The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918O'Brien, Frank Michael
History
The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918
O'Brien, Frank Michael
Sun (New York, N.Y. : 1833)
It cannot be said that the whole town buzzed with excitement that day.
Perhaps this first instalment was a bit over the heads of most readers;
it was so technical, so foreign. But in Nassau and Ann Streets,
wherever two newspapermen were gathered together, there was buzzing
enough. What was coming next? Why hadn’t they thought to subscribe to
the Edinburgh _Journal of Science_, with its wonderful supplement?
Nearly four columns of the revelations appeared on the following
day--August 26, 1835. This time the reading public came trooping into
camp, for the _Sun’s_ reprint of the _Journal of Science_ supplement
got beyond the stage of preliminaries and predictions, and began to
tell of what was to be seen on the moon. Scientists and newspapermen
appreciated the detailed description of the mammoth telescope and the
work of placing it, but the public, like a child, wanted the moon--and
got it. Let us plunge in at about the point where the public plunged:
The specimen of lunar vegetation, however, which they had
already seen, had decided a question of too exciting an
interest to induce them to retard its exit. It had demonstrated
that the moon has an atmosphere constituted similarly to our
own, and capable of sustaining organized and, therefore, most
probably, animal life.
“The trees,” says Dr. Grant, “for a period of ten minutes were
of one unvaried kind, and unlike any I have seen except the
largest class of yews in the English churchyards, which they in
some respects resemble. These were followed by a level green
plain which, as measured by the painted circle on our canvas
of forty-nine feet, must have been more than half a mile in
breadth.”
The article had explained that, by means of a great reflector, the
lunar views were thrown upon a big canvas screen behind the telescope.
Then appeared as fine a forest of firs, unequivocal firs, as I
have ever seen cherished in the bosom of my native mountains.
Wearied with the long continuance of these, we greatly reduced
the magnifying power of the microscope without eclipsing either
of the reflectors, and immediately perceived that we had been
insensibly descending, as it were, a mountainous district of
highly diversified and romantic character, and that we were
on the verge of a lake, or inland sea; but of what relative
locality or extent, we were yet too greatly magnified to
determine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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