NA TURE 



[July 9, 1874 



holds that she has good ground of expectancy of success. 

 What they need, what every observatory needs, is, first of 

 all, an astronomer with provision for his maintenance, 

 that he may be " free from other avocations and cares." 



ibj McKi 



A true astronomer, then, first of all — before even the most 

 imposing edifice or instruments. An astronomer with a 

 true conception of his work, with the splendid objects 

 before him, and the advantages of our day, may largely 

 repay the benefactions of the liberal by the lasting bene- 

 fits not of mere theory, hut of the practical usefulness of 

 discovery. 



-The Equ 



too- 



The U.S. Naval Ohservaio>y.—'X\vt history of this 

 Observatory is not a little remarkable. 



Close on the isle or. which stood what was known as 

 the " Washingion property," near tlie old Capitol, stood, 



in 1833, an unpretending wooden building but 16 ft. square, 

 erected at the expense of a lieutenant of the navy, and 

 equipped with a 5-foot Troughton transit instrument. 

 This was the United States Naval Observatory in 

 embryo. 



The transit was one of the instruments made for the 

 Coast Survey, under the supervision of Mr. Hassler, its 

 first superintendent, during his long detention in England, 

 by the breaking out of the war. Returning only in 1S15, 

 and the survey itself being soon arrested by Congress, 

 his instruments and the " fixed observatory," the establish- 

 ment of which he was the very first in the United States 

 to propose, rested quietly in statu quo ante helium. In 

 1832 the Coast Survey was revived ; but as an observatory 

 was peremptorily forbidden by the law, the transit was lent 

 to Lieut. Wilkes for his observations. 



Lieut. Wilkes's observations were, however, at first only 

 for obtaining clock errors, needed for determining the 

 true time for rating the naval chronometers then under 

 his charge. This testing of all the chronometers and 

 other naval instruments used by the United States ships 

 (begun in 1830 by Lieut. Goldsborough) had been at once 

 found a wise and useful economy for the navy. The 

 Secretary, therefore, established this little receptacle for 

 charts and instruments by placing an officer in charge' 

 permitting him to build his own little observatory and do 





hi3 own work. The " Depot " was the christening then 

 „iven to the establishment. This was all that Wilkes or 

 iny one of his successors dared call it even as late as 

 1842, when estabhshing the present astronomical institu- 

 tion. 



But in 1 838 a new call was made upon the Depot, which 

 turned the whole current of its future. The exploring ex- 

 p dition was about to sail for the South Seas. It would 

 be of prime importance, in determining the Isngitude of 

 places to be visited by the expedition, that corresponding 

 istronomical observations should be made at home, to be 

 compared on its return. Secretary Paulding gave the 

 observations in the United States to Lieut. Gilliss, 

 Wilkes's successor at the Depot, and to Prof Bond, of 

 Cambridge. For the years 1S3S-42 Gilliss worked most 

 ccurately and unremittingly. With the help of an achro- 

 matic telescope, .added by the Navy Department, and the 

 transit before mentioned, he observed and recorded 10,000 

 transits ; and his observations, afterwards tested by Prof. 

 Peirce, were tanked by him among the highest then 

 made. They are in the libraries of the astronomers of 

 Lurope. They procured, in fact, the founding of the pre- 

 sent Naval Observatory. 



For this, however, hard work in abundance was to be 

 done. Gilliss urged the unsuitablencss of his building 

 erected alongside of Wilkes's wooden square room, and 

 his want of space to erect a permanent circle. He won 



