"This 'finished' the work of education, for events were such that I never entered school again. In 1879 the writer built a private observatory in New Windsor, Ill., and on January 1st, 1880, a fine six-inch Clark equatorial, with circles, was set upon its pier. In the spring of 1888, Knox College, in Galesburg, Ill., erected a good observatory on the campus. All the instruments were removed from New Windsor and placed in the new dome. The writer was director of the Knox Observatory from Aug. 1st, 1888, to Aug. 1st, 1895.
"Upon coming to this fairy land of the earth, Southern California, I was appointed director of this mountain observatory, the Lowe, taking charge on Aug. 11th, 1900. Everything happened in August. Here is an elegant Clark sixteen-inch telescope, with spectroscope and tele-camera, with accessories. The writer has not startled the world by capital discoveries in astronomy, but has confined his work to writing for journals and magazines. Enough has been published to make several volumes. Only one series has been printed in book form—'Radiant Energy.' Study of science has been continuous, save for one deflection of six years, which were devoted with intense interest to Hindoo, Iranian, Persian, Egyptian and Greek philosophy and Esoteric mysteries, the occult.
"The writer is a life Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of the Southern California Academy of Science, and of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, but has not surprised any of these societies by the discovery of a law greater than gravity, nor what matter is, nor electricity, nor how grass grows, or why we are here on earth. None of the mean things that the writer has performed are inserted on account of the inordinate length of this note."
[The Spectroscope.]
About 1600 A. D., Kepler placed a prism in a beam of sunlight and saw what had not before been seen—so far as known—the first solar spectrum. A century later Newton darkened a room, admitted solar rays through a round aperture in a shutter, passed them through a prism and obtained a clearer spectrum than Kepler's. Little was thought of these things, however, until, when in 1802, Wollaston made a slit in a shutter, projected a spectrum, in which he was surprised to see a few dark lines. In 1814 Fraunhofer made a spectrum in the same way, but happened to look at it with a telescope. This act changed the course of the science of optics for all time; it was the origin of Spectrum Analysis, one of the chief products of the human mind, one of the corner-stones upon which rests the structure of modern science. Men's minds immediately began to expand, and a period of mental activity set in, the like of which was never known before. Fraunhofer saw hundreds of lines, but the great spectroscope in the Mount Lowe Observatory shows thousands, in width from that of a spider-web to one-tenth of a millimeter. They are the most valuable set of lines known. They enable finite man to tell what the earth, sun and stars, meteors, comets and nebulæ are composed of. The prism of Newton and Fraunhofer is now displaced by the diffraction grating—ruled by Rowland 14,438 lines to the inch. These striæ break up light into its elements, reflect them to the eye, and in solar and stellar light reveal the absorption lines. The spectroscope of the Lowe Observatory made by that accomplished optician Brashear is one of the finest.
White Chariot nearing the Chalet on Echo Mountain.
Night Scene, with Searchlight, Echo Mountain House, Mount Lowe.