436 ASTROPHYSICS 



fellows. The second has to do with available capital; and in this 

 respect we are distinctly at a disadvantage compared with other 

 men; for when a new instrument of general utility is invented, at 

 once a large amount of capital is invested in working out the details 

 and improving them to the utmost; whereas for a scientific instru- 

 ment no such funds are available. Think, for instance, of the money 

 spent in perfecting the bicycle, and the time occupied in developing 

 it from the earliest forms to those with which we are now familiar, 

 from the "bone-shaker" of the sixties, through the high bicycle 

 which we saw twenty years ago, to the modern machine. Think, too, 

 how totally unexpected have been some of the incidents in the history 

 of this machine, such as the introduction of pneumatic tires, or its 

 use by ladies. 1 In the case of such an instrument, now universally 

 adopted, if rapid development could have been secured by expendi- 

 ture of money and brains, surely enough of both commodities were 

 forthcoming to attain that end; and yet simplicity and finality 

 have probably not yet been attained in a period of thirty years. When 

 we compare the small amount of money and especially the small 

 number of persons that can be devoted to the perfection of a new 

 scientific method, such as the use of photography in astronomy, 

 it will excite little surprise that progress during the same period of 

 thirty years has been slower. In commerce old machines can be 

 thrown on the scrap-heap when improvements suggest themselves; 

 but who can afford to throw away an old transit-circle? The very 

 fact that it has been in use for many years renders its continued use 

 in each succeeding year the more important from considerations of 

 continuity. 



It is doubtless for such reasons as these that little has yet been 

 done in the way of utilizing photography for meridian observation. 

 Although one or two meritorious beginnings have been made, which 

 have sufficed to show that there are no insuperable difficulties in 

 the way, up to the present moment no meridian instrument of repute 

 is in regular work using the photographic method. And this fact 

 cannot, after all, be completely explained by the reasons above men- 

 tioned. Opportunities for setting up costly new instruments do not 

 occur frequently in astronomy, but they do occur. In the last decade, 

 for instance, large transit-circles have been set up both at Greenwich 

 and the Cape of Good Hope; but in neither instance has any attempt 

 been made to adopt the photographic method. The Washington 

 Observatory was reconstructed well within the period since the great 

 advantages of photography have been recognized; and yet not even 

 in the United States, the land of enterprise, was a start then made 



1 I have in my possession a copy of a work of reference on cycling, dated no 

 earlier than 1887, in which it is carefully stated as a deliberate conclusion that 

 ladies will never use the machine to any great extent. 



