564 



OBITUARIES, AMERICAN. (GOODYEAR GOULD.) 



Fisheries History of the Menhaden " (New York, 

 1880); "The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of 

 the United States" (7 volumes, Washington, 1884- 

 '87); "American Fishes: A Popular Treatise upon 

 the Game and Food Fishes of North America " 

 (New York, 1888); "the text of "Game Fishes of 

 the United States," with S. A. Kilbourne's plates 

 (1S79-'81); and with Tarleton H. Bean "Oceanic 

 Ichthyology " (1896). The degree of Ph. D. was 

 conferred on him by Indiana University, and that 

 of LL. D. by Wesleyan University. Dr. Goode was 

 chosen a member of the National Academy of Sci- 

 ences in 1888. 



Uoodyear, Charles, inventor, born in German- 

 town, Pa., in 18-52 ; died in New York city, May 22, 

 1896. He was the grandson of Amasa Goodyear, 

 the inventor of spring-steel hayforks, and son of 

 Charles Goodyear, inventor of the process for vul- 

 canizing India rubber. He received a public-school 

 education in New Haven, Conn., and spent his early 

 life working with his father and selling rights to 

 manufacture rubber goods under the patents se- 

 cured by him. On the death of his father, in I860, 

 he took charge of the estate and business, and soon 

 afterward patented a device for sewing soles on 

 shoes by the lock stitch. The first company to 

 manufacture machinery for shoemaking under this 

 patent was organized in New York city. Now there 

 are several in the United States, Canada, and in 

 Europe, and the machines are in universal use. 



tJould, Benjamin Apthorp, astronomer, born in 

 Boston. Mass., Sept. 27, 1824; died in Cambridge, 

 Mass., Nov. 26, 1896. He was able to read when he 

 was three years of age, and when he was ten he de- 

 livered an entertaining lecture on electricity, writ- 

 ten by himself and illustrated with a complete and 



neatly constructed 



; , electrical machine 



of his own manu- 

 facture. He pre- 

 pared for college 

 in the Boston Latin 

 School, where he 

 took high rank, re- 

 ceiving at one time 

 five prizes, among 

 which was the 

 Franklin gold med- 

 al. In 1844 he was 

 graduated at Har- 

 vard, where among 

 his classmates were 

 Dr. John C. Dalton 

 and Francis Park- 

 man. For a year he 

 taught in the Rox- 

 bury Latin School. 

 Prom 1845 to 1848 

 he was in Europe, 



studying at the observatories in Greenwich, Paris. 

 Berlin, Gottingen, Altona, and Gotha, and he 

 received in 1848 the degree of Ph. D. from Got- 

 tingen. On his return to the United States he 

 established "The Astronomical Journal" in No- 

 vember, 1849, published it largely at his own ex- 

 pense until 1801, and resumed the publication 

 in 1885. In 1852 he was appointed to the charge 

 of the longitude determinations of the Coast Sur- 

 vey, which service he organized and developed un- 

 til" his retirement in 1867. In 1859 lie published 

 his discussion of the places and proper motions of 

 cm-unipolar stars for use as standards in the Coast 

 Survey. These as revised by him in 1861. together 

 with his similar list of clock stars, were adopted as 

 the standards for the " American Ephemeris." In 

 1866 he published his reduction of D'Augelet's ob- 

 servations. About the same time he performed a 



similar service for the greater part of the observa- 

 tions made in the United States Naval Observatory 

 since its establishment, and also for the expedition 

 under Lieut. James M. Gilliss to Chili to determine 

 the solar parallax. In 1866 he planned and exe- 

 cuted the work of establishing by the Atlantic cable 

 the relation in longitude between European and 

 American stations. Meanwhile, in 1855, he was 

 called to the directorship of the Dudley Observatory 

 in Albany, and he remained in that capacity with- 

 out remuneration and at his own expense until 

 1859. He organized the work in this observatory 

 and first used there the normal clock compensated 

 for barometric variations. The clock that gave the 

 time signals was devised by him, as well as the 

 meridian circle now generally used. As actuary 

 of the United States Sanitary Commission he con- 

 ducted extensive and important researches upon 

 military and anthropological statistics and the dis- 

 tribution of population, the results of which he 

 published as "Investigations in the Military and 

 Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers" 

 (Xew York, 1869). About 1866 he undertook the 

 reduction of Lewis M. Rutherford's photographs of 

 the Pleiades, and in 1870 those of the Praesepe. 

 Memoirs on both of these subjects were presented 

 by him before the National Academy of Sciences. 

 The great work of Dr. Gould's life was in connec- 

 tion with the National Observatory in Cordoba, Ar- 

 gentine Republic, which institution was organized 

 by him in 1870, and there he undertook his " Ura- 

 nometry of the Southern Heavens." The zone ob- 

 servations of the stars between 23 and 80 south 

 declination, which were the original and always the 

 dominant object of the enterprise, were begun in 

 1872, substantially completed in 1877, and revised 

 in 1882-'83. This work was embodied in the Zone 

 Catalogues containing 73,160 stars, which appeared 

 in 1884. Parallel with this, and almost overshad- 

 owing it in importance, was carried on the inde- 

 pendent series of meridian-circle observations for 

 the General Catalogue of 32,448 stars, completed in 

 1885. Dr. Gould, in addition to the foregoing, com- 

 pleted in Cordoba the manuscript of his series of 15 

 volumes containing the observations and the annual 

 catalogues, incorporated in the General Catalogue, 

 ready for the printer. All these have been published. 

 In 1872 he instituted, under the auspices of the Ar- 

 gentine Republic, a chain of meteorological stations 

 from the tropics to Tierra del Fuego, and from the 

 Andes to the Atlantic, which are still maintained. 

 Soon after his return to Cambridge in 1885 he was 

 given a public dinner, at which President Eliot, of 

 Harvard, said: "When it comes to observing the 

 passage of a star across 20 miles in the field of the 

 telescope with the utmost accuracy and precision, 

 and doing that many times over for each star, and 

 doing it for 20,000 stars, the infinity of this minute 

 and patient labor is impressed upon our minds.'' 

 Dr. Holmes grteted him with a poem : 



Fresh from the spantrluil vault's o'erarcl.ing splendor, 

 Thy lonely pillar, thy revolving dome. 



In heartfelt accents, proud, rejoieiiiir. teller, 

 We bid thee welcome to thine earthly home ! 



To this home, where in 1864 he had built an ob- 

 servatory which he equipped with an eight-foot 

 transit instrument, he returned after leaving South 

 America, and there he passed the last years of his 

 life, devoting his attention chiefly to the publica- 

 tion of "The Astronomical Journal," for the con- 

 tinuation of which he made provision. The degree 

 of LL.D. was conferred on him by Harvard in 1885, 

 and by Columbia in 1887. He was one of the orig- 

 inal members of the National Academy of Sciences, 

 from which he received the Watson medal in 1886, 

 and President of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science in 1868. 



