SOME ASPECTS OF AMERICAN ASTRONOMY 77 



fact that he has no great buildings or fine instruments to show. 

 I may therefore be allowed to claim as an important factor 

 in the American astronomy of the last half century an insti- 

 tution of which few have heard and which has been overlooked 

 because there was nothing about it to excite attention. 



In 1849 the American Nautical Almanac office was estab- 

 lished by a congressional appropriation. The title of this 

 publication is somewhat misleading in suggesting a simple 

 enlargement of the family almanac which the sailor is to hang 

 up in his cabin for daily use. The fact is that what started 

 more than a centur}^ ago as a nautical almanac has since 

 grown into an astronomical ephemeris for the publication of 

 ever^^thing pertaining to times, seasons, eclipses, and the 

 motions of the heavenly bodies. It is the work in which 

 astronomical observations made in all the great observatories 

 of the world are ultimately utilized for scientific and public 

 purposes. Each of the leading nations of western Europe 

 issues such a publication. When the preparation and publi- 

 cation of the American ephemeris was decided upon the office 

 was first established in Cambridge, the seat of Harvard 

 university, because there could most readily be secured the 

 technical knowledge of mathematics and theoretical astronomy 

 necessary for the w^ork. 



A field of activity was thus opened, of which a number 

 of able young men who have since earned distinction in 

 various walks of life availed themselves. The head of the 

 office. Commander Davis, adopted a policy well fitted to pro- 

 mote their development. He translated the classic work of 

 Gauss, Theoria Motus Corporum Cselestium, and made the 

 office a sort of informal school, not, indeed, of the modern 

 t>T3e, but rather more like the classic grove of Hellas, where 

 philosophers conducted their discussions and profited by 

 mutual attrition. When, after a few years of experience, 

 methods were well established and a routine adopted, the office 

 was removed to Washington, where it has since remained . The 

 work of preparing the ephemeris has, with experience, been re- 

 duced to a matter of routine which may be continued indefi- 

 nitely, with occasional changes in methods and data and im- 

 provements to meet the increasing wants of investigators. 



