Maury's Elementary Geography - 1913
Matthew Fontaine Maury was a United States Navy officer who is best known for his work in oceanography and meteorology. He was born in Virginia in 1806 and died in 1873. Maury's geography, published in 1913, was a textbook designed for primary and intermediate classes123. However, it is important to note that Maury's most significant contributions to science were made much earlier in his career. Maury charted the Navy's course to the world of oceanography, which includes all of the basic sciences as they relate to the sea6. He started small-scale meteorological work and sent his first "weather journal" for the week ending January 14, 1843, to a Washington paper for publication. Before 1851, he conceived the idea of a universal system of meteorological observation on both land and sea6. By the fall of 1852, Maury constructed a contour map of the North Atlantic Ocean bottom with a profile on latitude 39°, off the coast of New Jersey to Europe as a preliminary survey essential for making a sound recommendation on so important a matter and to show that some of the deepest water was along this parallel6. In the course of his work on wind and current charts, Lieutenant Maury saw that there were vast areas of the world for which he had insufficient data on weather as well as on ocean currents and that other nations could aid in gathering information. By 1851 he was striving for a world meteorological organization6. In the sixth edition of his "Sailing Directions" of 1854, Maury included 90 pages of new information under the title suggested by Von Humboldt, "The Physical Geography of the Sea." His publishers in Philadelphia, recognizing its value for publication as a book, promptly warned Maury that some other publisher might "steal his thunder and reap a fortune on it"6. He was also the inventor of the first electrically controlled submarine mine successfully6.Maury's geography was published in 1913, even though Maury died in 1873, because the book was a revised edition of his earlier work. Maury's Revised Elementary Geography Designed for Primary and Intermediate Classes was a revision of his elementary geography textbook designed for primary and intermediate classes5. The book was published by American Book Company in New York, Cincinnati, and other places25. The revised edition was full of colorful diagrams and photos to help students understand the concepts5. The book was also a part of the Maury Geographical Series1.Source: perplexity.aikeyword: histtext
