Smuggler's Cove

The theme for Wideangle Wednesday this week is Science and its impact on us. For me today this concerns Tides. It's hosted this week by steveng.

The earliest recorded theory of tides was by Seleucus of Seleucia in the 2nd century BC, who correctly theorized that tides were caused by the moon. 
In China the first tide table was made in 1056 AD for visitors wishing to see the tidal bore in the Qiantang River. The first known British tide table is thought to have been by a 13th century monk, John of Wallingford.
Isaac Newton was the first to explain tides as the product of the gravitational attraction of astronomical masses. This was published in his Principia in 1687.
In 1770, Richard and George Holden used measurements taken by the Liverpool Dockmaster, William Hutchinson, between 1764 and 1767 to produce the first publicly accessible tide tables in the UK. 

All this science meant that looking on the internet I could see that low tide was at 12.22 and high tide would be at 18.52 so I knew I could visit the beach in Holcombe without getting my feet wet. It's a shame I didn't also check the results of meteorological science in the form of the weather forecast, which would have told me that it was going to throw it down at 4 o'clock as I walked back to the van, so I got pretty wet anyway!