Abstract
Richard Stephenson has transformed the subject of changes in the Earth’s rotation over the historical period from one of obfuscation to clarity. His careful amassing and analyses of historical observations of eclipses in the period 700 BC to AD 1600 has led to an accurate determination of the behaviour of the Earth’s rotation in that period. The length of the day has increased at an average rate of 1.8 milliseconds per century and on a time-scale of millenia shows fluctuations of about 4 milliseconds about that trend.
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Morrison, L. (2015). The Length of the Day: Richard Stephenson’s Contribution. In: Orchiston, W., Green, D., Strom, R. (eds) New Insights From Recent Studies in Historical Astronomy: Following in the Footsteps of F. Richard Stephenson. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07614-0_1
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