Enough of crackpots, how would you have got on in an 1859 school exam ?

[studiot]

Quote

BBC

Do you think you’ve got what it takes to tackle exam questions from 1859?

Shake off the cobwebs and give your brain a workout with this 19th Century test.

This exam paper, now owned by the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons, was produced by the UK’s first teaching association, the College of Preceptors.

These teachers predominantly taught at private schools.

As well as traditional subjects like maths, history and English, students were also tested on land and marine surveying, bookkeeping and commercial science, Latin and Greek.

But don’t worry, we’ve stuck to more familiar topics for this quiz.

All questions are taken from the 1859 exam paper, but you might notice that some of the answers reflect our contemporary understanding of certain topics. Answers may also include events from later than 1859, so keep your eyes peeled.

The exam has started, and you may now begin…

From the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons

 

There are 8 questions, click the orange button under the photo in the link to start.

I got 7/8 as I didn't know anything about the last one.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z8mvhcw?at_mid=n1brDq52Z7&at_medium=display_ad&at_campaign=Victorian_Exam_Paper_Quiz_NewsPromo_PNC&at_ptr_name=bbc&at_campaign_type=owned&at_objective=consumption&at_ptr_type=media&at_link_origin=promo_box&at_format=image&at_link_title=Victorian_Exam_Paper_Quiz_NewsPromo_PNC&at_bbc_team=BBC

[swansont]

7/8

I missed the music one (the order gets mixed each time)

[studiot]

15 minutes ago, swansont said:

7/8

I missed the music one (the order gets mixed each time)

Yes I am a musical dunce too, so I had no idea at all.

 

Thanks for the comment on the order.

I did find the range of subjects interesting though.

[Genady]

Quote

Your score: 6 / 8

You've smashed it! We think you'd have been top of your class.

I've missed St.Petersburg time by one hour, and never heard of Doomsday Book.

[exchemist]

Just now, Genady said:

I've missed St.Petersburg time by one hour, and never heard of Doomsday Book.

I got the same score, having forgotten how to do lowest common multiples and, like you, getting the St Petersburg time zone wrong (I thought it would be the the same as Helsinki).

[studiot]

5 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I got the same score, having forgotten how to do lowest common multiples and, like you, getting the St Petersburg time zone wrong (I thought it would be the the same as Helsinki).

I find it interesting that knowledge of timezones was required in 1859, which was just after the Crimean War and just before the Jules Verne book "around the world in 80 days."

[MigL]

8 / 8

And it's Domesday book.
A little history knowledge goes a long way.

 

[Genady]

I know a lot of history. Perhaps, of different parts of the world.

Quote

Domesday Book – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book"

(Domesday Book - Wikipedia)

[John Cuthber]

7/8 and, had I been a Victorian schoolkid, I might have swotted up on lowest common multiples.

26 minutes ago, studiot said:

I find it interesting that knowledge of timezones was required in 1859, which was just after the Crimean War and just before the Jules Verne book "around the world in 80 days."

That might not have been a time zone. It's pretty close to exactly 4 hours.
"

St Petersburg, Russia Lat Long Coordinates Info

The latitude of St Petersburg, Russia is 59.937500, "

[Genady]

36 minutes ago, studiot said:

I find it interesting that knowledge of timezones was required in 1859, which was just after the Crimean War and just before the Jules Verne book "around the world in 80 days."

I wonder what time they referred to in 1859. The worldwide hourly time zones were established much later.

[TheVat]

8/8 but had to take a WAG on St Pete.  LCM took me some time, my mental math is rusty.  I know there's a quicker way, but couldn't recall.  Something with factor trees and multiplying the primes.  Pencil and paper would have been needed.

[Genady]

edit: x-posted with John Cuthber

[swansont]

41 minutes ago, studiot said:

I find it interesting that knowledge of timezones was required in 1859, which was just after the Crimean War and just before the Jules Verne book "around the world in 80 days."

Especially since they didn’t exist back then, though the idea had been proposed. Zones as offsets from GMT were still a few decades off.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone

edit: xpost with Genady

[studiot]

22 minutes ago, swansont said:

Especially since they didn’t exist back then, though the idea had been proposed. Zones as offsets from GMT were still a few decades off.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone

edit: xpost with Genady

They were well aware of the variation of time (of noon) with longitude by that date. I hour for every 15^o longitude.

Huygens published the first statement of what we now now as the astronomers and surveyors equation of time in 1665.

I made my comments becasue I was suprised at the choice of St Petersburg, especially as it was a late established city and not made capital of Russia until 1712.

But we had just fought a war with Russia.

Of course the second reference was to the famous story about the international date line, published in 1872.

Also at that time as noted there were many 'prime meridians'

@Genady

It is the meriadians, not the parallels that determine time.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_meridian#List_of_historic_prime_meridians_on_Earth

 

The Russian one at that time was the Pulkova Meridian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulkovo_meridian

There was also the Paris rival to London

https://www.solosophie.com/paris-meridian/

 

[Genady]

9 minutes ago, studiot said:

Also at that time as noted there were many 'prime meridians'

@Genady

It is the meriadians, not the parallels that determine time.

Did I say something about parallels?

[studiot]

1 minute ago, Genady said:

Did I say something about parallels?

Quote

The latitude of St Petersburg, Russia is 59.937500, "

 

[Genady]

Just now, studiot said:

 

This quote is not from me:

 

58 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

That might not have been a time zone. It's pretty close to exactly 4 hours.
"

St Petersburg, Russia Lat Long Coordinates Info

The latitude of St Petersburg, Russia is 59.937500, "

 

[sethoflagos]

7/8

I guessed +4 hours for St Petersburg.

[Genady]

@studiot

St. Petersburg is 30⁰ E and should've been 2 hours ahead of GMT if they went by 15⁰ longitude. That was my answer on the quiz, 2 o'clock. Wrong! Their answer was 3 o'clock. It's neither time zone, nor astronomical difference.

Did you notice your misattribution of the quote above?

Edited March 14, 2023 by Genady

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

I find it interesting that knowledge of timezones was required in 1859, which was just after the Crimean War and just before the Jules Verne book "around the world in 80 days."

It was the height of the British Empire, though, and long-distance travel by ship was commonplace. Chronometers also were needed to determine longitude for navigation, so society, one way or another, was aware of the way time zones arise. 

And domestically, "railway time" had been established by the 1840s, to make time uniform across Britain, which was important to run a railway timetable, whereas previously it was not.

In fact there is one relic of the Oxford meridian to this day, in the tradition of Tom Tower, at Christ Church, striking at 5 minutes past 9 each evening, which it does 101 times, commemorating the number of original scholars at the college. I remember as an undergraduate questioning whether noon at Oxford was really 5 minutes later than at Greenwich, so, with a bottle of port among us, we chemists sat down in someone'e room and did the geometry. And it is.    

[studiot]

1 hour ago, Genady said:

@studiot

St. Petersburg is 30⁰ E and should've been 2 hours ahead of GMT if they went by 15⁰ longitude. That was my answer on the quiz, 2 o'clock. Wrong! Their answer was 3 o'clock. It's neither time zone, nor astronomical difference.

Did you notice your misattribution of the quote above?

My sincere apologies. I was rushing it.

St Petersburg is in the Moscow time zone, which is GMT +3, although as you say it is sufficiently west to be actually 1 hour behind

Notice the line in the BBC introduction

Quote

All questions are taken from the 1859 exam paper, but you might notice that some of the answers reflect our contemporary understanding of certain topics. Answers may also include events from later than 1859, so keep your eyes peeled.

Perhaps it always has been, I have not been able to determine this but in those days they used 'solar time', but for a whole area so it is reasonable to assume they followed the then capital.

[John Cuthber]

16 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

7/8 and, had I been a Victorian schoolkid, I might have swotted up on lowest common multiples.

That might not have been a time zone. It's pretty close to exactly 4 hours.
"

St Petersburg, Russia Lat Long Coordinates Info

The latitude of St Petersburg, Russia is 59.937500, "

I must have been half asleep when I posted that or something.
The longitude- almost exactly 30 degrees- is the one that matters . The time difference should be almost exactly 2 hours.
Today I think the answer is 3 hours, but that 's largely political.

[joigus]

I'm sorry to say I didn't do very well. 5/8. Congrats to everybody else.

In my defence, I never studied musical notation --so I took a chance between the correct one and the opposite--, the St. Petersburg one was hopeless for me, as I can't quite place St. Petersburg in my mind within the accuracy of one time zone, and the grammar question puzzled me, as eg "from" is certainly a preposition, though IMO it never tells you where or when something is in relation to something else. OTOH, "across" and "about" give you all kinds of different relations besides those related to time and space. In my mind, it seemed just too narrow, so I decided to stretch my definition of a clause, to disastrous effect.  

I guess I would make a poor Victorian.  

Edited March 15, 2023 by joigus
minor correction

[Genady]

5 minutes ago, joigus said:

the grammar question puzzled me, as eg "from" is certainly a preposition, though IMO it never tells you where or when something is in relation to something else. OTOH, "across" and "about" give you all kinds of different relations besides those related to time and space.

I've answered that one correctly, because I don't know much about formal grammar. So, I thought about the term, preposition. It has position in it. Aha, said I, it has something to do with space and time.  

[studiot]

55 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

I must have been half asleep when I posted that or something.
The longitude- almost exactly 30 degrees- is the one that matters . The time difference should be almost exactly 2 hours.
Today I think the answer is 3 hours, but that 's largely political.

We all do it.

I find a glass of Laphroaig helps at such moments.