Observatory Astronomical

American Observatories.

In 1832, Airy closed his report on astronomy to the British Association by remarking that, as for the United States, he did not know of the existence of a single public observatory within the whole country. The first American ob servatory is said to have been erected at Chapel Hill (N.C.), in 1831-32. It was destroyed by fire in 1838. Projects for observa tories were set on foot at Williams college, Mass., in 1836; at Hudson, 0., 1836-37; and for the National observatory at Wash ington which was actually established by Lieut. J. M. Gilliss of the U.S. Navy in 1843-44. The movement was encouraged and in many cases observatories were created by collective financial help. By the efforts of Prof. D. M. Mitchel money was raised for shares in a public company to build an observatory at Cincinnati. The first meeting of stockholders was held on May 23, 1842, and an ob ject glass I 'in. in diameter, which was quite large for that epoch, was procured during the summer. The Litchfield observatory of Hamilton college, New York, was founded by public subscription in 1852. An observatory attached to the University of Missouri in 1853 was afterwards improved by a gift from Dr. S. S. Laws. In 1856, the Dudley observatory, Albany, was established by gifts from citizens of that city, and took its name from the largest donor. Mrs. Blandina Dudley. The Allegheny observatory was founded as an annex to the university in 1860, and was completed in 1867 through the liberality of Mr. W. Shand. The Dearborn observatory of the University of Chicago was built in 1864 at the expense of a liberal benefactor at a cost of $30,000, and the in struments were paid for by public subscription. The Halsted ob servatory, attached to Princeton university, came into existence in 1866 by munificent gifts which paid for site and buildings. At the present time (1928) there are in the United States 7o ob servatories, some used merely for purposes of education, while others are doing original and brilliant astronomical work.

The U.S. Naval observatory at Washington is something akin to Greenwich, since it is a state-supported institution for the pur poses of the Navy. Chronometers and compasses are tested, and the staple astronomical work has been the making of star-cata logues. Excluding this, the most famous of these observatories of last century is that of Harvard college, Cambridge, Mass.,whose origin is associated with the personality of William Cranch Bond, a member of a Cornish family that emigrated in 1786 and settled in Portland, Me., where he was born in 1789. Bond had great aptitude for scientific research, especially astronomy, and when, in 1837, it was decided to build an observatory for Harvard col lege, he, though engaged in a profitable manufacturing business, accepted the invitation to take charge. No salary was attached to the office until the year 1846. The original Harvard observatory (Dana House, 1839) and the new observatory (1843-47) were established by public subscription. Under the direction of Prof. E. C. Pickering, the work of this observatory was mainly photo metric and spectroscopic. Harvard had no telescope of size,

until the new observatory was furnished with a i 5in. equatorial telescope, the largest made up to that time, though the observa tory at Pulkowa had one of like dimensions. At the present time it has a refracting telescope of 24in. aperture, the gift of Miss Catherine Bruce. It had a branch observatory in Arequipa, Peru, at a high elevation in the Andes, built and largely supported by a sum of money bequeathed for the purpose by Uriah Boyden, but this branch was in 1928 transferred to South Africa. Yale uni versity has an observatory, founded in 1882, which is known for its work on the determination of stellar parallaxes. The private observatory of Percival Lowell at Flagstaff, Arizona, has at tracted attention because of the observations of the surfaces of the planets made there, for which it was founded in As to South America, there had been an observatory at Buenos Aires in 1822, whose period of activity was short, so that the National observatory at Santiago (Chili). may be regarded as the first permanently founded (1856) on this continent. The National observatory of the Argentine Republic, established at Cordoba in 1870, has done good service in cataloguing the stars of the South ern hemisphere. There are other observatories in South America.

The last quarter of the 19th century may be said to have seen the beginning of the era of the large telescope, though the large specula of Parsonstown and Melbourne (4ft.) were earlier. The 26in. refractor at Washington dates from 1873, but a few years later, a telescope was made on a considerably larger scale through the benevolence of Mr. James Lick, who died in San Francisco on Oct. 1, 1876. On Jan. 9, 1887, Mr. Lick's body, transferred from its original place of burial, was deposited in the foundation pier of a great equatorial telescope, with object glass 36in. in diameter, that had been set up in a fine observatory on Mt. Hamil ton, Calif., at a total cost of $610,000, including $90,000 invested as endowment. In 1895 a reflector with a silver-on-glass mirror of 36in. diameter, that had been used by Dr. Common, was pre sented by Mr. Crossley of Halifax, England, and with these two instruments and others, the Lick observatory, dedicated to the University of California, has done much photographic and spectro scopic observation. The size of the larger instrument was sur passed ten years later when at the instigation of Mr. George E. Hale, Mr. C. T. Yerkes presented a refracting telescope with ob ject glass of 4oin. aperture, together with a large observatory building containing it on the shore of Williams bay, Lake Geneva, Wis., to the University of Chicago in Oct. 1897. From that date the Yerkes observatory has been a centre of astronomical activity. The programme has been, to a great extent, spectroscopic and astrophysical but micrometrical work on double stars, planets and satellites, has had a place, together with work in connection with the discovery and observation of comets.