• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 556 0

North Carolina, and at colleges such as Yale, Harvard, and Williams. The U.S. Naval Observatory, the country's first national observatory, also obtained its first decent telescope. During this period before the Civil War, additional observatories quickly sprang up, becoming the scientific facility de rigueur for major American cities and colleges. These efforts at last fulfilled the vision of John Quincy Adams, America's sixth president, who had long pushed for the country to erect a “lighthouse in the sky.” “Some Americans, haunted by a nagging sense of cultural inferiority and smarting from invidious comparisons with Europe, fostered astronomical research as a matter of national pride,” writes historian Howard Miller. And once in place, these pioneering astronomical outposts stimulated a continuing interest, especially among young boys like Keeler who dreamed of one day taking part in this new American endeavor.

Described by acquaintances as a “lankey green country boy” with a backwoods “cracker drawl,” Keeler came to develop special skills in building instruments, which enabled him to enter Johns Hopkins, America's first research university, just a year after the institution opened in Baltimore, Maryland. Upon graduation in 1881, Keeler began work near Pittsburgh at the Allegheny Observatory, headed up by Samuel P. Langley, the man who two decades later would almost beat the Wright brothers at getting a piloted, self-propelled aircraft flying. A year of graduate work in Germany in 1883–84 sharpened Keeler's expertise in spectral analysis. All this preparation turned out to be indispensable when he received an offer to join the staff of the Lick Observatory, the revolutionary new mecca for astronomy in central California.

• • •

James Lick initiated a remarkable trend. He stood at the head of a long line of prosperous benefactors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who used the business fortunes they accrued in the United States to construct some of the most productive observatories in astronomical history. Given his largesse, Lick raised the stakes in astronomy. Before this, the most acclaimed observatories were in Europe and sponsored by either universities or governments. With resources sparse, these institutions were often slow to adopt new techniques and instruments. At each observatory, surveys plugged along for decades, often using just one key telescope. But the Lick Observatory offered a new model for research, one that ran at a quicker pace enriched by private capital. Lick made big telescopes the commemorative monument of choice among the American nouveaux riches. Moreover, with these privately funded observatories being established from scratch, they were able to purchase the finest instruments and adopt the latest technologies. As a consequence, astronomy advanced in the United States at a faster pace than in any other country in the history of science. “Starting from essentially zero at the beginning of the nineteenth century,” says historian Stephen Brush, “the Americans had overtaken the Germans to jump into second place by the end of that century and were already challenging the British for the top spot.” Domination of the heavens appeared to go hand in hand with economic riches.

Lick earned his riches. Born in 1796 to a rural Pennsylvania Dutch family, just as the new republic of the United States was getting under way, he learned the trade of woodworking at the side of his father. After making a fairly comfortable living running his own shop in New York City, Lick abruptly decided in 1821 to move to South America, bent on amassing a fortune. There he became a master builder of fine-wood piano cases, a venture that proved highly lucrative in a culture where dancing and music were greatly valued. After twenty-seven years, though, living at first in Argentina, then Chile, and finally Peru, he decided to sell his varied business concerns and return to the United States. Arriving in San Francisco by ship in 1848, just as California was about to secede from Mexico, he came ashore with $30,000