566
S H A
SHANK, or SHANK-PAINTER, in a ship, is a short chainfastened under the loremast-shrouds, hy a bolt* to the ship’s sides,having at the other end a rope fastened to it.
Shank, in the manege, that part of a horse’s fore-leg which liesbetween the knee and the fetlock.
SHANKER, or CHANCRE, in medicine,- a malignant ulcer,usually occasioned by some venereal disorder.
SHANNON, the largest river in Ireland , and one of the finestin the British dominions, not only on account of its rolling 200miles, but also of its great depth in most places, and the gentlenessof its current. It runs from N. to S. separating the province ofConnaught from Leinster and Munster , and of consequence divid-ing the greatest part of Ireland into what lies on the E. and thaton the W. of the river; watering in its passage the county of Lei-trim, Roscommon , Gahvay, Clare, See.
SHAP, an ancient town of England, in Westmoreland, 29 milesS. S. E. of Carlisle, and 273 N, W. of London .
SHAPINSHAY, one of the Orkney Islands , lying about 3miles N. of Pomona, or Mainland.
SHARBIEI1, a district of Egypt, on the E. banks of the Nile ,extending thence to the frontiers of Arabia.
SHARE OF A PLOUGH, that part which cuts the ground ;the extremity forwards being covered with a sharp pointed iron,called the point of the share, and the end of the wood behind thetail of the share. See Plough , Ploughshare, and Rural(Econom y.
SHARK , in ichthyology. See SauALUS.
SPIARON, in ancient geography, the name of three cantons ofPalestine . The first lay between Mount Tabor and the sea of Ti-berias; the second between the city of Catsarea of Palestine , andJoppa; and the third lay beyond Jordan.
SHARP, Abraham, an eminent mathematician , mechanist,and astronomer, descended from an ancient family at Little llorton,near Bradford , in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where he wasborn about 1651. He was put apprentice to a merchant at Man-chester ; but his genius led him strongly to the study of mathe-matics, both theoretical and practical. By the consent, therefore,of his master, he quitted the business of a merchant, and removedto Liverpool, where he studied mathematics, astronomy, &c. andwhere, for a subsistence, he opened a school, and taught writingand accounts, &c. He had not been long at Liverpool when hefell in with a merchant from London , in whose house the astrono-mer, Mr. Flamsteed, then lodged. To get acquainted with thiseminent man, M r. Sharp engaged with the merchant as a book-keeper, and soon contracted an intimate friendship with Mr.Flamsteed, by whose interest and recommendation lie obtained amore profitable employment in the dock-yard at Chatham ; wherehe continued till his friend and patron, knowing his great merit inastronomy and mechanics, called him to his assistance in contriv-ing, adapting, and fitting up, the astronomical apparatus in theRoyal ( iservatory at Greenwich, which had been recently built, Iabout 1676. He was principally employed in the construction |of the mural arch, which in fourteen months he finished greatly jto the satisfaction of Mr. Flamsteed. According to Mr. Smeaton,this was the first good instrument of the kind ; and Mr. Sharp thefirst artist who cut accurate divisions upon astronomical instru-ments. When it was constructed, Mr. Flamsteed was thirty andMr. Sharp twenty-five years of age. These two friends con-tinued together for some time, making observations on the me-ridional zenith distances of the fixed stars, sun, moon, and pla-nets, with the times of their transits over the meridian ; also thediameters of the sun and moon, and their eclipses, with those ofJupiter’s satellites, the variation of the compass, &c. Mr. Sharp assisted Mr. Flamsteed also in making a catalogue of near 3000fixed stars with their longitudes and magnitudes, their right as-censions and polar distances, with the variations of the same, whilethey change their longitude by one degree. But from the fatigueof continually observing the stars by night, in a cold thin air, liewas reduced to a bad slate of health ; for the recovery of which heretired to his house at Horton; where, on his recovery, befittedup an observatory of his own ; having first made an elegant andcurious engine for turning all kinds of work in wood or brass,with a maimdril for turning irregular figures, as ovals, roses,wreathed pillars, &c. Besides these, he made most- of the toolsused by joiners, clock-makers, opticians, mathematical inst-rument-
S H A
makers, &c. The limbs or arcs of his large equatorial instrument,sextant, quadrant, &c. he graduated with the nicest accuracy, bydiagonal-divisions into degrees and minutes. The telescopes hemade use of were all of his own making, and the lenses ground,figured, and adjusted, with his own hands. It was at this time thathe assisted Mr. Flamsteed in calculating most of the tables in vol.2 of his Ilistoria Ccelestis, and executed the curious drawings ofthe charts of all the constellations visible in our hemisphere, withthe stiil more excellent drawings of the planispheres both of thenorthern and southern constellations. And though these weresent to be engraved at Amsterdam by a masterly hand ; yet theoriginals far exceeded the engravings in point of beauty and ele-gance ; these were published by Mr. Flamsteed, and both copiesmay be seen at Hurlon. The mathematician, says Dr. Hutton,meets with something extraordinary in Sharp ’s elaborate treatise ofGeometry Improved (in 4to. 1717, signed A. S. Philomath).His concise treatise of Polyedra, or Solid Bodies of many Bases,both the regular ones and others, illustrated with a variety of cop-per-plates, neatly engraved by bis own hands, is remarkable forneat Less and accuracy. Indeed few or none of the mathematicalinstrument-makers could exceed him, in exactly graduating, orneatly engraving, any mathematical or astronomical instrument, asmay be seen in the equatorial instrument above-mentioned, or inhis sextants, quadrants, and dials, of various sorts; also in q cu-rious armillary sphere, which, beside the common properties, hasmoveable circles, &c. for exhibiting and resolving all sphericaltriangles; also his double sector, with many other instruments, allcontrived, graduated, and finished, in a most elegant manner, byhimself. In short, he possessed at once a remarkably clear headfor contriving, an extraordinary hand for executing, any thing,not only in mechanics, but likewise in drawing, writing, and mak-ing, the’ most exact and beautiful schemes or figures in all his cal-culations and geometrical constructions. The quadrature of thecircle was undertaken by him for his own private amusement in1699, deduced from two different series, by which the truth of itwas proved to seventy-two places of figures; as may be seen inthe introduction to Sherwin’s Tables of Logarithms . In the samebook may also be seen his ingenious improvements on the makingof logarithms, and the constructing of the natural sines, tangents,and secants. He also calculated the natural and logarithmic sines,tangents, and secants, to every second in the first minute of thequadrant; the laborious investigation of which may be seen in thearchives of the Royal Socienly, exhibiting his very neat and accu-rate manner of writing and arranging his figures, not to be equalledby the best penman now living. Mr. Sharp kept up a corre-spondence by letters with most of the eminent mathematicians andastronomers of his time, as Mr. Flamsteed, Sir Isaac Newton , Dr.Halley, Dr. Wallis, Mr. Hodgson, Mr. Sherwin, &c. the answersto which letters are all written upon the backs, or empty spaces,of the letters he received, in a short-hand of his own contrivance.
! From a great variety of letters (of which a large chestful remainsj with his friends) from these and many other celebrated mathema-j ticians, it is evident that Mr. Sharp spared neither pains nor timeto promote real science. Indeed, being one of the most accurateand indefatigable computers that ever existed, he was for manyyears the common resource for Mr. Flamsteed, Sir Jonas Moore ,Dr. Halley, and others, in all sorts of troublesome and delicatecalculations. Mr. Sharp continued all his life a bachelor, andspent his time as recluse as a hermit. He was of a middle-stature,but very thin, being of a weakly constitution. He was remark-ably feeble the last three or four years of his life. He died on the18th July 1742, aged 91. In his retirement at Little Horton, heemployed four or five rooms or apartments in his house for differ-ent purposes, into which none of his family could enter at anytime without his permission. He duly attended the dissentingchapel at Bradford, of which he was a member , every Sunday;when he took care to be provided with plenty of halfpence, whichhe very charitably suffered to be taken singly out of his hand, heldbehind him during his walk to the chapel, by a number of poorpeople who followed him, without his ever looking back, or askinga question. Mr. Sharp was very irregular as to his meals, and re-markably sparing in his diet: so very much so, indeed, that thebreakfast, dinner, and supper, have often remained untouched byhim, when the servant has gone to remove what was left; sodeeplv engaged had he been in calculations.