Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Descriptive Information

Title

Studies for students: the elements of the geological time-scale

Description

In the same year that Walcott published his influential calculation for the age of the Earth and its eras, Henry Williams proposed, in his “Studies for students: the elements of the geological time-scale” (Journal of Geology, 1893), the new science of “geochronology”. This new discipline would encompass studies “in which the geological time-scale is applied to the evolution of the earth and its inhabitants” with a clear distinction between time concerned with “human chronology” and “geochronology”. Using a similar approach to Walcott, Williams attempted to bring quantitative rigor to the time-scale with the concept of a “geochrone”. His table shown here relates one “geochrone” to the duration of sediment deposition for the Eocene Epoch, and all other eras are ratioed to this unit. As with the other examples shown in this section, Williams’ methods were, as recognized at the time, inadequate to the task at hand. Yet they collectively show a growing desire to place absolute numbers on a hitherto relative history.

Call Number (click link to view in library catalog)

550.5 JG

See Also

Full Text Available at JSTOR

Authors

Williams, Henry

Date

1893

From the Exhibit

In Search of Lost Time: Earth’s Chronology

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Location

Chicago

Language

English

Rights

This item was originally published in the Journal of Geology. Intellectual property rights, including copyright, may reside with the materials' creator(s) or their heirs. This content was downloaded from JSTOR on 4/4/2023. JSTOR terms and conditions of use can be found here: https://about.jstor.org/terms/.

Type

Text

Medium

Article

Bibliographic Citation

Williams, Henry. “Studies for students: the elements of the geological time-scale”. Journal of Geology 1, no. 3 (1893): 283-295.