Prqfessor Eliae Loom is. 437 



residing near West Point, X. Y. These were only moderately 

 successful, but they were the first observations of the kind 

 undertaken in America. 



During the senior year of his college course there arrived at 

 New Haven the five-inch telescope, given to the college by 

 Mr. Sheldon (lark, constructed by Holland. This instrument 

 was much larger than any telescope then in the country. It 

 was temporarily placed in the Athenaeum tower, where it was 

 mounted on castors and wheeled to the windows for use. This 

 temporary abode it occupied, however, for oyer thirty years. In 

 spite of its miserable location it was, in the decade following its 

 instalment, a power in the development of the study of astronomy 

 in the college. The lives and works of Barnard, and Loomis, 

 and Mason, and Herrick, and Lyman, and Chauvenet, and 

 Hubbard, and of other graduates of the college prove this. 

 What rich returns for Mr. Sheldon Clark's twelve-hundred- 

 dollar investment ! 



In 1S35 the return of Halley's comet had been predicted, 

 and its appearance was eagerly expected by astronomers and 

 the public : Professor Olmsted and Tutor Loomis first in this 

 country caught sight of the stranger, and throughout its course 

 they noted its physical appearances. With such means as he 

 had at command, Mr. Loomis observed the body's place, and 

 computed from his observations the orbit. 



The latitude and longitude of an observatorv are constants 

 to be early determined. These were measured by President 

 Day for Yale College in 1811. In the summer of 1835 Tutor 

 Loomis, with such instruments as the college possessed, a sex- 

 tant and a small portable transit, made numerous observations 

 of Polaris for latitude, and several moon culminations for 

 longitude. From these he computed the latitude and longitude 

 of the Athenaeum tower. The longitude from Greenwich 

 though obtained from a small number of observations, differs 

 less than two seconds of time from our best determinations 

 to-dav. 



While in Europe in 1836-37 Professor Loomis, as I have 

 said, bought for Western Reserve College the instruments for 

 an observatory. These were a four-inch equatorial, a transit 

 instrument and an astronomical clock. On hie return he 



