The Great Patroness: Blandia Dudley

Writing about Blandina Dudley can be tricky.  I can wish it were different, but almost all of our sources focus on her relationship with the men around her.  Basically, any discussion of Mrs. Dudley fails the Bechdel test. Mrs. Dudley was born Blandina Bleecker, part of the prosperous Dutch Bleecker family.  Her great-grandfather, Jan Jansen…

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Where Was Dudley? Part 2

In 1892, Dudley Observatory director Benjamin Boss took stock of the observatory’s position in the field of astronomy and found it wanting.  Dudley was had fallen behind the times, with no equipment to do spectroscope work and no telescope capable of doing photo-astronomy. Worse, the position of the Dudley made fixing these problems difficult.  The…

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What Happened to the Women Computers?

I’ve spoken about the Dudley Observatory’s corps of women computers several times now.  Every time, someone has come up to me afterwards to mention that, back in their day, there still were departments of women working low level mathematical jobs.  Without giving away anyone’s age, I can say this runs up until the seventies. This…

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Recovering the History of Women Computers

As an archivist, I’m not used to covering topical issues.  But the history of women computers in the field of science is suddenly getting a lot of attention.  The latest is the film “Hidden Figures,” which follows four African American women and their careers as mathematicians in Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory’s computer pool.  It’s based on…

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“A Deed of More Perilous and Romantic Courage has Perhaps Never Been Undertaken …”

Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel was a tireless scientist and engineer who deserves a share of the credit for shaping American astronomy.  He was an institution builder and a self-taught astronomer responsible for starting both the Cincinnati Observatory and our own Dudley Observatory.  He was also an  inventor, and his chronograph  allowed a single astronomer to both make…

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Making New Mirrors

This doesn’t look like much, but it was the start of something that was going to revolutionize the field of astronomy.  This is a disk of silicon dioxide, also known as silica.  Since it is made from very clean quartz sand, it is also known as “fused quartz”.  You can think of silica as being…

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How to Measure a Mountain Without Leaving Your Observatory

Nineteenth century observatories were more than just places to look at the stars.  They were packed with scientific instruments that were useful for all sorts of purposes: highly accurate clocks, barometers, thermometers, transits and other surveying equipment, and so on.  Many observatories were staffed by people eager to reach out to the public, either as…

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Instruments

In regards to the last post, here’s Verplanck Colvin himself, taking notes on the right.  The instrument he’s using is called a theodolite, which is essentially a small rotating telescope for measuring horizontal and vertical angles.  Well, I guess in this case it’s not really a small telescope at all.  That looks like a brass…

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Goulds 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…

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The 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…

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