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Anno Domini 2071 / Translated from the Dutch Original cover

Anno Domini 2071 / Translated from the Dutch Original

Chapter 27: Calculatoria.
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About This Book

A narrator drifts into a visionary account of life in the year 2071, guided by the apparition of an earlier scientific thinker and a young companion, and proceeds through a series of speculative essays and vignettes imagining technological, social, and institutional changes. Topics range from advanced communications, air and rail travel, materials and energy innovations, scientific instruments and observatories, to reorganized education, libraries, political reforms, suffrage, gender rights, and global commerce. The tone alternates between satirical observation and earnest extrapolation, presenting descriptive scenes and concise treatises that project how inventions and reforms might reshape everyday life and public institutions.

Calculatoria.

“Then at last,” said I, “the science of astronomy has wandered back to the cradle of its infancy, the soil of Chaldea. But what has become of the once so celebrated observatories of Leiden, Greenwich, the Pulkowa, etc., etc.?”

They have been changed into calculatoria, as in fact they had been already for some time past. Among them are distributed the observations made at the central observatory, and these they have to work out. At the same time these calculatoria continue to be of some use to the young astronomer; having there to encounter no end of difficulties, he may learn the value of the Latin adage, Per ardua ad astera, and so grow ultimately into a hard-working and accurate observer.

With regard to the practical results already obtained at the Orumiah observatory—in consequence of our knowledge of the celestial bodies having so considerably increased—I merely wish to call your attention for a moment to yonder map and the words printed underneath. I will rather not offend you by giving you any warning or advice in the matter.