Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 10.djvu/186

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TOD


TODD


18-S7-93. visiting Loiulon. Paris and Berlin in 1890 to insi>ect similar foreign offices and to bring to the United States one set of the national metric standar.ls from Paris; was assistant in charge of the U.S. coast and geodetic survey office, 1895-99, and in the latter j-ear appointed assistant super- intern lent of the same. He was a delegate to the International Geodetic conference at Berlin. 1895, was apjwinted to represent the United States in the ilemarkation of boundary between Alaska and Canada under the modus I'ivendi of October, 1809. and was apjxiinted superintendent of the U.S. coast and geodetic survey, Dec. 1, 1900. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: president of the Wasliington Philosophical society; a member of the American Metrological society, the Amer- ican Society of Civil Engineers and of other sci- entific organizations. He is the author of vari- ous Reports, and of " Our National Standard and the Office of Weights and Measures " in the Trans- actions of the Association of Civil Engineers of Cornell Unirersity {YoLV. 1896-97).

TOD, David, governor of Ohio, was born in Youngstown, Ohio, Feb. 21, 1805. His father, George Tod (1773-1841). Yale, 1795, removed to Georgetown, Ohio, in 1800; was state senator, 1804-05; judge of the state supreme court, 1806-09; served in the 1812 war, and was presiding judge of the:id judicial court of Ohio, 1815-34. David Tod vras admitted to the bar in 1827; was subse- quently postmaster of Warren. Ohio, state senator from Trumbull county. 1838-40, and the unsuc- cessful Democratic candidate for governor in 1844 and 1846. Becoming interested in a coal mine in Pennsylvania, he left his law practice and was influential in building the Pennsylvania canal and the Cleveland and Washington railroad. He served as U.S. minister to Brazil, 1847-52, and was a ilelegate to and vice-president of the Demo- cratic national convention, Charleston, S.C., 18G0, and was presiding over that body when the Southern delegates left the hall. He was elected as a Republican governor of Ohio, serving. 1862- 64. and was a presidential elector on the Grant and Colfax ticket in 1868. He died in Youngs- town. Ohio. Nov. 13, 1808.

TODD, Charles Burr, author, was born in Red- ding, Conn.. Jan. 9, 1849; son of Seth and Deb- orah (Burr) Todd; grandson of Sherlock and Zillah (Gilbert) Todd, and of Bethel and Hannah (Tuttle) Todd, and a descendant of Jehu Burr, first settler in Springfield, Mass., and Fairfield, Vt., and of Christopher Todd, first settler in New Haven, Conn. He fitted for college, but poor sight prevented his entering, and after teaching school for .several years, he made literary work his profession. He was commissioner, 1887-93, for erecting a monument on the winter quarters


of Israel Putnam's division of Continentals in Redding, Conn., and in 1895 was appointed by Mayor Strong, a member of the committee to print early records of the city of New York. He is the author of: History of the Burr Family (1879; 4th ed.. 1901); History of Redding, Conn. (1880); Life and Letters of Joel Barhnr (1880): Story of the City of Xeiv York (1892): Story of Washington, the National Capital (1897); Lance, Cross and Canoe in the Valley of the Mississijjjn (with the Rev. W. H. Milburn, 1898); ^1 Brief History of Aetv York (1899); The True Aaron Burr (1902); The Real Benedict Arnold, (1903).

TODD, David, astronomer, was born in Lake Ridge, N.Y.. March 19, 1855; son of Sereno Ed- wards and Rhoda (Peck) Todd; grandson of Josiah and Lucretia (IngersoU) Todd and of Benoni and Huldah Peck; and a descendant of Jonathan Edwards (q.v.), president of the College of New Jersey, Princeton. He attended Colum- bia college. 1870-72; was graduated from Amherst college, A.B., 1875, A.M., 1878; was chief assis- tant to the U.S. transit of Venus commission at "Washington, D.C., 1875-78; was chief of the eclipse party sent out by the U.S. government to Texas, 1878, and was chief assistant on the U.S. Nautical Almanac at Washington, 1878-81. He was married, March 5, 1879, to Mabel Loomis (q.v.). He returned to Amherst college as director of its observatory and professor of as- tronomy in 1881, which position he still held in 1903. He assumed charge of the Lick observa- tory observations of the transit of Venus in 1882; was professor of astronomy and higher mathe- matics at Smith college, 1882-87, supervising the construction of the college observatory in 1886-87; astronomer in charge of the American eclipse expedition to Japan, 1887, and during the same season, organized an expedition under the aus- pices of the Boyden fund of Harvard college, to the summit of Fiijisan, 12,400 feet in height, to test the superiority of a great elevation for astro- nomical observations; was chief of the U.S. scientific expedition to the west coast of Africa, 1889-90; of the Amherst Eclipse expedition to Japan, 1896; to Tripoli. Barbary, 1900; and to the Dutch East Indies, 1901. In addition to his many important astronomical and meteorological observations, he invented and applied, during his African expedition, a pneumatic arrangement by which a numerous battery of astronomical in- struments (photographic) was operated auto- matically by one person, and made several hun- dred exposures in one hundred and ninety seconds of totality. The degree of Ph.D. was conferred upon Professor Todd by Washington and Jeffer- son in 1888. He was made a fellow of the Amer- ican Association for the Advancement of Science;