Posts Tagged ‘Benjamin Gould’
The All-Cut Come-It
Dr. Rapson put together this display in our Planetarium Gallery. That’s the Dudley’s Comet Seeker telescope, built by Alvan Clark & Co., along with articles from the Astronomical Journal detailing the two comets that the telescope discovered. The first was discovered by Dr. Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters, known as C.H.F. Peters for obvious reasons. In the…
Read MoreFrom the Collection: Polsey Clock
This piece is a bit of a mystery. It comes down to us simply as the “Polsey Clock.” Our other clocks come from famous makers, but Polsey is virtually unknown. It’s also very plain, somewhat battered, and missing a few pieces. Still, in its way, it’s the most interesting clock we have. It may be…
Read MoreThe Poetry of Benjamin Gould
Observatory Lyrics Tom Tom the President Begged Grabbed the money and quickly spent But Jimmy was caught though he was bought And now Tommy’s going to get what he ought. This little bit of doggerel was one of Benjamin A. Gould’s ways of blowing off steam. He would pen a scathing poem directed at whoever…
Read MoreA Scientific Puritan: Benjamin Apthorp Gould
Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel and James Armsby both deserve credit for inspiring and founding the Dudley Observatory. But when Mitchell was tied up working as an engineer, Armsby had to look elsewhere to find a director who could organize the construction of the Observatory building and get the instruments working. Through a developing partnership with the US Costal Survey,…
Read MoreGoulds all the way back
There’s one advantage to inheriting a library; you don’t just get the books, you also get the bookmarks. This bit of paper was found in one of the books used by Benjamin Gould. On one side are some calculations. On this side is a rough family tree. Like any good Boston pure-blood, Gould was very interested…
Read MoreThe Total Eclipse of 1878
As we gear up for the Eclipse Across America this summer, it’s worth looking back at the history of eclipse viewing and the role it played in modern astronomy. Treks out to some remote location to view a solar eclipse were a type of pilgrimage for American astronomers, bringing together large numbers of scientists in one remote…
Read MoreFrom the Library: “A Plan for Securing Observations of the Variable Stars”
Pamphlets were the blog posts of the nineteenth century. They could be quickly and cheaply produced, then distributed either for free or for a few pennies to cover printing costs. If popular, they could be bound and go from being ephemera to being permanent. One fan of the preserving the media, Samuel Johnson, explained the…
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