If a friend passed along a problem to Halley he could be confident that the scientist would use every means to arrive at a solution. Take, for example, the question posed by John Houghton, also a Fellow of the Royal Society: how can one arrive at a reasonable estimate of the total acreage of England and Wales considering the irregular shape of the land surface?
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Halley attacked the problem in an unconventional way. He found the most accurate map available, cut carefully around each bay and inlet until he held a paper outline of the land area of England and Wales. He weighed this map, the cut out a circle for the central part of England. Finding the acreage of a known circle would not be a difficult task. He weighed the paper circle and compared it with the weight of the full map. His estimate of the total acreage of England and Wales was amazingly close to today's figure. &britishheritage.com