Harvard College Observatory

“ Agreeably to the announcement of the annual report of Harvard College Observatory for 1877, as to photometry, a beginning was made by constructing a photometer suitable to be attached to the great telescope. Other photometers have been devised at different times for use independently. One of the earliest was applied during the year beginning Oct. 12, 1877, in measuring the light of all known satellites excepting the two inner ones of Uranus, which are too faint to be discerned, even by the great telescope. ”

“ The observer from the beginning had been Prof. William A. Rogers. He resigned his position as assistant professor in the observatory in 1886, but continued to serve as editor of the published results. The whole series makes half a dozen or more volumes of the annals. The European supervisors of the general undertaking, well pleased, apparently, with the early instalments of manuscript returns, assigned to Harvard the work of reobservation of another zone, that between 9° 50′ south and 14° 10′ south. This work is still in progress. Each zone comprises about 8000 stars or nearly 17,000 in all. ”

“ The apparatus was at once put to use in the several telegraphic stations of the coast survey; and one of the circumstances which made Mr. G. P. Bond’s tour in Europe a notable one was its exhibition for the first time there. It was shown in operation and explained in a lecture by him before the Royal Astronomical Society, and also at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Through the urgency of Sir David Brewster and others it was set up in the great exhibition at London in 1851, where a medal was awarded for it. ”

“ In the early observations of Mr. Bond at Cambridge, priority was given to the work begun at Dorchester for the naval department. In the college record a considerable part of the routine is classed as meteorology, with reference, chiefly, to the earth’s magnetism. The scheme of observation in this department was, however, much broadened, and in this the observatory appears to have performed its first notable service to pure science and to have assumed a place that gave it international recognition. ”

“ Something practical in astronomy had always been taught in the college course. In this way, or possibly by Mr. Bond himself, the position of Harvard Hall on the college grounds had been determined. Thus, in a paper published by him in 1833 in the Memoirs of the American Academy, he gives the position of his observatory in Dorchester as “0°-3′-15′′ east of Harvard Hall in Cambridge.” ”

“ There are suggestions of both the modern and the antique world in the statement that in this first experience the electrical apparatus of a department of the institution founded by John Harvard, was connected with like apparatus in an observatory in the garden of Peter Stuyvesant in New York city. These electrical experiments of the coast survey were begun as early as 1844, between Washington and Baltimore. ”

“ It is bad enough to allow so much mere capital to lie idle, but it is worse not to return to the benefactor of a college something which may be the sign of a good investment, something which shall encourage him and others to believe that their gifts are doing real, practical educational good. It is here intended to speak only of the college observatory as a means of education, and a distinct difference is made between the ordinary institution of this kind, and the working observatories of such colleges as Dartmouth, Harvard, the University of Michigan, and others. ”

“ Here, as one of his brief biographers remarks, “no eclipse or occultation escaped him, though occupied in business during the day in Boston,” and here Mr. Quincy found him in 1839, busy in his work for the Navy Department. The period which had elapsed since the setting of the granite block and the poising upon it of the borrowed telescope had been for Mr. Bond one of constant and rapid advance in the astronomer’s art. The Cottage street observatory was built about the year 1823. ”

“ A considerable revenue has thus annually been derived. Other electrical apparatus of the observatory was modified and improved. A “switch-board,” the device of his predecessor was much elaborated in its mechanism, whereby the electrical current was made more available and all the principal instruments were connected at will with the chronographs.
In 1868 when he visited Europe he procured the apparatus of a meridian circle of the latest device, the lenses being made in Cambridge. In setting up the instrument he saw opportunity to introduce various improvements in mechanism. ”

“ A special encouragement to new enterprises at Harvard is in the munificent gift of $50,000, made within the year past by Miss Catherine W. Bruce of New York for the construction of a telescope of 24 inches aperture, to be used in photography. A contract for this instrument has been made. It is intended that its first use shall be to photograph maps of the fainter stars, and it is hoped that those as faint as the 16th magnitude can thus be represented. ”

“ Bond is to be regarded not in the character of an employee, but a benefactor of the college; that his labors were deemed by those most familiar with them to be indispensable and invaluable, and that his friendship for the college, manifested in all ways, and especially in his declination of the liberal offers coming from Washington, was appreciated and honored. The date of Mr. Bond’s appointment as director of the observatory was Feb. 12, 1840, though the confirmation by the corporation was later. He was given the honorary degree of A.M., by Harvard in 1842. ”

“ Nothing of importance appears to have been done in this department thereafter until 1886, when the proposition of Mrs. Draper opened the way to investigation of spectra by aid of photography. For this the 11-inch photographic telescope, which had been used by Dr. Draper, was loaned by Mrs. Draper, who also met the expense of a new mounting and a special observatory building. A beginning was made with an eight-inch instrument, known as the Bache telescope. It is of the pattern described as the “doublet,” and offers the advantage of a large field of view. ”

“ An early application of photography in this investigation was in the direction of determining the color of stars, measuring their brightness by an independent method, picturing their spectra, exhibiting the effect of atmospheric absorption of light in a series of plates covering the period of a year, and ascertaining by images of stars trailed upon the plate, the clearness and steadiness of the atmosphere.
In 1887 the Boyden fund being available, the first step was taken in the important enterprise of giving a continental expansion to the work of the observatory. ”

“ It had the highest award of the Massachusetts Mechanic Association, a gold medal. It was adopted at the Greenwich observatory soon after Mr. Bond’s exhibition of his model, and speedily throughout Europe.
Soon after the electrical experiments of 1848 at the observatory the wire was put into use to transmit to Boston and different railway points, signals giving the true local time, these signals being electrically responsive to the movement of an astronomical clock in the observatory, the method of transmission being that of the “circuit interrupter.” ”

“ He began a paper on the nebula in Orion, which he did not live to complete, though during his prolonged last illness he continued his labors upon it, and dictated to an amanuensis long after strength to write had gone from him.
This paper was afterwards finished by Prof. T. H. Safford, then of Harvard, now of Williams College observatory. A biographer says of Mr. Bond: “Science to him was not a pastime but a serious calling, to be pursued with the utmost conscientiousness and singleness of purpose. ”

“ There was none in the world that filled all the requirements, and Prof. Bond invented and made one. It is in use, unchanged, to this day, and by means of its ingeniously combined wheels, cogs and pulleys the17 observer can quickly and easily place himself anywhere along the vertical quarter circle and horizontal full circle traversed by the eye-piece of the telescope.
Prior to 1845 a transfer of 12 chronometers to and from Greenwich, Eng., had been made by Prof. Bond and Commodore Owen, for the determination of the longitude of the observatory. ”

“ His son, G. P. Bond, wrote of this instrument, years afterwards: “It is no rude affair, but every part, especially the graduation, the most difficult of all, shows the neatness, patience, and accuracy of a practised artist. A better witness to the progress he had already made in astronomy could not be desired. It is all that the materials would admit of, and proves that he must have been, even then, irrevocably devoted to astronomy.” ”

“ The work in progress in Peru will give other series of plates offering equal facilities for the study at Cambridge of that part of the sky which is beyond our southern horizon. Some of the results which these extensive investigations of the light, the spectra and the positions of the stars will yield will anticipate the doings of other great observatories of the world. But there is no necessary limit at stars of the magnitudes named; there will remain other worlds to conquer. ”

“ That this experience with the comet was a fortunate turning point in Mr. Bond’s career is evinced by Prof. Farrar’s genial recognition in the paper published in the organ of American Science, where he might excusably have ignored so crude a record as that which was the best Mr. Bond could supply, and by the appearance not long afterwards, at the west end of the Hawes house in Dorchester, of a loaned telescope belonging to Harvard College. ”

“ Alger to cast a stand for the transit instrument, a small one, which I think belonged to Harvard College. From this time he began to live among the stars.”
The facts thus recorded of the beginning of Mr. Bond’s career show his zeal and watchfulness as an amateur in astronomy, and that up to the date of the comet’s appearance, and later, he had no personal acquaintance with men of science in the vicinity, since he informed none of them of what he had seen. ”

“ This way is through the establishment of a central agency to which funds might be sent, to be expended on observatory or other work, so as to attain the best results, independently of all local and personal conditions. No institution appears to be better adapted for such service than Harvard College. It is financially strong ”

“ The magnitude of this undertaking, as a whole, surpassed anything ever attempted in any other country.
In his report, reviewing the year 1848, the director says; “Some experiments made with the daguerreotype and talbotype processes for obtaining impressions of the sun’s image formed by the telescope have not been attended with complete success; however, we do not despair of ultimate success.” ”

“ The modern methods of advancing science—the laboratory, the observatory, the museum, the expedition, with their complex equipment—demand administrative ability of a high order. Science has been able to supply presidents, not only to the great technical schools, but also to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and other universities. Still, it is unfortunate that the man of science can not look forward to promotion in the direction of his own work. He becomes a college professor or the like at a comparatively early age with a moderate salary. ”

“ Professor Edward C. Pickering, Director of the Harvard Observatory, has suggested that astronomers the world over resolve themselves into a committee of the whole for the attack of great questions, the work to be duly parcelled out among the observatories best placed and equipped for specific tasks, to the end that repetition be avoided and a single, comprehensive plan be pursued. Not only in astronomy but in every field of science such concerted attack would have great value. ”

“ He must constantly ask himself, while using his instruments, "If I do this or that, what will happen, and why?" Now, it is presumably to forward this branch of Astronomy—Spherical Astronomy—that the college observatory was founded, and, if it does this in the right way, it is of great value. To do this properly, requires but a small outlay. A small equatorial of, say, four inches aperture, with circles divided to one minute, will serve to exhibit every thing of interest to the general observer, and will give a student much more opportunity for work than he can possibly find time to improve. ”

“ The study of astronomy was for many years a favorite avocation of this illustrious statesman. He often observed and recorded the phenomena of the heavens. He read the works of Newton, Schubert, Lalande, Biot and Lacroix. A report of Adams respecting the establishment of a national observatory has been pronounced by a competent judge "well worthy the perusal of every lover of the exalted science of astronomy, both for the richness of its information and the beauty of its eloquence." In 1823 he offered to give a thousand dollars towards the establishment of an observatory at Harvard University. ”

“ History will be just to his memory, and will not fail to record his early interest and strenuous zeal for the advancement of astronomical science, and the influence his eloquence and untiring perseverance, in illustrating its importance with an unsurpassed array of appropriate learning, exerted on the public mind in the United States, not only in effecting the establishment of other Astronomical Observatories, but absolutely compelling party spirit, notwithstanding its open, bitter animosity, to lay the foundation of that Observatory which now bears the name of "National." ”