Edward Charles Pickering, the present director of the observatory, was
appointed in 1876. He was born in Boston and is of the Essex family
of the name, Colonel Timothy Pickering being his great-grandfather.
He is a graduate of the Lawrence Scientific School of the class of
1865. During the next two years he was a teacher of mathematics in
that department of Harvard University. Later and up to the time of
his appointment as director, he was professor of physics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A system of teaching physics called the “laboratory method” was
introduced by him there, and his text book illustrative of the method
has to a great extent been adopted by like institutes. Astronomy, as a
department of physics, came into the general course, and the attention
necessarily given, for the purposes of instruction in the institute,
to the technics of that subject, and to demonstration, served as
preparation and discipline for the official responsibilities which he
afterwards assumed.
He was a member of the Nautical Almanac party for observing in Iowa the
total solar eclipse of 1869, and was in like service in the following
year as a member of the United States Coast Survey party which observed
in Spain a recurrence of that event.
When he came to the directorship he found the observatory to be well
equipped as to instruments and its small working force efficiently
employed. Their number was but five or six, which was all the means of
the institution permitted of.
Like pecuniary restrictions continued until 1879, when a subscription
was completed providing for the institution, $5000 annually for
five years. Since then much larger gifts have been bestowed and
the instrumental equipment, in recent years especially, has been
whatever the latest demands or suggestions of science called for;
the observatory staff has been augmented from time to time, till it
now numbers about 40 persons, and the field of observation has been
extended to include the southern hemisphere of stars.
Upon the premises at Cambridge where in 1876 stood only the main
observatory and a lesser adjunct structure are now eight or ten others,
a cluster of small wooden buildings, domed or otherwise adapted
for astronomical uses, each containing a costly instrument of the
most approved device; and besides these a dwelling house has been
transformed into a hall, or rather a workshop of photography, and makes
the northernmost structure of the little city of science which has
been set upon Summer House hill.
Upon Mt. Wilson, in California, in north latitude, and Mt. Harvard,
in Peru, in south latitude, stand other unpretentious buildings, from
within which observers of the Harvard corps nightly search through the
translucent upper atmosphere of those regions to the respective poles.
This aggregation of means has yielded ample returns; to say which is to
signify that during the period under consideration the institution has
made a noteworthy record, and that its affairs have been guided with
befitting skill and judgment.
The total permanent funds at the beginning of the present term amounted
to about $170,000. The subscription for five years was intended for
immediate expenditure. At the end of that period a permanent fund
of $50,000 was obtained in like manner. In 1885 was added to the
permanent funds the bequest of Robert Treat Paine of his whole estate,
of which $164,198 became at once available. In 1886 was made the first
of a series of annual gifts of large sums of money by Mrs. Anna P.
Draper of New York as a memorial of her husband, the late Prof. Henry
Draper. These gifts have constantly been applied in furtherance of
photographical observation, especially in that line of investigation
which Dr. Draper himself began in his lifetime. In 1887 the bequest
of Uriah A. Boyden, amounting to $238,000, became available. This
bequest has conditions providing for astronomical work at considerable
elevations as free as possible from disturbing or obstructing
conditions of atmosphere. The income of the Paine fund may be applied
generally.
In pursuing the inquiries thus suggested, and others, the observatory
has adhered to its traditions, wherein original investigation has
been directed to the physical rather than the mathematical side of
astronomical science.
In his first annual report the present director outlined the immediate
policy, in the then restricted state of the finances, to be to keep
employed chiefly the two most costly and effective instruments, the
great equatorial and the meridian circle. The latter was already in
constant use in the work of the Cambridge zone.
With reference to the former, the report having named the several
specialties which the great observatories of this country had taken,
each to itself, said: “Photometry offers a field almost wholly
unexplored with large telescopes either in this country or abroad. It
has therefore been selected as that to which the greater portion of the
time of our telescope will be devoted.”
The investigation thus entered upon, together with the zone
observations just mentioned, and the continuation by ampler and in
some particulars radically different methods of investigations in
spectroscopy and photography, have given the institution a wide renown.
But hardly less conspicuous are certain other achievements in the long
list which makes the complete record. Without attempting to give any of
these rank, still less to repeat the list, a few may here be mentioned
upon the ground of their presumed popular interest.
In 1878 the utility of the time signal service was increased by causing
a time ball to be dropped every day at exact noon from a conspicuous
point in Boston within view of the shipping of the harbor. The time was
that of the meridian of the State House in Boston. When the standard
or 75th meridian time went into general use the practice was conformed
thereto. Indeed, the terms of the proposition might be reversed so as
to indicate that, in the final determination, the responsibility was
put upon the observatory to lead off in the matter.
There had been some discussion in the public prints and elsewhere of
the advisability of adopting a common meridian time for large areas.
In the report of the observatory for 1878 the theoretical presentation
of the case which had been made by those advocating the change was
sanctioned, and the new time was recommended as sure to be of public
convenience if generally accepted. General consent was somewhat
slow in its manifestation, but eventually the managers of all the
principal railroads of New England agreed to adopt the plan if the
time-signalling system of the observatory should be made to correspond
in respect to clock connections, time ball, etc.
This was instantly agreed to, and with due prior public notice the
new time went into use Nov. 18, 1883, and the Boston noon ball was
first dropped on that day at exactly five hours later than the noon of
Greenwich.
[Illustration: HARVARD COLLEGE OBSERVATORY.]
[Illustration: HARVARD STATION IN CALIFORNIA.]
In 1880 the full routine of meteorological observation was abandoned,
as several institutions were doing like work. The record of the
observatory in meteorology, which had continuously been kept up for 40
years, was reduced to proper form for printing, and was published in
1889. Certain observations of this kind have, however, been continued
in the record to the present date.
In 1888 a plan of co-operation was agreed upon with the N. E.
Meteorological Society and Mr. A. L. Rotch of the Blue Hill, Mass.,
Observatory, by which their results, which are of a comprehensive
character, have since been published in the annals of the Harvard
Observatory.
In 1877, in co-operation with Miss Mitchell of Vassar College
Observatory and her assistants, observations were made at Cambridge
for determining the longitude of the Vassar Observatory. Between
Feb. 15, 1879, and Jan. 3, 1880, like observations were made in
co-operation with officers of the Winchester Observatory of Yale
College to ascertain the longitude of that institution. Between June 2
and June 23, 1883, similar work was done to fix the longitude of McGill
Observatory in Montreal.
In the summer of 1888 ten evenings were given for observations for the
longitude of Smith College in Northampton. The observers were Miss
Byrd, teacher of astronomy at that college, and Miss Whitney, professor
of astronomy at Vassar College. Harvard’s contribution in the affair
consisted in providing facilities on the spot, including the use of a
transit instrument. These are instances, which among others go to show
that because of infinite painstaking at Harvard in the earlier years
it has become the Mecca to which all on this continent who wish to
be perfectly assured in the matter of longitude may prudently make a
pilgrimage.
In 1881 an arrangement was entered into for prompt communication as to
unusual celestial phenomena, discoveries, etc., among astronomers in
this country and in Europe. A cipher code, the invention of Messrs.
S. C. Chandler and John Ritchie, Jr., of the observatory staff, was
put into use. It is known as the “Science Observer Code,” and as it is
superior in accuracy to former codes has been widely recognized. In
1883 Harvard observatory was made the official distributing centre for
this class of news, by consent of the Smithsonian Institute, which had
previously performed the service.
Upon the occasion of the transit of Mercury across the sun’s disk in
May, 1878, all the available telescopes of the observatory were put to
use. The results, which included many photographs, were satisfactory,
considering the unfavorable weather. During the like transit of Venus,
on Dec. 6, 1882, six telescopes being in use, large additions were made
to the important data which planetary events of this kind may supply.
In August, 1886, a small party provided with instruments belonging
to the observatory made an expedition to Grenada, near the northern
coast of South America, for observation of the total solar eclipse of
that year. The expedition was in charge of Mr. W. H. Pickering, who
afterwards became a member of the observatory corps.
On Jan. 1, 1889, a large party, under the same direction, observed a
recurrence of the event in California. The observations were mainly
photographical. Excellent results were obtained in both cases, though
less in amount in the former, because of unfavorable weather.
Much has been done during the term in cometary investigation, but
latterly comets have been observed, as a rule, only immediately upon
discovery and towards the end of their visible period, or after they
had got beyond the reach of any but the most powerful telescopes.
In the summer of 1883 the director journeyed in Europe and visited
the principal observatories there. In the following annual report he
names as an important result of his journey the obtaining of copies of
unpublished manuscripts of Argelander and Sir William Herschel. The
former are memoranda of observations of variable stars and the latter
of observations made more than 100 years ago of the light of all stars
of Flamsteed’s catalogue.
The work on the Cambridge zone of stars was completed, as respects the
primary plan of observation, on Jan. 26, 1879, and at that stage was
regarded as one of the largest astronomical undertakings ever carried
through in this country.
The reduction of the data was accomplished in 1883, but as was
expected, a necessity for reobservation appeared in certain cases.
This work was done between Oct. 9, 1883 and Aug. 9, 1884. 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 publications of the observatory during the present term in the form
of annals, and as contributions by members of the corps to various
journals of science, have been numerous and extensive. At the beginning
of the term but four volumes of annals had been issued, though about
an equal number were in some stage of progress in the printers’ hands,
publication having gone on slowly from lack of means. At the present
time the continuous series of 22 volumes has been issued, excepting
the second or supplementary parts in two or three instances. These
parts are nearly ready, and the manuscript for about half a dozen more
volumes in regular succession has, in part or whole, been given to the
printer.
A review of what has been done during the present term in the
departments of photometry, spectroscopy and photography will be
comprised in the next and closing number of this series.