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ther than with reference to their rising, as had hitherto been the custom. In making these studies of the relative position of the stars, Hipparchus was led to compare his observations with those of the Babylonians, which, it was said, Alexander had caused to be transmitted to Greece. He made use also of the observations of Aristarchus and others of his Greek precursors. The result of his comparisons proved that the sphere of the fixed stars had apparently shifted its position in reference to the plane of the sun's orbit--that is to say, the plane of the ecliptic no longer seemed to cut the sphere of the fixed stars at precisely the point where the two coincided in former centuries. The plane of the ecliptic must therefore be conceived as slowly revolving in such a way as gradually to circumnavigate the heavens. This important phenomenon is described as the precession of the equinoxes.
It is much in question whether this phenomenon was not known to the ancient Egyptian astronomers; but in any event, Hipparchus is to be credited with demonstrating the fact and making it known to the Western world. A further service was rendered theoretical astronomy by Hipparchus through his invention of the planosphere, an instrument for the representation of the mechanism of the heavens. His computations of the properties of the spheres led him also to what was virtually a discovery of the method of trigonometry, giving him, therefore, a high position in the field of mathematics. All in all, then, Hipparchus is a most heroic figure. He may well be considered the greatest star-gazer of antiquity, though he cannot, without injustice to his great precursors, be allowed the title which is sometimes given him of "father of systematic astronomy."
CTESIBIUS AND HERO: MAGICIANS OF ALEXANDRIA
Just about the time when Hipparchus was working out at Rhodes his puzzles of celestial mechanics, there was a man in Alexandria who was exercising a strangely inventive genius over mechanical problems of another sort; a man who,
A History of Science, vol 1, page 198
by Henry Smith Williams