The Reminiscences of an Astronomer

by Simon Newcomb

Of course all this could not be done on the spot. What had to be done was to find the observations, study their relations and the method of making them, and copy everything that seemed necessary for working them up. This took some six weeks, but the material I carried away proved the greatest find I ever made. Three or four years were spent in making all the calculations I have described. Then it was found that seventy-five years were added, at a single step, to the period during which the history of the moon's motion could be written. Previously this history was supposed to commence with the observations of Bradley, at Greenwich, about 1750; now it was extended back to 1675, and with a less degree of accuracy thirty years farther still. Hansen's tables were found to deviate from the truth, in 1675 and subsequent years, to a surprising extent; but the cause of the deviation is not entirely unfolded even now.

During the time I was doing this work, Paris was under the reign of the Commune and besieged by the national forces. The studies had to be made within hearing of the besieging guns; and I could sometimes go to a window and see flashes of artillery from one of the fortifications to the south. Nearly every day I took a walk through the town, occasionally as far as the Arc. As my observations during these walks have no scientific value, I shall postpone an account of what I saw to another chapter.

One curious result of this work is that the longitude of the moon may now be said to be known with greater accuracy through the last quarter of the seventeenth century than during the ninety years from 1750 to 1840. The reason is that, for this more modern period, no effective comparison has been made between observations and Hansen's tables.

Just as this work was approaching completion I was called upon to decide a question which would materially influence all my future activity. The lamented death of Professor Winlock in 1875 left vacant the directorship of the Harvard Observatory. A month or two later I was quite taken by surprise to receive a letter from President Eliot tendering me this position. I thus had to choose between two courses. One led immediately to a professorship in Harvard University, with all the distinction and worldly advantages associated with it, including complete freedom of action, an independent position, and the opportunity of doing such work as I deemed best with the limited resources at the disposal of the observatory. On the other hand was a position to which the official world attached no importance, and which brought with it no worldly advantages whatever.

I first consulted Mr. Secretary Robeson on the matter. The force with which he expressed himself took me quite by surprise. "By all means accept the place; don't remain in the government service a day longer than you have to. A scientific man here has no future before him, and the quicker he can get away the better." Then he began to descant on our miserable "politics" which brought about such a state of things.

Such words, coming from a sagacious head of a department who, one might suppose, would have been sorry to part with a coadjutor of sufficient importance to be needed by Harvard University, seemed to me very suggestive. And yet I finally declined the place, perhaps unwisely for myself, though no one who knows what the Cambridge Observatory has become under Professor Pickering can feel that Harvard has any cause to regret my decision. An apology for it on my own behalf will seem more appropriate.

On the Cambridge side it must be remembered that the Harvard Observatory was then almost nothing compared with what it is now. It was poor in means, meagre in instrumental outfit, and wanting in working assistants; I think the latter did not number more than three or four, with perhaps a few other temporary employees. There seemed little prospect of doing much.

On the Washington side was the fact that I was bound to Washington by family ties, and that, if Harvard needed my services, surely the government needed them much more. True, this argument was, for the time, annulled by the energetic assurance of Secretary Robeson, showing that the government felt no want of any one in its service able to command a university professorship. But I was still pervaded by the optimism of youth in everything that concerned the future of our government, and did not believe that, with the growth of intelligence in our country, an absence of touch between the scientific and literary classes on the one side, and "politics" on the other, could continue. In addition to this was the general feeling by which I have been actuated from youth—that one ought to choose that line of activity for which Nature had best fitted him, trusting that the operation of moral causes would, in the end, right every wrong, rather than look out for place and preferment. I felt that the conduct of government astronomy was that line of activity for which I was best fitted, and that, in the absence of strong reason to the contrary, it had better not be changed. In addition to these general considerations was the special point that, in the course of a couple of years, the directorship of the Nautical Almanac would become vacant, and here would be an unequaled opportunity for carrying on the work in mathematical astronomy I had most at heart. Yet, could I have foreseen that the want of touch which I have already referred to would not be cured, that I should be unable to complete the work I had mapped out before my retirement, or to secure active public interest in its continuance, my decision would perhaps have been different.

On September 15, 1877, I took charge of the Nautical Almanac Office. The change was one of the happiest of my life. I was now in a position of recognized responsibility, where my recommendations met with the respect due to that responsibility, where I could make plans with the assurance of being able to carry them out, and where the countless annoyances of being looked upon as an important factor in work where there was no chance of my being such would no longer exist. Practically I had complete control of the work of the office, and was thus, metaphorically speaking, able to work with untied hands. It may seem almost puerile to say this to men of business experience, but there is a current notion, spread among all classes, that because the Naval Observatory has able and learned professors, therefore they must be able to do good and satisfactory work, which may be worth correcting.

I found my new office in a rather dilapidated old dwelling-house, about half a mile or less from the observatory, in one of those doubtful regions on the border line between a slum and the lowest order of respectability. If I remember aright, the only occupants of the place were the superintendent, my old friend Mr. Loomis, senior assistant, who looked after current business, a proof-reader and a messenger. All the computers, including even one copyist, did their work at their homes.