The Reminiscences of an Astronomer Part 15

"It is not his fault," was the reply; "he nearly lost his eyesight in the civil war, and it is hard for him to see at all." In the view of counsel that explanation ought to have settled the case in his favor. It did not, however, but "influence" had no difficulty in making itself more successful in another field.

Among my first steps was that of getting a new office in the top of the Corcoran Building, then just completed. It was large and roomy enough to allow quite a number of a.s.sistants around me.

Much of the work was then, as now, done by the piece, or annual job, the computers on it very generally working at their homes.

This offers many advantages for such work; the government is not burdened with an officer who must be paid his regular monthly salary whether he supplies his work or not, and whom it is unpleasant and difficult to get rid of in case of sickness or breakdown of any sort. The work is paid for when furnished, and the main trouble of administration saved. It is only necessary to have a brief report from time to time, showing that the work is actually going on.

I began with a careful examination of the relation of prices to work, making an estimate of the time probably necessary to do each job.

Among the performers of the annual work were several able and eminent professors at various universities and schools. I found that they were being paid at pretty high professional prices. I recall with great satisfaction that I was able to reduce the prices and, step by step, concentrate all the work in Washington, without detriment to the pleasant relations I sustained with these men, some of them old and intimate friends. These economies went on increasing year by year, and every dollar that was saved went into the work of making the tables necessary for the future use of the Ephemeris.

The programme of work which I mapped out, involved, as one branch of it, a discussion of all the observations of value on the positions of the sun, moon, and planets, and incidentally, on the bright fixed stars, made at the leading observatories of the world since 1750.

One might almost say it involved repeating, in a s.p.a.ce of ten or fifteen years, an important part of the world's work in astronomy for more than a century past. Of course, this was impossible to carry out in all its completeness. In most cases what I was obliged practically to confine myself to was a correction of the reductions already made and published. Still, the job was one with which I do not think any astronomical one ever before attempted by a single person could compare in extent. The number of meridian observations on the sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars alone numbered 62,030. They were made at the observatories of Greenwich, Paris, Konigsberg, Pulkowa, Cape of Good Hope,--but I need not go over the entire list, which numbers thirteen.

The other branches of the work were such as I have already described,--the computation of the formulae for the perturbation of the various planets by each other. As I am writing for the general reader, I need not go into any further technical description of this work than I have already done. Something about my a.s.sistants may, however, be of interest. They were too numerous to be all recalled individually. In fact, when the work was at its height, the office was, in the number of its scientific employees, nearly on an equality with the three or four greatest observatories of the world.

One of my experiences has affected my judgment on the general morale of the educated young men of our country. In not a single case did I ever have an a.s.sistant who tried to shirk his duty to the government, nor do I think there was more than a single case in which one tried to contest my judgment of his own merits, or those of his work.

I adopted the principle that promotion should be by merit rather than by seniority, and my decisions on that matter were always accepted without complaint. I recall two men who voluntarily resigned when they found that, through failure of health or strength, they were unable to properly go on with their work. In frankness I must admit that there was one case in which I had a very disagreeable contest in getting rid of a learned gentleman whose practical powers were so far inferior to his theoretical knowledge that he was almost useless in the office. He made the fiercest and most determined fight in which I was ever engaged, but I must, in justice to all concerned, say that his defect was not in will to do his work but in the requisite power.

Officially I was not without fault, because, in the press of matters requiring my attention, I had entrusted too much to him, and did not discover his deficiencies until some mischief had been done.

Perhaps the most eminent and interesting man a.s.sociated with me during this period was Mr. George W. Hill, who will easily rank as the greatest master of mathematical astronomy during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The only defect of his make-up of which I have reason to complain is the lack of the teaching faculty.

Had this been developed in him, I could have learned very much from him that would have been to my advantage. In saying this I have one especial point in mind. In beginning my studies in celestial mechanics, I lacked the guidance of some one conversant with the subject on its practical side. Two systems of computing planetary perturbations had been used, one by Leverrier, while the other was invented by Hansen. The former method was, in principle, of great simplicity, while the latter seemed to be very complex and even clumsy. I naturally supposed that the man who computed the direction of the planet Neptune before its existence was known, must be a master of the whole subject, and followed the lines he indicated.

I gradually discovered the contrary, and introduced modified methods, but did not entirely break away from the old trammels. Hill had never been bound by them, and used Hansen's method from the beginning.

Had he given me a few demonstrations of its advantages, I should have been saved a great deal of time and labor.

The part a.s.signed to Hill was about the most difficult in the whole work,--the theory of Jupiter and Saturn. Owing to the great ma.s.s of these "giant planets," the inequalities of their motion, especially in the case of Saturn, affected by the attraction of Jupiter, is greater than in the case of the other planets. Leverrier failed to attain the necessary exactness in his investigation of their motion.

Hill had done some work on the subject at his home in Nyack Turnpike before I took charge of the office. He now moved to Washington, and seriously began the complicated numerical calculations which his task involved. I urged that he should accept the a.s.sistance of less skilled computers; but he declined it from a desire to do the entire work himself. Computers to make the duplicate computations necessary to guard against accidental numerical errors on his part were all that he required. He labored almost incessantly for about ten years, when he handed in the ma.n.u.script of what now forms Volume IV. of the "Astronomical Papers."

A pleasant incident occurred in 1884, when the office was honored by a visit from Professor John C. Adams of England, the man who, independently of Leverrier, had computed the place of Neptune, but failed to receive the lion's share of the honor because it happened to be the computations of the Frenchman and not his which led immediately to the discovery of the planet. It was of the greatest interest to me to bring two such congenial spirits as Adams and Hill together.

It would be difficult to find a more impressive example than that afforded by Hill's career, of the difficulty of getting the public to form and act upon sane judgments in such cases as his.

The world has the highest admiration for astronomical research, and in this sentiment our countrymen are foremost. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote it. They pay good salaries to professors who chance to get a certain official position where they may do good work. And here was perhaps the greatest living master in the highest and most difficult field of astronomy, winning world-wide recognition for his country in the science, and receiving the salary of a department clerk. I never wrestled harder with a superior than I did with Hon. R. W. Thompson, Secretary of the Navy, about 1880, to induce him to raise Mr. Hill's salary from $1200 to $1400.

It goes without saying that Hill took even less interest in the matter than I did. He did not work for pay, but for the love of science. His little farm at Nyack Turnpike sufficed for his home, and supplied his necessities so long as he lived there, and all he asked in Washington was the means of going on with his work.

The deplorable feature of the situation is, that this devotion to his science, instead of commanding due recognition on the public and official side, rather tended to create an inadequate impression of the importance of what he was doing. That I could not secure for him at least the highest official consideration is among the regretful memories of my official life.

Although, so far as the amount of labor is concerned, Mr. Hill's work upon Jupiter and Saturn is the most ma.s.sive he ever undertook, his really great scientific merit consists in the development of a radically new method of computing the inequalities of the moon's motion, which is now being developed and applied by Professor E. W. Brown. His most marked intellectual characteristic is the eminently practical character of his researches. He does not aim so much at elegant mathematical formulae, as to determine with the greatest precision the actual quant.i.ties of which mathematical astronomy stands in need. In this direction he has left every investigator of recent or present time far in the rear.

After the computations on Jupiter and Saturn were made, it was necessary to correct their orbits and make tables of their motions.

This work I left entirely in Mr. Hill's hands, the only requirement being that the ma.s.ses of the planets and other data which he adopted should be uniform with those I used in the rest of the work. His tables were practically completed in ma.n.u.script at the beginning of 1892. When they were through, doubtless feeling, as well he might, that he had done his whole duty to science and the government, Mr. Hill resigned his office and returned to his home.

During the summer he paid a visit to Europe, and visiting the Cambridge University, was honored with the degree of Doctor of Laws, along with a distinguished company, headed by the Duke of Edinburgh.

One of the pleasant things to recall was that, during the fifteen years of our connection, there was never the slightest dissension or friction between us.

I may add that the computations which he made on the theory of Jupiter and Saturn are all preserved complete and in perfect form at the Nautical Almanac Office, so that, in case any question should arise respecting them in future generations, the point can be cleared up by an inspection.

In 1874, three years before I left the observatory, I was informed by Dr. Henry Draper that he had a mechanical a.s.sistant who showed great fondness for and proficiency in some work in mathematical astronomy. I asked to see what he was doing, and received a collection of papers of a remarkable kind. They consisted mainly of some of the complicated developments of celestial mechanics.

In returning them I wrote to Draper that, when I was ready to begin my work on the planetary theories, I must have his man,--could he possibly be spared? But he came to me before the time, while I was carrying on some investigations with aid afforded by the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution. Of course, when I took charge of the Nautical Almanac Office, he was speedily given employment on its work. His name was John Meier, a Swiss by birth, evidently from the peasant cla.s.s, but who had nevertheless been a pupil of Professor Rudolph Wolf at Zurich. Emigrating to this country, he was, during the civil war, an engineer's mate or something of that grade in the navy. He was the most perfect example of a mathematical machine that I ever had at command. Of original power,--the faculty of developing new methods and discovering new problems, he had not a particle. Happily for his peace of mind, he was totally devoid of worldly ambition. I had only to prepare the fundamental data for him, explain what was wanted, write down the matters he was to start with, and he ground out day after day the most complicated algebraic and trigonometrical computations with untiring diligence and almost unerring accuracy.

But a dark side of the picture showed itself very suddenly and unexpectedly in a few years. For the most selfish reasons, if for no others, I desired that his peace of mind should be undisturbed.

The result was that I was from time to time appealed to as an arbitrator of family dissensions, in which it was impossible to say which side was right and which wrong. Then, as a prophylactic against malaria, his wife administered doses of whiskey. The rest of the history need not be told. It ill.u.s.trates the maxim that "blood will tell," which I fear is as true in scientific work as in any other field of human activity.

A man of totally different blood, the best in fact, entered the office shortly before Meier broke down. This was Mr. Cleveland Keith, son of Professor Reuel Keith, who was one of the professors at the observatory when it was started. His patience and ability led to his gradually taking the place of a foreman in supervising the work pertaining to the reduction of the observations, and the construction of the tables of the planets. Without his help, I fear I should never have brought the tables to a conclusion. He died in 1896, just as the final results of the work were being put together.

High among the troublesome problems with which I had to deal while in charge of the Nautical Almanac, was that of universal time.

All but the youngest of my readers will remember the period when every railway had its own meridian, by the time of which its trains were run, which had to be changed here and there in the case of the great trunk lines, and which seldom agreed with the local time of a place.

In the Pennsylvania station at Pittsburg were three different times; one that of Philadelphia, one of some point farther west, and the third the local Pittsburg time. The traveler was constantly liable to miss a train, a connection, or an engagement by the doubt and confusion thus arising.

This was remedied in 1883 by the adoption of our present system of standard times of four different meridians, the introduction of which was one of the great reforms of our generation. When this change was made, I was in favor of using Washington time as the standard, instead of going across the ocean to Greenwich for a meridian.

But those who were pressing the measure wanted to have a system for the whole world, and for this purpose the meridian of Greenwich was the natural one. Practically our purpose was served as well by the Greenwich meridian as it would have been by that of Washington.

The year following this change an international meridian conference was held at Washington, on the invitation of our government, to agree upon a single prime meridian to be adopted by the whole world in measuring longitudes and indicating time.

Of course the meridian of Greenwich was the only one that would answer the purpose. This had already been adopted by several leading maritime nations, including ourselves as well as Great Britain.

It was merely a question of getting the others to fall into line.

No conference was really necessary for this purpose, because the dissentients caused much more inconvenience to themselves than to any one else by their divergent practice. The French held out against the adoption of the Greenwich meridian, and proposed one pa.s.sing through Behring Strait. I was not a member of the conference, but was invited to submit my views, which I did orally. I ventured to point out to the Frenchmen that the meridian of Greenwich also belonged to France, pa.s.sing near Havre and intersecting their country from north to south.

It was therefore as much a French as an English meridian, and could be adopted without any sacrifice of national position. But they were not convinced, and will probably hold out until England adopts the metric system, on which occasion it is said that they will be prepared to adopt the Greenwich meridian.

One proceeding of the conference ill.u.s.trates a general characteristic of reformers. Almost without debate, certainly without adequate consideration, the conference adopted a recommendation that astronomers and navigators should change their system of reckoning time. Both these cla.s.ses have, from time immemorial, begun the day at noon, because this system was most natural and convenient, when the question was not that of a measure of time for daily life, but simply to indicate with mathematical precision the moment of an event.

Navigators had begun the day at noon, because the observations of the sun, on which the lat.i.tude of a ship depends, are necessarily made at noon, and the run of the ship is worked up immediately afterward.

The proposed change would have produced unending confusion in astronomical nomenclature, owing to the difficulty of knowing in all cases which system of time was used in any given treatise or record of observations. I therefore felt compelled, in the general interest of science and public convenience, to oppose the project with all my power, suggesting that, if the new system must be put into operation, we should wait until the beginning of a new century.

"I hope you will succeed in having its adoption postponed until 1900," wrote Airy to me, "and when 1900 comes, I hope you will further succeed in having it again postponed until the year 2000."

The German official astronomers, and indeed most of the official ones everywhere, opposed the change, but the efforts on the other side were vigorously continued. The British Admiralty was strongly urged to introduce the change into the Nautical Almanac, and the question of doing this was warmly discussed in various scientific journals.

One result of this movement was that, in 1886, Rear-Admiral George H. Belknap, superintendent of the Naval Observatory, and myself were directed to report on the question. I drew up a very elaborate report, discussing the subject especially in its relations to navigation, pointing out in the strongest terms I could the danger of placing in the hands of navigators an almanac in which the numbers were given in a form so different from that to which they were accustomed. If they chanced to forget the change, the results of their computations might be out to any extent, to the great danger and confusion of their reckoning, while not a solitary advantage would be gained by it.

There is some reason to suppose that this doc.u.ment found its way to the British Admiralty, but I never heard a word further on the subject except that it ceased to be discussed in London. A few years later some unavailing efforts were made to revive the discussion, but the twentieth century is started without this confusing change being introduced into the astronomical ephemerides and nautical almanacs of the world, and navigators are still at liberty to practice the system they find most convenient.

In 1894 I had succeeded in bringing so much of the work as pertained to the reduction of the observations and the determination of the elements of the planets to a conclusion. So far as the larger planets were concerned, it only remained to construct the necessary tables, which, however, would be a work of several years.

With the year 1896 came what was perhaps the most important event in my whole plan. I have already remarked upon the confusion which pervaded the whole system of exact astronomy, arising from the diversity of the fundamental data made use of by the astronomers of foreign countries and various inst.i.tutions in their work. It was, I think, rather exceptional that any astronomical result was based on entirely h.o.m.ogeneous and consistent data. To remedy this state of things and start the exact astronomy of the twentieth century on one basis for the whole world, was one of the objects which I had mapped out from the beginning. Dr. A. M. W. Downing, superintendent of the British Nautical Almanac, was struck by the same consideration and animated by the same motive. He had especially in view to avoid the duplication of work which arose from the same computations being made in different countries for the same result, whereby much unnecessary labor was expended. The field of astronomy is so vast, and the quant.i.ty of work urgently required to be done so far beyond the power of any one nation, that a combination to avoid all such waste was extremely desirable. When, in 1895, my preliminary results were published, he took the initiative in a project for putting the idea into effect, by proposing an international conference of the directors of the four leading ephemerides, to agree upon a uniform system of data for all computations pertaining to the fixed stars.

This conference was held in Paris in May, 1896. After several days of discussion, it resolved that, beginning with 1901, a certain set of constants should be used in all the ephemerides, substantially the same as those I had worked out, but without certain ulterior, though practically unimportant, modifications which I had applied for the sake of symmetry. My determination of the positions and motions of the bright fixed stars, which I had not yet completed, was adopted in advance for the same purpose, I agreeing to complete it if possible in time for use in 1901. I also agreed to make a new determination of the constant of precession, that which I had used in my previous work not being quite satisfactory. All this by no means filled the field of exact astronomy, yet what was left outside of it was of comparatively little importance for the special object in view.

More than a year after the conference I was taken quite by surprise by a vigorous attack on its work and conclusions on the part of Professor Lewis Boss, director of the Dudley Observatory, warmly seconded by Mr. S. C. Chandler of Cambridge, the editor of the "Astronomical Journal." The main grounds of attack were two in number. The time was not ripe for concluding upon a system of permanent astronomical standards. Besides this, the astronomers of the country should have been consulted before a decision was reached.

Ultimately the attack led to a result which may appear curious to the future astronomer. He will find the foreign ephemerides using uniform data worked out in the office of the "American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac" at Washington for the years beginning with 1901.

He will find that these same data, after being partially adopted in the ephemeris for 1900, were thrown out in 1901, and the antiquated ones reintroduced in the main body of the ephemeris. The new ones appear simply in an appendix.

As, under the operation of law, I should be retired from active service in the March following the conference, it became a serious question whether I should be able to finish the work that had been mapped out, as well as the planetary tables. Mr. Secretary Herbert, on his own motion so far as I know, sent for me to inquire into the subject. The result of the conference was a movement on his part to secure an appropriation somewhat less than the highest salary of a professor, to compensate me for the completion of the work after my retirement. The House Committee on Appropriations, ever mindful of economy in any new item, reduced the amount to a clerical salary.

The committee of conference compromised on a mean between the two.

It happened that the work on the stars was not specified in the law,--only the tables of the planets. In consequence I had no legal right to go on with the former, although the ephemerides of Europe were waiting for the results. After much trouble an arrangement was effected under which the computers on the work were not to be prohibited from consulting me in its prosecution.

Astronomical work is never really done and finished. The questions growing out of the agreement or non-agreement of the tables with observations still remain to be studied, and require an immense amount of computation. In what country and by whom these computations will be made no one can now tell. The work which I most regretted to leave unfinished was that on the motion of the moon. As I have already said, this work is complete to 1750. The computations for carrying it on from 1750 to the present time were perhaps three fourths done when I had to lay them aside. In 1902, when the Carnegie Inst.i.tution was organized, it made a grant for supplying me with the computing a.s.sistance and other facilities necessary for the work, and the Secretary of the Navy allowed me the use of the old computations.

Under such auspices the work was recommenced in March, 1903.

So far as I can recall, I never asked anything from the government which would in any way promote my personal interests. The only exception, if such it is, is that during the civil war I joined with other professors in asking that we be put on the same footing with other staff corps of the navy as regarded pay and rank. So far as my views were concerned, the rank was merely a _pro forma_ matter, as I never could see any sound reason for a man pursuing astronomical duties caring to have military rank.