The growth of this infant city, then small even for an infant, into the
great commercial metropolis of the West has been the just pride of its
people and the wonder of the world. I mention it now because of a
remarkable coincidence. With this civic growth has quietly gone on
another, little noted by the great world, and yet in its way equally
wonderful and equally gratifying to the pride of those who measure
greatness by intellectual progress. Taking knowledge of the universe as
a measure of progress, I wish to invite attention to the fact that
American astronomy began with your city, and has slowly but surely kept
pace with it, until to-day our country stands second only to Germany in
the number of researches being prosecuted, and second to none in the
number of men who have gained the highest recognition by their labors.
In 1836 Professor Albert Hopkins, of Williams College, and Professor
Elias Loomis, of Western Reserve College, Ohio, both commenced little
observatories. Professor Loomis went to Europe for all his instruments,
but Hopkins was able even then to get some of his in this country.
Shortly afterwards a little wooden structure was erected by Captain
Gilliss on Capitol Hill, at Washington, and supplied with a transit
instrument for observing moon culminations, in conjunction with Captain
Wilkes, who was then setting out on his exploring expedition to the
southern hemisphere. The date of these observatories was practically
the same as that on which a charter for the city of Chicago was
obtained from the legislature. With their establishment the population
of your city had increased to 703.
The next decade, 1840 to 1850, was that in which our practical
astronomy seriously commenced. The little observatory of Captain
Gilliss was replaced by the Naval, then called the National
Observatory, erected at Washington during the years 1843-44, and fitted
out with what were then the most approved instruments. About the same
time the appearance of the great comet of 1843 led the citizens of
Boston to erect the observatory of Harvard College. Thus it is little
more than a half-century since the two principal observatories in the
United States were established. But we must not for a moment suppose
that the mere erection of an observatory can mark an epoch in
scientific history. What must make the decade of which I speak ever
memorable in American astronomy was not merely the erection of
buildings, but the character of the work done by astronomers away from
them as well as in them.
The National Observatory soon became famous by two remarkable steps
which raised our country to an important position among those applying
modern science to practical uses. One of these consisted of the
researches of Sears Cook Walker on the motion of the newly discovered
planet Neptune. He was the first astronomer to determine fairly good
elements of the orbit of that planet, and, what is yet more remarkable,
he was able to trace back the movement of the planet in the heavens for
half a century and to show that it had been observed as a fixed star by
Lalande in 1795, without the observer having any suspicion of the true
character of the object.
The other work to which I refer was the application to astronomy and to
the determination of longitudes of the chronographic method of
registering transits of stars or other phenomena requiring an exact
record of the instant of their occurrence. It is to be regretted that
the history of this application has not been fully written. In some
points there seems to be as much obscurity as with the discovery of
ether as an anaesthetic, which took place about the same time. Happily,
no such contest has been fought over the astronomical as over the
surgical discovery, the fact being that all who were engaged in the
application of the new method were more anxious to perfect it than they
were to get credit for themselves. We know that Saxton, of the Coast
Survey; Mitchell and Locke, of Cincinnati; Bond, at Cambridge, as well
as Walker, and other astronomers at the Naval Observatory, all worked
at the apparatus; that Maury seconded their efforts with untiring zeal;
that it was used to determine the longitude of Baltimore as early as
1844 by Captain Wilkes, and that it was put into practical use in
recording observations at the Naval Observatory as early as 1846.
At the Cambridge Observatory the two Bonds, father and son, speedily
began to show the stuff of which the astronomer is made. A well-devised
system of observations was put in operation. The discovery of the dark
ring of Saturn and of a new satellite to that planet gave additional
fame to the establishment.
Nor was activity confined to the observational side of the science. The
same decade of which I speak was marked by the beginning of Professor
Pierce's mathematical work, especially his determination of the
perturbations of Uranus and Neptune. At this time commenced the work of
Dr. B. A. Gould, who soon became the leading figure in American
astronomy. Immediately on graduating at Harvard in 1845, he determined
to devote all the energies of his life to the prosecution of his
favorite science. He studied in Europe for three years, took the
doctor's degree at Gottingen, came home, founded the Astronomical
Journal, and took an active part in that branch of the work of the
Coast Survey which included the determination of longitudes by
astronomical methods.
An episode which may not belong to the history of astronomy must be
acknowledged to have had a powerful influence in exciting public
interest in that science. Professor O. M. Mitchell, the founder and
first director of the Cincinnati Observatory, made the masses of our
intelligent people acquainted with the leading facts of astronomy by
courses of lectures which, in lucidity and eloquence, have never been
excelled. The immediate object of the lectures was to raise funds for
establishing his observatory and fitting it out with a fine telescope.
The popular interest thus excited in the science had an important
effect in leading the public to support astronomical research. If
public support, based on public interest, is what has made the present
fabric of American astronomy possible, then should we honor the name of
a man whose enthusiasm leavened the masses of his countrymen with
interest in our science.
The Civil War naturally exerted a depressing influence upon our
scientific activity. The cultivator of knowledge is no less patriotic
than his fellow-citizens, and vies with them in devotion to the public
welfare. The active interest which such cultivators took, first in the
prosecution of the war and then in the restoration of the Union,
naturally distracted their attention from their favorite pursuits. But
no sooner was political stability reached than a wave of intellectual
activity set in, which has gone on increasing up to the present time.
If it be true that never before in our history has so much attention
been given to education as now; that never before did so many men
devote themselves to the diffusion of knowledge, it is no less true
that never was astronomical work so energetically pursued among us as
at the present time.
One deplorable result of the Civil War was that Gould's Astronomical
Journal had to be suspended. Shortly after the restoration of peace,
instead of re-establishing the journal, its founder conceived the
project of exploring the southern heavens. The northern hemisphere
being the seat of civilization, that portion of the sky which could not
be seen from our latitudes was comparatively neglected. What had been
done in the southern hemisphere was mostly the occasional work of
individuals and of one or two permanent observatories. The latter were
so few in number and so meagre in their outfit that a splendid field
was open to the inquirer. Gould found the patron which he desired in
the government of the Argentine Republic, on whose territory he erected
what must rank in the future as one of the memorable astronomical
establishments of the world. His work affords a most striking example
of the principle that the astronomer is more important than his
instruments. Not only were the means at the command of the Argentine
Observatory slender in the extreme when compared with those of the
favored institutions of the North, but, from the very nature of the
case, the Argentine Republic could not supply trained astronomers. The
difficulties thus growing out of the administration cannot be
overestimated. And yet the sixteen great volumes in which the work of
the institution has been published will rank in the future among the
classics of astronomy.
Another wonderful focus of activity, in which one hardly knows whether
he ought most to admire the exhaustless energy or the admirable
ingenuity which he finds displayed, is the Harvard Observatory. Its
work has been aided by gifts which have no parallel in the liberality
that prompted them. Yet without energy and skill such gifts would have
been useless. The activity of the establishment includes both
hemispheres. Time would fail to tell how it has not only mapped out
important regions of the heavens from the north to the south pole, but
analyzed the rays of light which come from hundreds of thousands of
stars by recording their spectra in permanence on photographic plates.
The work of the establishment is so organized that a new star cannot
appear in any part of the heavens nor a known star undergo any
noteworthy change without immediate detection by the photographic eye
of one or more little telescopes, all-seeing and never-sleeping
policemen that scan the heavens unceasingly while the astronomer may
sleep, and report in the morning every case of irregularity in the
proceedings of the heavenly bodies.
Yet another example, showing what great results may be obtained with
limited means, is afforded by the Lick Observatory, on Mount Hamilton,
California. During the ten years of its activity its astronomers have
made it known the world over by works and discoveries too varied and
numerous to be even mentioned at the present time.
The astronomical work of which I have thus far spoken has been almost
entirely that done at observatories. I fear that I may in this way have
strengthened an erroneous impression that the seat of important
astronomical work is necessarily connected with an observatory. It must
be admitted that an institution which has a local habitation and a
magnificent building commands public attention so strongly that
valuable work done elsewhere may be overlooked. A very important part
of astronomical work is done away from telescopes and meridian circles
and requires nothing but a good library for its prosecution. One who is
devoted to this side of the subject may often feel that the public does
not appreciate his work at its true relative value from the very fact
that he has no great buildings or fine instruments to show. I may
therefore be allowed to claim as an important factor in the American
astronomy of the last half-century an institution of which few have
heard and which has been overlooked because there was nothing about it
to excite attention.
In 1849 the American Nautical Almanac office was established by a
Congressional appropriation. The title of this publication is somewhat
misleading in suggesting a simple enlargement of the family almanac
which the sailor is to hang up in his cabin for daily use. The fact is
that what started more than a century ago as a nautical almanac has
since grown into an astronomical ephemeris for the publication of
everything pertaining to times, seasons, eclipses, and the motions of
the heavenly bodies. It is the work in which astronomical observations
made in all the great observatories of the world are ultimately
utilized for scientific and public purposes. Each of the leading
nations of western Europe issues such a publication. When the
preparation and publication of the American ephemeris was decided upon
the office was first established in Cambridge, the seat of Harvard
University, because there could most readily be secured the technical
knowledge of mathematics and theoretical astronomy necessary for the
work.
A field of activity was thus opened, of which a number of able young
men who have since earned distinction in various walks of life availed
themselves. The head of the office, Commander Davis, adopted a policy
well fitted to promote their development. He translated the classic
work of Gauss, Theoria Motus Corporum Celestium, and made the office a
sort of informal school, not, indeed, of the modern type, but rather
more like the classic grove of Hellas, where philosophers conducted
their discussions and profited by mutual attrition. When, after a few
years of experience, methods were well established and a routine
adopted, the office was removed to Washington, where it has since
remained. The work of preparing the ephemeris has, with experience,
been reduced to a matter of routine which may be continued
indefinitely, with occasional changes in methods and data, and
improvements to meet the increasing wants of investigators.
The mere preparation of the ephemeris includes but a small part of the
work of mathematical calculation and investigation required in
astronomy. One of the great wants of the science to-day is the
reduction of the observations made during the first half of the present
century, and even during the last half of the preceding one. The labor
which could profitably be devoted to this work would be more than that
required in any one astronomical observatory. It is unfortunate for
this work that a great building is not required for its prosecution
because its needfulness is thus very generally overlooked by that
portion of the public interested in the progress of science. An
organization especially devoted to it is one of the scientific needs of
our time.
In such an epoch-making age as the present it is dangerous to cite any
one step as making a new epoch. Yet it may be that when the historian
of the future reviews the science of our day he will find the most
remarkable feature of the astronomy of the last twenty years of our
century to be the discovery that this steadfast earth of which the
poets have told us is not, after all, quite steadfast; that the north
and south poles move about a very little, describing curves so
complicated that they have not yet been fully marked out. The periodic
variations of latitude thus brought about were first suspected about
1880, and announced with some modest assurance by Kustner, of Berlin, a
few years later. The progress of the views of astronomical opinion from
incredulity to confidence was extremely slow until, about 1890,
Chandler, of the United States, by an exhaustive discussion of
innumerable results of observations, showed that the latitude of every
point on the earth was subject to a double oscillation, one having a
period of a year, the other of four hundred and twenty-seven days.
Notwithstanding the remarkable parallel between the growth of American
astronomy and that of your city, one cannot but fear that if a foreign
observer had been asked only half a dozen years ago at what point in
the United States a great school of theoretical and practical
astronomy, aided by an establishment for the exploration of the
heavens, was likely to be established by the munificence of private
citizens, he would have been wiser than most foreigners had he guessed
Chicago. Had this place been suggested to him, I fear he would have
replied that were it possible to utilize celestial knowledge in
acquiring earthly wealth, here would be the most promising seat for
such a school. But he would need to have been a little wiser than his
generation to reflect that wealth is at the base of all progress in
knowledge and the liberal arts; that it is only when men are relieved
from the necessity of devoting all their energies to the immediate
wants of life that they can lead the intellectual life, and that we
should therefore look to the most enterprising commercial centre as the
likeliest seat for a great scientific institution.
Now we have the school, and we have the observatory, which we hope will
in the near future do work that will cast lustre on the name of its
founder as well as on the astronomers who may be associated with it.
You will, I am sure, pardon me if I make some suggestions on the
subject of the future needs of the establishment. We want this newly
founded institution to be a great success, to do work which shall show
that the intellectual productiveness of your community will not be
allowed to lag behind its material growth The public is very apt to
feel that when some munificent patron of science has mounted a great
telescope under a suitable dome, and supplied all the apparatus which
the astronomer wants to use, success is assured. But such is not the
case. The most important requisite, one more difficult to command than
telescopes or observatories, may still be wanting. A great telescope is
of no use without a man at the end of it, and what the telescope may do
depends more upon this appendage than upon the instrument itself. The
place which telescopes and observatories have taken in astronomical
history are by no means proportional to their dimensions. Many a great
instrument has been a mere toy in the hands of its owner. Many a small
one has become famous.
Twenty years ago there was here in your own city a modest little
instrument which, judged by its size, could not hold up its head with
the great ones even of that day. It was the private property of a young
man holding no scientific position and scarcely known to the public.
And yet that little telescope is to-day among the famous ones of the
world, having made memorable advances in the astronomy of double stars,
and shown its owner to be a worthy successor of the Herschels and
Struves in that line of work.
A hundred observers might have used the appliances of the Lick
Observatory for a whole generation without finding the fifth satellite
of Jupiter; without successfully photographing the cloud forms of the
Milky Way; without discovering the extraordinary patches of nebulous
light, nearly or quite invisible to the human eye, which fill some
regions of the heavens.
When I was in Zurich last year I paid a visit to the little, but not
unknown, observatory of its famous polytechnic school. The professor of
astronomy was especially interested in the observations of the sun with
the aid of the spectroscope, and among the ingenious devices which he
described, not the least interesting was the method of photographing
the sun by special rays of the spectrum, which had been worked out at
the Kenwood Observatory in Chicago. The Kenwood Observatory is not, I
believe, in the eye of the public, one of the noteworthy institutions
of your city which every visitor is taken to see, and yet this
invention has given it an important place in the science of our day.
Should you ask me what are the most hopeful features in the great
establishment which you are now dedicating, I would say that they are
not alone to be found in the size of your unequalled telescope, nor in
the cost of the outfit, but in the fact that your authorities have
shown their appreciation of the requirements of success by adding to
the material outfit of the establishment the three men whose works I
have described.
Gentlemen of the trustees, allow me to commend to your fostering care
the men at the end of the telescope. The constitution of the astronomer
shows curious and interesting features. If he is destined to advance
the science by works of real genius, he must, like the poet, be born,
not made. The born astronomer, when placed in command of a telescope,
goes about using it as naturally and effectively as the babe avails
itself of its mother's breast. He sees intuitively what less gifted men
have to learn by long study and tedious experiment. He is moved to
celestial knowledge by a passion which dominates his nature. He can no
more avoid doing astronomical work, whether in the line of observations
or research, than a poet can chain his Pegasus to earth. I do not mean
by this that education and training will be of no use to him. They will
certainly accelerate his early progress. If he is to become great on
the mathematical side, not only must his genius have a bend in that
direction, but he must have the means of pursuing his studies. And yet
I have seen so many failures of men who had the best instruction, and
so many successes of men who scarcely learned anything of their
teachers, that I sometimes ask whether the great American celestial
mechanician of the twentieth century will be a graduate of a university
or of the backwoods.
Is the man thus moved to the exploration of nature by an unconquerable
passion more to be envied or pitied? In no other pursuit does success
come with such certainty to him who deserves it. No life is so
enjoyable as that whose energies are devoted to following out the
inborn impulses of one's nature. The investigator of truth is little
subject to the disappointments which await the ambitious man in other
fields of activity. It is pleasant to be one of a brotherhood extending
over the world, in which no rivalry exists except that which comes out
of trying to do better work than any one else, while mutual admiration
stifles jealousy. And yet, with all these advantages, the experience of
the astronomer may have its dark side. As he sees his field widening
faster than he can advance he is impressed with the littleness of all
that can be done in one short life. He feels the same want of
successors to pursue his work that the founder of a dynasty may feel
for heirs to occupy his throne. He has no desire to figure in history
as a Napoleon of science whose conquests must terminate with his life.
Even during his active career his work may be such a kind as to require
the co-operation of others and the active support of the public. If he
is disappointed in commanding these requirements, if he finds neither
co-operation nor support, if some great scheme to which he may have
devoted much of his life thus proves to be only a castle in the air, he
may feel that nature has dealt hardly with him in not endowing him with
passions like to those of other men.
In treating a theme of perennial interest one naturally tries to fancy
what the future may have in store If the traveller, contemplating the
ruins of some ancient city which in the long ago teemed with the life
and activities of generations of men, sees every stone instinct with
emotion and the dust alive with memories of the past, may he not be
similarly impressed when he feels that he is looking around upon a seat
of future empire--a region where generations yet unborn may take a
leading part in moulding the history of the world? What may we not
expect of that energy which in sixty years has transformed a straggling
village into one of the world's great centres of commerce? May it not
exercise a powerful influence on the destiny not only of the country
but of the world? If so, shall the power thus to be exercised prove an
agent of beneficence, diffusing light and life among nations, or shall
it be the opposite?
The time must come ere long when wealth shall outgrow the field in
which it can be profitably employed. In what direction shall its
possessors then look? Shall they train a posterity which will so use
its power as to make the world better that it has lived in it? Will the
future heir to great wealth prefer the intellectual life to the life of
pleasure?