Abstract
WHEN Captain Roald Amundsen started his voyage in the Gjoa through the North-west Passage in 1903, his first aim was the accomplishment of this great feat of exploration, and his second was the investigation of the magnetic conditions at and near the magnetic pole. After his return from these successful enterprises, he published an account of his voyage. “The North-west Passage”, in 1907, but his scientific material for a long time lay stored in the Historical Museum, pending its publication by a board of editors. State grants were made at various intervals between 1908 and 1923 towards the preparation and publication of the results, and the preparation of the terrestrial magnetic data was finished in 1923; at that time further funds for the publication became difficult to obtain, but by restricting the scale of the work the funds were finally obtained for publication by the Geophysical Commission of the Norwegian Academy of Science at Oslo in its regular volumes. Part 1 is to deal with astronomy and meteorology, and Parts 2 and 3 with terrestrial magnetism. The first to appear is Part 3, which consists of a reproduction of all the magnetographs obtained by the expedition, with only sufficient text (17 pages) to explain their nature. It is “assumed that in some way or another funds will be obtained for the publication of Parts 1 and 2”—an assumption which geophysicists will earnestly hope to see confirmed.
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Magnetographs obtained by Amundsen, 1903–1906*. Nature 127, 978–979 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/127978a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/127978a0