This important step was,
however, taken by Tycho. He considered that all the planets revolved
around the sun in circles, and that the sun itself, bearing all these
orbits, described a mighty circle around the earth. This point
having been reached, only one more step would have been necessary to
reach the glorious truths that revealed the structure of the solar
system. That last step was taken by Copernicus.
COPERNICUS
[PLATE: THORN, FROM AN OLD PRINT.]
The quaint town of Thorn, on the Vistula, was more than two centuries
old when Copernicus was born there on the 19th of February, 1473. The
situation of this town on the frontier between Prussia and Poland,
with the commodious waterway offered by the river, made it a place of
considerable trade. A view of the town, as it was at the time of the
birth of Copernicus, is here given. The walls, with their
watch-towers, will be noted, and the strategic importance which the
situation of Thorn gave to it in the fifteenth century still belongs
thereto, so much so that the German Government recently constituted
the town a fortress of the first class.
Copernicus, the astronomer, whose discoveries make him the great
predecessor of Kepler and Newton, did not come from a noble family,
as certain other early astronomers have done, for his father was a
tradesman.
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