(meteorobs) (meteors) Origin of ZHR?

[bob]

Daniel - Last year, George Drobnock pointed me to the "Memoirs of the British Astronomical Association vol I (1891)" in which he states that the term ZHR is discussed. I am not privy to that volume, but have found in later volumes that the term "zenithal horary number" is used, and I believe it is the same as ZHR. If you Google "zenithal horary number" you will find many documents, and I believe that the one that I found by Blackhouse (1883)discribes the zenithal horary number and its algorithm. While the data in the table is for the years 1883-4, he suggests that he had made observations back in 1859 using this algorithm.

I have posted a PDF file of this document in the files section.

Bob 

--- In meteorobs at yahoogroups.com, dfischer at ... wrote:
>
> > In 2007 there was a discussion about the year first used used or origin
> > of the term Zenith Hourly Rate ZHR.
> 
> At the International Meteor Conference in 2003 Paul Roggemans from Belgium
> gave a remarkable review paper on the history of systematic meteor
> observation in Europe - according to my contemporary report on his talk at
> http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~dfischer/news/750.html#744 the ZHR and other
> standards of visual counting only emerged in the early to mid-1980s after
> heated discussions taking place mostly in Eastern Europe. (According to
> http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2004JIMO...32....2T the paper is also in
> the Proceedings.) My first 'encounter' with the ZHR formula was in the
> East German journal Die Sterne around 1985 which would fit Roggemans'
> narrative. Since all this ain't ancient history, enough eyewitnesses of
> the early days of the ZHR should still be around.
> 
> Daniel
> 
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