370 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



pany the party sent to Saskatchewan by the Almanac office and 

 in his Reminiscences he described with much interest the trip to 

 the then far-away northwest. The expedition failed of success for 

 "the weather was hopeless. We saw the darkness of the eclipse 

 and nothing more." He consoled himself, however, with the fol- 

 lowing thought: 



"It was much easier to go back and tell of the clouds than it 

 would have been to say that the telescope got disarranged at the 

 critical moment so that the observations failed." 



In 1 86 1 he learned of a vacancy in the select corps of professors 

 of mathematics in the U. S. Navy, and in August, 1861, he made 

 formal application for an appointment to the Hon. Gideon Welles, 

 then Secretary of the Navy. His letter was brief and concluded 

 with: 



"I would respectfully refer you to Commander Charles Henry 

 Davis, U. S. N., Professor Benjamin Peirce, of Harvard University, 

 Dr. Benjamin A. Gould, of Cambridge, and Professor Joseph 

 Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, for any informa- 

 tion respecting me which will enable you to judge of the propriety 

 of my appointment." 



Great was his satisfaction when a month later he found in the 

 post-office "a very large official envelope containing my commis- 

 sion duly signed by Abraham Lincoln, President of the United 

 States." He promptly reported to Washington where he was sent 

 to the Naval Observatory and was assigned to work on the transit 

 instrument. With this appointment his greater life-work began, 

 in the prosecution of which he continued until within a very few 

 days of the end of his life. 



It is a far cry from that long-ago Naval Observatory with its 

 primitive facilities to the now excellent equipment and attractive 

 building on the observatory grounds on the hills northwest of 

 Washington. Newcomb has described the work as follows: 



"The custom was that one of us should come on every clear 

 evening, make observations as long as he chose, and then go home. 

 The transit instrument was at one end of the building and the 

 mural circle, in charge of Professor Hubbard, at the other. He 

 was weak in health, and unable to do much continuous work of 



