SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY 



By C. G. abbot 



Secretary, Smithson'uui histttiilitni 



(With Six Plates) 



August 22, 1934. marks the centenary of the birth of the third 

 Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Samuel Pierpont Langley 

 was born at Roxbury, near Boston, Massachusetts, August 22, 1834, 

 and died at Washington, February 27, 1906. After his graduation 

 from the Boston High School in 1851, he studied and practiced civil 

 engineering and architecture until 1864. Then he traveled extensively 

 in Europe, frequently visiting observatories and learned societies there. 

 He and his brother, afterward Prof. John W. Langley, had long been 

 ardent amateur astronomers, and being of mechanical tastes, they 

 had constructed a small reflecting telescope. Returning from his 

 European trip, the future Secretary devoted himself to astronomy. 

 After a short assistantship at Harvard College Observatory and a very 

 brief tenure as assistant professor of mathematics and director of the 

 observatory at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., he was in 1866 

 appointed director of the Allegheny Observatory, near Pittsburgh, 

 and professor of physics in the Western University of Pennsylvania. 

 He remained there for more than 20 years, during which his remark- 

 able pioneering astronomical work along several different lines gave 

 him a foremost standing in astronomy, along with that triumvirate of 

 distinguished American astronomers of those days, Simon Newcomb, 

 Edward C. Pickering, and Charles E. Young. He raised considerable 

 revenue for the Allegheny Observatory by the then novel device of 

 furnishing astronomical time to the Pennsylvania Railroad. The 

 wealthy Pittsburgh philanthropist, William Thaw, was his helpful 

 friend. By Langley's encouraging advice, John A. Brashear, a steel 

 worker, was transformed from a timid amateur mirror-grinder to 

 the founder of that great optical concern, the John A. Brashear 

 Optical Company, of Allegheny, Pa., and was ever his grateful 

 friend and helper in preparing novel apparatus for his pioneering 

 experiments. 



Owing to the failing health of the distinguished naturalist, Spen- 

 cer F. Baird, second Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Langley 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 92, No. 8 



