90 Britain's Heritage of Science 



followed in his father's footsteps as astronomer, and built 

 himself an observatory at Kew. It was here that the 

 observations which led to the discovery by Bradley of the 

 aberration of light were carried out. Molyneux has not re- 

 ceived sufficient credit for the design of the instrument and 

 of the measuring appliances on which the successful prosecu- 

 tion of the research depended. The idea of testing Hooke's 

 method of measuring the so-called " parallax " of stars 

 seems to have been due to Molyneux. He worked assiduously 

 at the construction of telescopes, one of which he presented 

 to the King of Portugal, and left an unpublished MS. on 

 optics, which was made use of by Robert Smith in the 

 preparation of his treatise. 



The work of William Herschel (1738-1822) brings us 

 into touch with modern astronomy. His father was a 

 musician in the Hanoverian Army, though the family 

 originally came from Moravia. At the age of fourteen he 

 accompanied, as an oboe player, a Hanoverian band on a 

 visit to England, but only settled finally in this country 

 in 1757, his health not being strong enough to take part 

 in the Seven Years' War. He ultimately went to live in 

 Bath as a teacher of music, and became director of the 

 musical entertainments in that fashionable resort. His 

 turn for reading serious books led him to the study of 

 Ferguson's astronomy and Smith's harmonics, followed by 

 the optics of the same writer. He then decided to take up 

 astronomy more seriously; he bought a small Gregorian 

 telescope, but not content with this, and, unable to obtain 

 a larger instrument with the means at his disposal, he set to 

 work with his own hands, and having succeeded in polishing 

 a mirror of six-foot focal length mounted it as a reflecting 

 telescope. A frequently quoted passage from one of his 

 letters, written in 1783, shows the object he had in view : 

 " I determined to accept nothing on faith, but to see 

 with my own eyes what others had seen before me. I 

 finally succeeded in completing a so-called Newtonian in- 

 strument, seven feet in length. From this, I advanced 

 to one of ten feet, and at last to one of twenty, for I had 

 fully made up my mind to carry on the improvement 

 of my telescopes as far as it could be done. When I 



