Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/418

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing the preceding spring he had declined "the almost unlimited offers made to him by the administration at Washington to induce him to take charge of the observatory there." It is known also that frequent expenditures of his own money were made during this period for current expenses and for things convenient in conducting the observatory—sums small severally, no doubt, but considerable in the total. In 1846 a sum equal to the proposed salaries for the next two years was subscribed by citizens of Boston, and in 1849 the official board was able to report that "through a bequest of one hundred thousand dollars made by Edward Bromfield Phillips they should thereafter be relieved from anxiety as to the payment of salaries and current expenses."

The fifteen-inch equatorial was set up in June, 1847, and has done splendid service for now nearly half a century. At last the skill of Prof. Bond was furnished with a fitting implement. In reply to an inquiry from Edward Everett, who had become president of the college the year before, Prof. Bond wrote specifying several interesting things that could be seen with it, and ended by saying: "But I must recollect that you require of me only a brief account of our telescope. The objects revealed to us by this excellent instrument are so numerous and interesting that it is difficult to know where to stop" In a subsequent letter he wrote to the president, "You will rejoice with me that the great nebula in Orion has yielded to the powers of our incomparable telescope." Besides this and other nebulæ the planet Saturn was an early subject of investigation. On September 19, 1848, Prof. Bond discovered the eighth satellite of this planet, which long remained the only addition to the solar system made on the continent of America.

When Bond was determining the position of the Harvard Observatory, Commodore Owen, of the British navy, was making an official survey in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The latter, desiring to use the observatory as his zero point, co-operated with Bond in making a transfer of twelve chronometers to and from Greenwich, England. Afterward other chronometer expeditions were conducted by Bond in co-operation with the United States Coast Survey, the final one being in 1855. In the summing up of results, seven hundred and twenty-three independent chronometer records were used. The magnitude of this undertaking, as a whole, surpassed anything ever attempted in any other country.

As early as 1848 Prof. Bond mentions, in his report as director of the observatory, some experiments with the daguerreotype and talbotype processes for obtaining pictures of the sun, which, though encouraging, could hardly be called successful. But in his report for 1850 he is able to say: "With the assistance of Mr. J. A. Whipple, daguerreotypist, we have obtained several impres-