA's studies of stellar evolution applied mass annihilation theory based on relativity theory. However K. HIRAYAMA didn't apply annihilation theory. Given a dynamic astronomical point of view, it was natural for K. HIRAYAMA to have applied the capture hypothesis rather than the mass annihilation theory. This theory seemed to be farsighted in terms of regarding the solar system formation as a common star one, but we couldn't reduce this so simply, because he suggested his theory on the condition that many stars were in proximity at the formation of binary stars, and star cluster. His theory is similar to Shinzo SHINJYO's theory in that he applied his theory to all stellar evolution. It is interesting to note that they went on to form the non-plusation theory of Cepheid variables from this theory.