Sara is somebody with a wealth of expertise
that is really hard to capture in just a couple of minutes.
And so the thing that is really easy to explain
is where she went to school because it all
goes to Cambridge.
And as a matter of fact, most of it goes to Harvard.
So she was an undergraduate and a graduate student.
All of her degrees--
all degrees you could get from Harvard,
she has, including her PhD.
But she also has an MPhil from Cambridge
because apparently writing Cambridge in her address
is very important.
So anyway, so she's very well trained
as a historian of science, and her expertise
goes across many different fields.
And some of you who've been to the collection
of historical scientific instruments
where she has served as the curator since 2000
have seen this big assortment of exhibits.
And before that, she was at the Adler planetarium in Chicago.
I don't know if anybody is from Chicago,
but her main interests, I think, are from astronomy
and the history of astronomy.
And I've had the honor of working with Sara
over the last few years because we're
making this big course on prediction
and people's interests in knowing the future.
And Sara's going to talk to you about a different course.
These are both courses that are available online
through HarvardX and EdX.
And the other course that Sara has been very involved
with led even to a book called Tangible Things,
and she's going to talk to you about that tonight.
But I'll just tell you that in the context
of the other course, the prediction course where
I worked with Sarah, she's told me things that I didn't know
and that hardly anybody else knows
about comets, about navigation, about clocks,
about timekeeping, about computers, how
to restore telescopes, how telescopes work,
who did what, all kinds of gossipy stories
about the history of astronomy.
And I don't know how much of that
Sara is going to share with us tonight,
but I do know that I should be quiet and let
you hear from Sarah.
And I'm just very grateful to call Sara
my collaborator and my friend.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Jane and Alyssa, for those lovely opening remarks.
So, tangible things of American astronomy--
as a science that studies distant celestial objects,
astronomy deals with few things that can be touched directly.
And yet astronomy has many tangible things--
scientific instruments and observatories, for example--
which link the past to the present.
Now there is little question about maintaining
things still valuable for scientific research purposes.
But why, why, why should we care about documenting
and preserving the old and obsolete?
Well, as a historian, I am not going
to tell you that everything old is valuable--
far from it.
But I will say that there's a lot
to be learned from many old things.
And this is not just a case of nostalgia.
Indeed, outmoded objects, when critically examined,
are useful to modern scientists because they
offer insight into why things are the way they are,
why we believe what we believe, and perhaps
how we can change them.
So let's take a look at some examples.
So, the adventures of Captain John Smith, Pocahontas,
and a sundial--
as our story opens in 1607, we find Captain Smith
paddling upstream through the Virginia wilderness
when he is ambushed by Indians, held prisoner, and repeatedly
threatened with death his life is spared first
by the intervention of his sundial, whose
spinning compass needle fascinates his captors,
and then by Pocahontas, the chief's daughter, who
throws herself between Smith and a warrior ready to bash
in his head.
And here you see in this scene, where she's actually
quite a young girl at the bottom here trying to protect him.
So Smith called his globe sundial
a globe-like jewel that showed that roundness
of the Earth, the course of the sun, moon, and stars.
The outer surface was a sphere marked
with the ecliptic, the equator, and the tropics of Cancer
and Capricorn.
Inside, a compass needle imitated the magnetic virtues
of the Earth.
A gnomon was mounted over the magnetic compass,
and its shadow was used to find the time.
The other hemisphere held a lunar [INAUDIBLE],,
which is essentially an analog computer
to determine the phases of the moon
and the information needed to use the sundial by moonlight.
Now Smith saw his sundial as a microcosm of the universe.
While stalling for time among the Indians,
Smith claimed that he lectured them
about astronomy, geography, and the diversity of nations
using this sundial as a prop.
Smith believed that mathematics was the key
to unlock nature's secrets.
His sundial was but one of many mathematical instruments
and methods the ship captain used
to explore and chart the waters of Virginia and New England.
Smith's account of his escape by virtue of his compass dial
makes it clear that he understood
how mathematical practice gave European settlers powers that
seemed magical to Native Americans, powers
that would enable them to dominate the New World.
Thomas Harriet, the astronomer explorer
who had spent nine months at Roanoke Island in 1585,
observed the same thing.
He wrote, "mathematical instruments, sea compasses,
the virtue of the loadstone in drawing iron, a perspective
glass whereby was shown many strange sights, burning
glasses, wild fireworks, guns, books, writing and reading,
spring clocks that seem to go of themselves,
and many other things that we had were so strange unto them
that they thought they were rather the works of gods
than of man."
From these first encounters, English cosmology
was set on a collision course with the world
of the Native Americans.
An almanac, a sermon, and mechanical models--
now as the only periodicals in 17th century New England,
what do almanacs tell us?
Starting in 1639, they were prepared by Harvard College
tutors and printed on a little press in Harvard Yard.
They show familiarity with the work of Copernicus, Galileo,
and Kepler.
But as you can see from the title page of this almanac
from 1684, they expressed a Puritan and Christian
worldview.
So for starters, you can see here
how it says it's not just the almanac for the year 1684,
but it goes on to say this being,
you know, the year from the creation
of the world, 5,633 years--
from the suffering of our savior,
1651 years, and so on up through the restoration of King Charles
II and the last leap year.
But down lower at the bottom here,
you'll see also this Latin phrase
which I've written up above.
And it translates as follows--
the stars govern man, but God governs the stars.
Now Puritans encouraged the study of nature
but believed that natural events reflected God's will and should
be seen as signs of the times.
After learning that Harvard's commencement was scheduled
for the date of a solar eclipse in 1684,
the college moved it up a day just to be safe.
On July 1, the academic festivities
went on without a hitch.
But President John Rogers unfortunately died the next day
during the eclipse.
The owner of this almanac, Judge Samuel Sewall,
a hanging judge during the Salem witch trials of 1692,
has noted the coincidence in his copy.
You'll see his mark on the lower right.
It's even more poignant since this issue of the almanac
had been a gift to him from President Rogers himself.
Now Roger's successor as president of Harvard College
was Increase Mather, the Puritan divine.
In the early 1680s, Mather had viewed
the Great Comet of 1680 and 81 and Halley's Comet of 1682
with the college's first telescope.
The observations of one spectator,
a certain Thomas Brattle, better known
probably to you for the street named after his family--
these observations were immortalized
in Newton's Principia.
But Mather's were put into sermons.
Mather preached that comets were warning [INAUDIBLE]
that God discharged before his murdering pieces went off.
They were portraits of political and religious evils, death,
and destruction.
And here you see an example of one of his sermons
about the comets.
And I'll just point out that this was--
the printing for this was paid for by Judge Samuel Sewall,
who we just met a moment ago.
Now by the time Halley's comet made its first predicted return
in 1759, comets and eclipses were still
occasions for public awe but not alarm.
John Winthrop, Harvard's professor
of mathematics and natural philosophy,
observed the comet in April and gave a public lecture.
Following Newton, he said the comets were
part of the solar system and brought vital fluids
to the Earth and fuel to the sun.
God contrived their orbits to prevent collisions.
He demonstrated this wisdom with equipment
such as this planetarium and cometarium,
showing that comets were signs of God's providence and not
his punishment.
The thing I want you to know well
here is these objects, when properly interpreted,
show that astronomy had not shed its ties to religion, even
though God's role in the cosmos had been re-evaluated.
In fact, faith was still a motivator for astronomers.
Astronomical instruments go behind enemy lines--
so like comets, solar eclipses had also
become occasions for research rather than
dread in the 18th century.
In 1780, Samuel Williams, Winthrop's successor,
decided that he would observe a total solar eclipse
in Penobscot Bay, Maine, even if the location was in a war zone.
The Bay was a strategic base for the British Navy
during the American Revolution and just a year earlier had
been the site of a major naval battle
in which an American fleet was decimated.
But Williams was no stranger to research behind enemy lines.
As a student in 1761, he had accompanied John Winthrop
up to St. John's Newfoundland to observe the transit of Venus
during the French and Indian War.
So let me take a moment to just explain what a transit of Venus
is and why you would go all the way to Newfoundland
to try to observe it.
So a transit of Venus is a rare astronomical alignment
of the Earth, Venus, and the sun.
So if you think of the sun is here
and Venus is going around it and then the Earth is going
around both of them, occasionally Venus
will cross between the Earth and the sun.
But most often, it is above or below the plane
that the Earth and sun are, so it
doesn't cross right in front of the disk of the sun.
But every 105 and 1/2 years or 121 and 1/2 years, Venus
crosses in front of the sun and looks
like a little dot going across.
And these transits, as they're called
come in pairs eight years apart with this big gap between.
So in the 18th century, Edmond Halley
had suggested that if astronomers
went all over the globe and tried
to observe this transit, the little dot going
across the sun, from different parts of the globe,
they could, in effect, triangulate
on Venus and the sun and therefore figure out
the distance from the Earth to the sun, which
was an unmeasured distance at that time.
So it was one of the great unsolved problems.
So there was a multinational collaboration where astronomers
went all over the globe.
And the only observer in North America to participate in this
was Professor John Winthrop, who took Samuel Williams up
to 1761.
But he had to go behind enemy lines.
And these are some of the instruments that Winthrop
had carried along with letters of safe passage written
to British and French commanders.
And the expedition had been financed by the colony
in Massachusetts Bay.
Now at the time of the second transit, the pair was in 1769,
and astronomy also rose above politics.
Then with the assistance from Benjamin Franklin,
Harvard reported state of the art English
astronomical instruments despite the boycott of English goods
by patriotic rebels for the British military blockade
of Boston.
In 1780 now, the eclipse fell in the midst of the official war.
Like Winthrop did before him, Williams
turned to his senior statesman and with this help received
support from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
and the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The state provided use of its row galley, a 250 ton
ship powered by oars as well as sail, with four swivel guns.
The board of war financed the expedition.
John Hancock, who was Speaker of the House in Massachusetts,
wrote the following to the British commander at Penobscot.
Though we are politically enemies,
it is presumable we shall not dissent
from the practice of all civilized people
in promoting science.
And the officer agreed not to impede the astronomers.
So Williams, two Harvard faculty members,
and six students plus probably a lot of rowers
provided by the Commonwealth, the hidden people who
are always involved in these things,
they departed Boston from Penobscot Bay, Maine,
in October.
Now for security reasons, the British commander
limited their stay and forced then
to observe from Long Island, now called Islesboro, Maine,
rather than from the mainland as planned.
Williams had no time to determine
the longitude of the new site to see if it would still
be within the path of totality.
Now modern calculations places encampment slightly outside,
but he was the first to observe what
later became known as Bailey's Beads,
as we see in this publication.
So it shows that he's quite close to the total path.
Now this excursion is credited as being
the first solar eclipse expedition in North America.
And these are the British instruments
that Ben Franklin had ushered through boycotts and blockades
to take further by patriots behind British enemy lines
to see the eclipse.
And there is a lesson here about science
rising above politics and another
about having to use the apparatus manufactured
by your current enemy.
But that's a story of political economy for another day.
So I'd like to turn now to astronomy as public utility.
A major reason that the state had supported astronomical
research was the presumption that astronomy was useful,
especially for navigation, geodetic surveys,
and timekeeping, all needs of the Commonwealth
and federal government.
Proof of this premise can be seen
in the establishment and early work of the Harvard College
Observatory.
So let's start by following the money.
When the apparition of the Great Comet of 1843
shamed Bostonians into building an observatory
worthy of observing it, community leaders
ponied up $25,000 in six weeks.
The preponderance of insurance companies on a dedication
plaque underscores the importance of Boston
as a mercantile center dependent on shipping.
Before the comet, Harvard had convinced William Cranch Bond,
who you see here, to bring his own instruments to Cambridge
and work for free from a rooftop on the Dana house,
which was located at the current side of Lemont Library.
Now Bond had all this money--
or Harvard out all this money, but he
could use it to build and direct a monumental observatory
with fixed instruments.
Harvard bought a refractor for Mertz and Mahler of Munich
with a 15 inch aperture.
So that's the diameter of the lens.
It was the twin of the largest in the world
at the new Imperial Russian observatory at Pulkovo.
So you see when Harvard gets going,
it does nothing by halves here.
Now this telescope, and you see it pictured there--
it's still up at the observatory.
It remained the largest in the United States
for 25 years when it was surpassed
by the US Naval observatory's 26 inch telescope.
And here is a big change.
In 1847, the best telescope had to come from Germany.
25 years later, it was made down the street
in Cambridge Port, Massachusetts.
Bonding and his sons--
George, Joseph, and Richard--
were astronomers and horologists living at the observatory.
Not only did they work in the observatory
as well as live there, but they were also
partners in the family clock making
firm William Bond and Sons.
The entanglement is revealed by this letterhead.
So here is a bill for regulating, I believe,
a chronometer.
And here's the company name.
And up here, they're not showing their offices in Boston.
They're showing the observatory and Garden Street.
In 1849 and 1850, Bond devised what
became known as the American method
of astronomical observation.
The new method employed new astronomical instruments
invented by the Bonds.
First, there was a clock with an electrical brake circuit that
could send time signals along wires
to a drum chronograph which you see here
in the front that recorded the beats of the clock
on that paper.
And then you have an astronomer who
is observing the sky through a transit telescope.
And he can press a telegraph key when
a star crosses in front of his micrometer eyepiece.
And that moment of observation is marked along the time chart
on the paper on the chronograph.
Now this new American method took European observatories
by storm.
It was far more accurate than the old ear eye hand
method, in which the astronomer would to listen to and count
the beats of the clock while simultaneously watching
the transit of a star and then jotting down the instant when
it crossed a wire in his field of view
and estimating the fractions of a second in which that
happened.
Now when the new clock and chronograph
were displayed at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851,
they earned a bronze Medal for the company
and were lauded in the publication American
Superiority at the World's Fair.
Now the telegraph lines that carried timed signals
inside the observatory could reach beyond its walls.
And before long, Harvard was selling time.
With the assistance of the US Coast Survey,
wires linked the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge
to the shop of William Bond and Son in Boston.
When the New England Association of Railroad Superintendents,
which represented 15 different companies,
voted in 1849 to adopt a standard time
along all the tracks in the interest of public safety
and convenient scheduling, it decided
that the time to be regulated by William Bond and Son.
And you see this timetable here of which
conductors need to bring their watches for regulation on which
days.
The firm used chronometers to adjust railroad conductors'
timepieces and installed astronomical regulators
in railroad stations.
The first of these standard clocks
was Bond number 137, which was delivered in 1855 to the Boston
and Providence railroad for use in the Boston Station.
Bond clock number 394, also shown here,
was one of the regulators set up at Harvard observatory
to deliver standard mean time to New England
through the agency of the Bond firm.
So the Bond firm profited from the business,
but Harvard College Observatory delivered the signal
for free under the directorships of William Cranch Bond and then
his son George Phillips Bond.
Not until 1872 under the leadership of Joseph Winlock
did the observatory establish fees for its time service.
Now Bond was also a pioneer in celestial photography,
taking the first photograph of a star other than the sun in 1850
using the great refractor we saw a moment ago
as well as daguerreotypes of the moon and a solar eclipse.
And I'd like to turn now to some more photography
and talk about glass that altered
the scale of the universe and the work force.
So I want to take you and jump ahead some 50 years
into the directorship of Edward C. Pickering and photographs
made on glass plates by huge camera-like telescopes.
Pickering was a pioneer of the new field of astrophysics.
He wasn't interested in simply stars' positions,
but their physical nature as revealed
by photometry and spectroscopy.
Initially, he and male observers made these measurements
at the eyepiece of telescopes and photometers,
but photographs more sensitive than the naked eye soon
took over the data capture.
Pickering deployed photographic telescopes in both hemispheres.
Notable among them was the Bruce telescope.
Carrying a price tag of $50,000, which was $66 and 1/2 million
in today's money, it was the most powerful telescope
in the world when completed in 1893.
It was made by Alvin Clark and sons of Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and the telescope had two pairs of massive glass
lenses with a clear aperture of 24 inches
and a combined focal length of 11 feet.
And here, what you're seeing is the two pairs
of lenses mounted freely on a stand in our gallery.
And what's in front here is another giant piece
of glass, a removable prism for dispersing starlight
into spectra.
And on the right here, you see the lenses
would have been here and here and the objective prism up
here.
And the plate holder where the photographs were taken
are down here.
Now the telescope was sent by Harvard College
to an observatory in Arequipa, Peru,
that it built and then on to Bloemfontein, South Africa,
in order to photograph the southern sky
on these giant glass plates.
A single photographic plate could
reveal more than 100,000 stars.
When the objective prism was put in front of the plate,
the photographs showed starlight dispersed into bands of spectra
like you see here.
They look like little smears with lines on them.
Now each of these spectra offers information
on the elements composing the star,
whether the star had an orbiting companion, how it was moving,
what its temperature was.
And the information was used at the observatory
to to classify stars according to a type sequence that
was OBAFGKM, which was devised by Annie Jump Cannon
and the other women working with her at the observatory
and well remembered by the later memonic, Oh Be a Fine Girl,
Kiss Me.
But that didn't come from the ladies at the observatory.
Another concern was the changing brightness of stars over time.
To measure this, photographs were
examined under magnification, and the variable star's image
was compared to magnitude standards on a fly spanker
like you see here that was slapped down
alongside on the plate.
Notes were made in India ink on the non-emulsion side
of the photographic plate, on its paper sleeve,
and in pencil in a log book.
Now these annotations leave a trail
of how the work was done, by whom, and when.
I wish I could say it was an indelible trail,
but recent projects to digitize the plates
have been scrubbing off these marks.
This irreversible act is of great concern
to historians as well as many plate-using astronomers.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt was a computer at the Harvard College
Observatory who specialized in variable stars
and examined many Bruce plates.
Her analysis of a special class of variables
known as cepheid variables in the Magellanic Clouds
led to her discovery of a law connecting
the absolute magnitude of each such star with the period
that its brightness fluctuated.
She published her findings in 1908 and 1912,
and they would soon be used as a way
to measure the dimensions of the universe.
So when Edwin Hubble in the 1920s using a 100 inch
telescope at Mt.
Wilson observatory discovered this type
of cepheid variable star in spiral nebulae
within the Milky Way, it became clear
that these nebulae, these fuzzy patches,
were independent galaxies located far beyond our galaxy.
So prior to this time there was a common view
that the Milky Way was everything and everything
was contained in it.
And so now we see that there's these things that
look like starry patches were actually
full galaxies at a great distance.
And Leavitt's findings were able to act like a standard candle
for measuring those distances because you
could tell what the brightness should
be by how much they flickered, in effect, like how
they fluctuated in light.
And so then if the brightness wasn't that much as
observed on the plates, then it had
to mean that it was just-- that object was much further away.
And so that's how we got these great distances.
And in 2008, the American Astronomical Society
recognized the significance of Leavitt's work
by designating the period luminosity relationship
as the Leavitt Law.
So with instruments readied in Cambridge
before being shipped abroad and crates of glass plates
returned for analysis, the observatory
had become a research factory.
To manage all the observing stations and data streams,
Pickering employed the most fantastic desk
in the history of astronomy.
Custom made by the observatory's chief engineer,
the desk is eight feet in diameter with 12 drawers
rotating around a central pole.
A bookcase rose independently above it.
Here we see the remnants of a label on a compartment
marked Boyden Station, which was the name
of the observing station first in Peru and then
in South Africa.
Pickering's successor, Harlow Shapley,
also loved the rotating desk and was often photographed at it.
So, paper dolls and wonder women--
the reduction of the data from hundreds of thousands
of astronomical photographs was time consuming,
and Pickering could not afford to hire more men.
He turned to the daughters of Harvard faculty,
qualified Radcliffe students in unpaid internships,
and women willing to work for $0.25 an hour.
Between 1885 and 1927, 80 women computers, as they were known,
analyzed the data contained on all those glass
plates produced by Harvard's photographic telescopes.
Shapley measured projects in terms of what
he called kilogirl hours.
Now notwithstanding that Ms. Katherine Bruce and Mrs. Mary
Anna Palmer Draper funded a lot of this work,
the women were actually not treated very well
by the university.
Take, for instance, Anne John Cannon.
Now she personally classified more than 350,000 stars
by their spectra and created the Harvard classification
system still used today.
She was elected the first female officer of the American
Astronomical Society in 1912, and her astrophysical work
earned her many accolades during her lifetime.
And yet Harvard refused to grant her a faculty appointment
until 1938.
In spite of all the pioneering work of computers
such as Cannon and Leavitt, this 1980 photograph
depicts them holding hands in a paper doll-like pose.
It's a charming photo until you start to think about it.
Now I do get some satisfaction in seeing Cannon's life
story featured in 1949 in "Wonder Women of History,"
a series bound with the "Wonder Woman" comic books.
But this comic strip is in sharp contrast
to the depiction of female astronomers in the media,
dressed in high heels, short skirts, and white evening
gloves.
Women are posed next to fancy telescopes marketed to men.
Puns are made about heavenly bodies.
These are the stereotypes that prominent women astronomers
such as Vera Reuben and Virginia Trimble
had to overcome in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
So what does a computer have in common with a teapot?
Well, this brings up the topic of popular culture
and the public's fascination with things
astronomical and how that has been mobilized to advertise
products and support research.
Astronomers, of course, were not secluded on Observatory Hill,
nor were they removed from the social rituals, entertainments,
business, and politics of their times.
William Cranch Bond, for instance,
had took the time to have this life mask made in 1844.
And we could look at it like his photographs and chronographs
as capturing an instant in time.
This silver tea set, engraved with the initials ACJ,
brings to mind the work of its owner, Anne John
Cannon, a computer who daily assigned alphabet letters
to the stars she classified.
Cannon enjoyed serving tea in her home,
Star Cottage on Bond Street alongside Observatory Hill.
She used one of her logbooks to record her various guests
and visitors.
Or consider that in 1879, only a year after Gilbert and Sullivan
produced HMS Pinafore, a Harvard astronomer
wrote a parody based on observatory life.
Now, like, how many songs do you know
about prisms and photometers?
This is where you'll find them.
50 years later, it was performed by another generation
at the observatory.
On the flipside, ephemeral publications
such as greeting cards, advertisements,
and vinyl records illustrate how contemporary popular culture
drew inspiration from astronomers'
work and the celestial bodies they studied.
Sheet music and recordings brought the stars home.
So did products promising their users
an out of this world experience.
D-Zerta drew on the anticipated return of Comet Hailey in 1910
to launch its new pudding.
Excitement over the opening of the world's largest telescope
in 1949, the 200 inch telescope at Palomar Observatory,
California, was used to sell Buicks and bread.
The associations promoted and how high tech and innovative
the goods were.
In some cases, profits went to support astronomy.
Take, for instance, this Warner's Safe Yeast trade card
featuring children looking at a comet.
The product was part of the patent medicine empire
that made Holbert H. Warner a millionaire.
He used his fortune to build the Warner observatory
in Rochester, create various comment prizes,
and finance Lewis Swift and E.E. Bernard, two
eminent astronomers.
So what about homemade and recycled telescope?
Any object-based history of American astronomy
should take into account amateur telescope makers whose
mecca is Stellafane, shown here, and participants
in groups such as the American Association of Variable Star
Observers.
But I'd like to take a moment to focus on Operation Moon Watch.
During the International Geophysical Year,
which ran from July 1957 through December 1958--
and yes, that's more than a year.
And it was the largest multi-national collaboration
of scientists at that time.
But during that year, the United States and the Soviet Union
planned to launch the first artificial satellites
to study the Earth's shape and atmosphere.
The satellites would need to be tracked,
and the job was given to Fred Whipple, an expert on meteor
tracking and photography.
As director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory,
Whipple planned a two-prong professional
and amateur approach 12 professionally
manned Baker Nunn telescopes were being deployed
to photograph the satellites in order
to determine their orbits.
But the big cameras needed to know
where to look for these faint objects.
This was the job of Operation Moon Watch.
The Smithsonian observatory published inserts in Sky
and Telescope magazine that called
for the [INAUDIBLE] of teams of amateurs
who would observe the satellites passing overhead
and relay their data back to the observatory.
They were equipped with modified army M17 elbow telescopes
and cheap satellite tracking telescopes made specifically
for this purpose.
But when Sputnik launched unexpectedly
on October 4, 1957, the United States
was caught with its professional telescopes down.
The moon watch observations of citizen scientists filled
the breach.
Project Moon Watch speaks to the importance of amateurs
and crowdsourcing and giving an assist
to professional astronomers.
It also speaks to the entwinement
of military security and astronomical institutions
and the development and deployment
of high tech, often classified, optical instruments.
So to draw some conclusions here,
I'd like to return to what I said at the start of this talk,
when I asked why should we care about documenting
and preserving the old and obsolete.
Now a simple answer is that material things enhance
our knowledge of astronomy's history in ways that written
text alone cannot do.
But I think a more important answer
is that learning about the past helps us to live critically
in the present.
Captain Smith's sundial sheds light
on the imperialistic arrogance of colonizers
and the roots of conflict with native peoples about cosmology,
an ongoing situation in the location of mountaintop
observatories.
Mechanical models of the solar system
must be understood along with almanacs and sermons, not only
as a means to teach astronomy, but also to promote piety
in colonial New England.
They lead us to ask how changing religious beliefs in America
today might affect academic and federal support for science.
Clocks, telescopes, and quadrants
taken behind enemy lines on research expeditions
declare not only a noble commitment
to place science above politics but also
the importance of state funding to support the work.
These are both worthy but difficult goals still.
And then we saw how the improved clocks, chronographs,
and telegraph wires were deployed
to increase astronomical accuracy
and deliver standard time as a public utility.
Motivation came from a partnership between business
and astronomy, represented in the entanglement of personnel
of the Harvard College Observatory and the William
Bond and Son firm.
The story of glass in the form of large lenses, prisms,
and photographic plates takes us into a global network
of observing stations and expanded astronomy workforce
and the creation of a data library
which can still be mined for information 100 years later.
The observatory director has become a business manager
seated at an enormous desk when he is not out raising money.
The glass plates and paper ephemera
also raise our consciousness about the role and treatment
of women over time.
And moon watch telescopes show us the power and value
of amateurs.
Astronomers, of course, have always
imbibed the values of their times,
as t-sats, images of baseball, and life masks remind us.
The thing, though, is us to be mindful of the public's romance
with the stars and remember how popular media can
be used to build support for dark skies
and great new telescopes.
So to close my talk, I just want to say
that many of the objects that I showed you tonight
are on display in two galleries in the Science Center
at the collection of historical scientific instruments.
Many are on display in the Putnam gallery
on the first floor of the Science Center
in an exhibit called Time, Life, and Matter--
Science in Cambridge.
And on the third floor at the foyer of the history of science
department, we have a little gallery
where we have an exhibit called Starstruck--
Astronomers in Popular Culture.
And the exhibit there was curated
by nine students from the Tangible Things course
that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and I co-taught last fall.
And you'll see in it the t-sat, the life mask, moon watch
telescopes, many of the things that you also saw in this talk.
And I may have some of the students who
co-curated that exhibit with me here in the audience.
I see one in the back--
Isabella, I think.
And so if you're interested in that project, do speak to her.
The other thing-- these exhibits are open on--
both are open on weekdays, and the one in the Putnam gallery
is also open on Sundays.
So you'll have an opportunity to see both exhibits.
One's permanent, one's temporary,
but it'll be up until the end of September, the one
called Starstruck--
Astronomers in Popular Culture.
So I do encourage you to come see the real thing.
Thank you.
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