History of the Harvard College Observatory During the Period 1840-1890Baker, Daniel W.
History
History of the Harvard College Observatory During the Period 1840-1890
Baker, Daniel W.
Harvard College Observatory
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.
These were approved by experience and went into general use elsewhere.
Another of his devices was “for the determination of absolute
personal equation by mechanical means.” Other contrivances, either
wholly original or ingenious modifications of known apparatus, were
an attachment to the spectroscope for automatic recording, being a
modification of the chronograph: a combination of a stationary plane
mirror with a fixed lens of great focal length—from 30 to 40 feet—for
photographing the sun; a later improvement of this, by which the
telescope was reduced to a single fixed lens of long focus and small
aperture, chromatic aberration was avoided and the image on the plate
could be made as large as was convenient for measuring; and a change of
method by which the sun’s image could be taken at the principal focus
of the object glass and not beyond an eye-piece used to enlarge the
image.
In February, 1866, when he took charge of the observatory, the great
equatorial was applied to a series of observations of double, and
especially binary stars. This investigation was continued as steadily
as circumstances would permit till 1872, and the results appear in the
annals. In 1867 the first spectroscope owned by the observatory was
imported, and in 1869 another. Two small direct vision spectroscopes
were also procured during Prof. Winlock’s term.
In 1870 the new meridian circle, a superior instrument, was set up,
and on Nov. 10 of that year was begun the series of observations for
position of stars in the “Cambridge zone,” so called, or that between
50° north and 55° north and overlapping 10′ upon each contiguous zone.
This survey was a joint enterprise conducted by certain of the great
observatories of the world, that of Harvard being one of the two in
this country having a share in the work. On July 4, 1870, was begun a
series of photographs of the sun, and the work was continued nearly
or quite to the end of Prof. Winlock’s term, many hundred photographs
being comprised in the list.
[Illustration: HARVARD OBSERVATORY STATION IN SPAIN.]
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