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Observatorium NOTE: This is a draft version only, which will be translated into German in due course. Please quote from the published version or contact the author for permission. Omar W. Nasim

Although the observatory is one of the oldest sites dedicated to the study of the

natural world, historians of science have until late been rather occupied with another

much more modern site for the production of scientific knowledge, the laboratory.

With their keen focus on the experimental sciences—rather than the observational—

the amount of attention paid to the laboratory is however not surprising. After all, it

was the experimental science of physics that was regarded as the paradigm science for

most of the twentieth century, and which offered a model for understanding the

relationship between theory and experiment. And even when historians and

sociologists of science embarked on the practical turn, it was first taken within the

context of the experimental sciences rather than the observational. This fruitful turn

was the result of regarding the culture of experiment as something more than just at

the beckon-call of theory—experiment came to have a “life of its own,” a life mostly

spent in the laboratory (Hacking 1983).

With the practical turn boundaries came to be questioned, so that experiments, along

with laboratories, began to appear in unexpected and formerly proscribed places. Ian

Hacking, for instance, proclaimed that astronomy was well outside the domain of

scientific experiment (Hacking 1989). A few years later, Simon Schaffer (1995)

showed that one could not understand the rise of the “new astronomy” or astrophysics

in the nineteenth century without an appreciation for how laboratories and an

associated experimental culture were embedded into an observatory’s networks.

Victorian astronomers turned observatories “into subspecialized workshops,” wrote

Schaffer, “stocked with batteries, induction coils, magnetometers, telegraph wires,

spectroscopes, reagent bottles, Bunsen burners, photographic studios, and even

‘artificial stars’” (Schaffer 1995, 259). Schaffer thus assimilated observation into the

prevalent discourse around the experimental sciences (vgl. Hoffmann 2007). This

emphasis on experimental culture can be explained by the wish to challenge positivist

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readings of the history of science. Earlier, Schaffer (1988) had already carefully

traced the role of the personal equation in the transformation of observatories—

presumed by positivists to be solitary watchtowers where heroic observers passively

gazed into the heavens—into efficient “factories” where mere observers were

disciplined into becoming replaceable “drudges” or “machines” under constant

surveillance (Schaffer 1988, 119; 120). This was especially the case in large national

observatories like the Royal Observatory at Greenwich or the Paris Observatory,

where observers were managed as liabilities.

However, behind the common metaphor of a solemn watchtower, the observatory also

reflects a model of objectivity. The specificities of an observatory’s place and the

manner by which it may be de-placed were connected to a view of objectivity that

extolled a view from nowhere or everywhere. This is a view that makes a critical

attitude towards the ways in which the observatory has been placed or de-placed all

the more significant (vgl. James 1989; Fox and Guagnini 1999). In fact, a focus on the

place or site of knowledge production reveals something about its distinctive

character as a particular sort of enterprise rather than another. So besides the

laboratory and the observatory, the most important of such sites is the field. The

laboratory is characterized by its sterile and standardized placelessness, one that is

conducive to universally replicable findings. The field, on the other hand, is often

distinguished for its ruggedness and site-specificity, where local variations are

themselves made the subject of study. Without being reduced to a border zone

(Kohler 2002), the observatory has aptly been described as a “middle ground between

laboratory and field” (Le Gars and Aubin 2009, 512), and as a unique site where

characteristics of both—field and lab—“co-mingle” (Lane 2010, 93).

Aside from the deconstruction of universal placelessness into multiple intersecting

places, sites and localities, let us not forget that just as vital is the strategies and

techniques employed by scientists for transcending, erasing, or silencing locale

specificities; or what Peter Galison has called the local de-localization of scientific

work (Galison 2005, 490; see also, Daston 2009; Ophir and Shapin 1991). The

observatory as a hybrid site provides historians of science with an exceptional

opportunity to examine more fully the multiple dimensions of both directions: from

the placeless to the situated, and from the local to the de-placed. After all, those who

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worked at observatories directly faced the ideals and challenges of both the laboratory

and the field. Indeed, permanent observatories were de-placed, as they became nodes

in socio-political, mathematical, and geographic networks (Le Gars and Aubin 2009).

But many observatories were also temporarily erected in the field, only to further

draw attention to their context and specificity of locale (Pang 2002; Ratcliff 2008)

Moreover, while the observatory can be investigated from the vantage point of the

experimental sciences, as it often has, it might also be treated from the perspective of

the observational sciences. But it is only recently that historians of science have

begun to give distinct treatment to the multiple “histories of observation,” instead of

subjugating them to the yoke of either theory or experiment. The many welcome

results of the latest focus on observation have been a number of studies on practices,

instruments, or techniques that have remained neglected or outside the frame of

interest thus far (z.B. Hoffmann 2006; Daston and Lunbeck 2011; Nasim 2013;

Terrall 2014). Among these is what has been called “observatory techniques” (Aubin,

Bigg, and Sibum 2010). It consists in a number of physical, methodological and social

techniques developed in and for the observatory, including those that enable the use

of instruments, data acquisition, representational practices, and management (Aubin

2011, 116). These techniques defined not only the observatory as a space, but also the

practices and methods in several important nineteenth century sciences such as

physics, mathematics, statistics, meteorology, geodesy, and even psychophysiology

(Canales 2001; Schmidgen 2013). In addition, these techniques cannot be considered

apart from their connections to the colonial expansions of the great empires of the

nineteenth century (Nanni 2012).

What might be included in an entry on the observatory is huge. I have thus opted to

frame the discussion around a significant feature of observatories already alluded to,

which will allow me to be as inclusive of its history as possible; namely, multiple

strategies of stabilizing and thus transcending an observatory’s place in the face of

factors that might destabilize it. I explore here the interplay between these forces. I

will begin by showing how strategies of transcending are reflected in an observatory’s

physical construction and architecture, including the materials used for the

construction of instruments and their situation and grounding in an observatory. From

considerations of the appropriate soil to the growing number of disturbances in the

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modern world, like the railway and the electric lights of a city, I will move to

strategies developed by observatories to both delocalize as well as stabilize. Among

the most important of such strategies has been its orientation in space and in time, the

consequences of which cannot be overemphasized for not only scientific practice but

also for the orientation of results on paper and print, and even for the self in the face

of the modernity. Finally, I will end with a discussion of a move to stabilize

observatories by means of their directors and their management styles. Though much

of the discussion will revolve around examples taken from the nineteenth century (a

focus warranted by the sudden increase in the number of observatories in the world at

the time (Hermann 1973; Howse 1986)), I will, nevertheless, conclude with a brief

gesture to how one of these directors anticipated the development of the observatory

well into the twentieth century.

I.

Observatories had to be stabilized in the face of all that could possibly destabilize.

Ranging from the cultural and epistemic, architectural and material, in the long

history of the observatory there have been different means to stability. For one thing,

an observatory is as stable as its principal instruments. Before the seventeenth century,

one often finds that the size and material selected for an observatory’s instruments

was thought to achieve this stability. Take for instance the large stone, immobile

instruments at the Jantar Mantar Observatory built for the Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh

II (1688-1743) in the eighteenth century. Ulugh Beg’s (1394-1449) observatory in

Samarkand built in 1428, which was inspired by Nasr al-Din al-Tusi’s (1201-1274)

thirteen century Maragha Observatory, had its chief instrument, an altitude or mural

quadrant (an estimated 63 metres along its edge and with a radius of 40.212 metres),

partly cut into the side of a solid rock hill, bisecting the main building down the

middle on the north-south axis (Sayili 1960). Large immobile instruments and the

manner of their use and construction continued to be associated with stability and

determined the kinds of space provided for them; and this well into the modern period

of Europe as well, as witnessed by Tycho Brahe’s observatory in Uraniborg.

Terrace observatories were common for large instruments that stood immobile and

permanently fixed in the open—especially in places where cold winters were not a

problem. And as long as the principal instrument remained the quadrant or sextant

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(but not the telescope), a terrace, courtyard, or platform continued to be a major

feature of an observatory (for example, Peking Observatory, Die Sternwarte von

Eimmart in Nuernberg, Kassel Observatory, the old university observatory in Breslau,

and a large part of Hevelius’ Observatory). Shelter was provided mainly for staff,

library, records, and instruments of a more delicate nature. However, around the late

seventeenth century, many meridian instruments became smaller and more delicate in

their construction and adjustment; consequently, they came to be housed inside. They

are mounted and fixed indoors, where large windows or slits through a roof parallel to

the meridian line sometimes marked on the floor provided observers access to the

heavens.

Fig. 1

Jesuiten-Sternwarte Prag, Tower Observatory (rund 50 m hoch), 1721-1723. Image from P. Mueller, Sternwarten in Bildern, Springer Verlag, 1992, p. 65.

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One of the ways in which the stability for an observatory—and thus its instruments,

techniques, and results—came to be understood for most of the eighteenth century

was shaped by how instruments were housed and used in towers (figure 1). Augustin-

Charles d’Aviler’s Dictionnaire d’architecture (1755) defines the observatory as a

“bâtiment en forme de tour, élevé sur un éminence, et couvert d’une terrase, où l’on

fait des observations d’astronomie, et des expériences de physique” (d’Aviler 1755,

252). While the top floors of a tower were dedicated to instruments of all kinds and

the most important observational work, lower floors might be used for other purposes.

Take for instance the Berlin Observatory (built in 1706-11), which had an 84-foot

tower built for the purposes of astronomical observation, and a meeting place on the

lower floors for the newly founded Kurfürstlich Brandenburgische Sozietät der

Wissenschaften (Connelly 1973, 30-32). Another interesting example is the eight-

story (50 meter high) observatory of the Benedictine Abbey at Kremsmünster

(founded in 1756) that had floors below the sixth story devoted to a museum with

collections dedicated to inorganic artifacts on the first floors, moved up to the organic

and lower forms of life, and higher up to the human and artistic and finally to the

cosmic (Mueller 1992). Towers were indeed conducive to hierarchies of knowledge.

Tower observatories were often built in the midst of cities, above busy streets, and

sometimes upon the remnants of ancient structures such as old city walls (e.g.,

Montpellier Observatory, Bologna Observatory, and the old Goettingen Observatory

built in 1751). The towers not only protected instruments and astronomers, they stood

as emblems of security, permanence, and mastery. Indeed, instead of stability being

conferred by an instrument’s size and make-up, with tower observatories the reverse

is the case: the loftiness of sturdy towers not only elevate astronomy and its

instruments to new dizzying heights but also ground them through a variety of ancient

or enlightened spaces upon which they are made to firmly stand.1 An architectonics of

knowledge of the eighteenth century, to be sure, that centered on classification and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!The!model!for!these!might!have!been!the!Copenhagen!tower!observatory!built!between!1637?42,!which!is!34.8!meters!high!and!is!attached!to!a!church.!On!a!lower!floor!the!entire!University!of!Copenhagen!library!was!also!housed!in!1657!in!a!large!room!halfway!up!the!round!tower.!!!!!!!

! 7!

hierarchy, grounded and stabilized tower observatories of the period (Schwarte 2005,

91-96).

II.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Galileo was among the first to turn the

newly invented telescope to the heavens. But it was not until the late seventeenth

century that observatories began to be equipped with some kind of telescope or other.

However, the principal instruments of astronomical observation remained the mural

quadrant or sextant. At a time when meridian observations were the chief task of any

observatory, the telescope was considered too unwieldy and imprecise for meridian

observations. Although Ole Rømer invented the first transit instrument in 1690 and a

meridian circle in 1704 (both employed small refractor telescopes fixed to the

meridian), it was not until the instrument maker John Dollond patented the achromatic

lens in 1753, and Nevil Maskelyne invented the prismatic micrometer that these

inventions (along with the pendulum astronomical regulator) allowed smaller but

more powerful refracting telescopes to be employed for the purposes of precise

meridian (or positional) astronomy. A new level of accuracy was attained with the

telescope as an instrument (King 1955; Chapman 1995).

Fig. 2 Section of Harvard College Observatory, from W. C. Bond, “History and Description of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College,” Annals of the Astronomical Observatory 1 (1856), Plate II.

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Associated with this accuracy arose at the end of the eighteenth century fresh ways to

literally ground telescopes, and thus to stabilize and give shape to observatories.

Newly equipped telescopes were brought down from towers to newly built

observatories that stood on higher ground (e.g., Kew Observatory or King’s

Observatory (1769), and Stockholm Observatory (1753)). Or, what turns out to be a

feature of many nineteenth century observatories, the primary telescopic instruments

themselves begun to be fixed upon brick or granite piers that ran deep down into the

foundations of an observatory (e.g., Dunsink Observatory, Dublin (1785) being

among the first of these kind). The piers stood unconnected to the floors of the

observatory, so that no vibrations could be transmitted to it (figure 2). The piers often

stood many meters high and raised an instrument up to the second or third floor where

it sat under a domed roof; but the piers also ran many meters deep, thus preventing—

unlike tower observatories—the use of any space below (compare figures 1 and 2).

Consequently, and due in part to the keen attention now paid to the foundations of an

observatory and the piers that ran deep down into them, older observatories begin to

be described as “those great and unstable structures,” (Ussher 1787, 8) while the

newer observatories are described as “perfectly stable” (Ussher 1787, 7).

By the late eighteenth century many begin to echo and heed Rømer’s advice given in

a letter to Leibniz over a half century earlier: “I differ sharply from their opinion, who

up to now have adorned observatories more for pomp than use, and have

accommodated the instruments to the building rather than the building to the

instruments” (in Connelly 1973, 27). In fact, with the stabilizing techniques just

described, nineteenth century observatories become even more sensitive to

destabilizing forces—ironically, the inadvertent recognition of this fact sometimes

helped to transform observatories into instruments of other sorts altogether. Take for

instance the important observatory at Neuchatel, which was erected at the base of the

Jura Mountains (in 1858), and thus on solid-rock rather than on gravel (as

recommended later on). The annual change in pointing of the observatory’s meridian

circle turned out to be so great that Adolphe Hirsch (1830-1901), the observatory’s

first director, discovered that he could publish an investigation showing that the

mountain upon which the observatory sat actually underwent an annual change to an

extent that had not before been remarked upon (reported in Newcomb 1884, 15).

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However, besides regular, measurable natural shifts in an observatory’s environment

or the Earth itself, the more an observatory was precisely located and stably fixed the

more irregular tremors and movements came to negatively affect the work done in it.

It is thus little wonder that the American astronomer Denison Olmsted wrote in the

mid-1800s, addressing his countrymen involved in the observatory-building-boom

that the consideration of the “greatest importance” in the erection of an observatory is

“to secure perfect steadiness … A situation is therefore selected as remote as possible

from public roads (for even the passing of a carriages would give a tremulous motion

to the ground, which would be sensible in large instruments)” (Olmsted 1856, 51). If

the carriage was a hazard, the increasing number of railroads near observatories was

disastrous. George Airy, Captain Denham, and Thomas Robinson, for instance,

carried out experiments on the effect of vibrations caused by trains. The results were

published by the order of the House of Commons. But these tests were carried out in

makeshift stations and not fixed observatories. Robinson, the director of the Armagh

Observatory, had, thanks to the opening of the Ulster Railway near his observatory,

the “unfortunate” opportunity to test the effects on his fixed observatory. A battery of

tests yielded mostly harmful results for the observatory, but by far the “most

dangerous of all these disturbances” occurred during the bisection of a star when a

train passed—effecting the very bread-and-butter of positional astronomy. Robinson

goes on to write that “I have, therefore, been obliged to establish it as a standing rule,

that all such cases are to be noticed in the journal, and the observations rejected”

(Robinson 1850-1853, 291).

The level and number of disturbances was only amplified when it came to

metropolitan observatories. Vibrations caused by carriages, trains, and crowds

harmfully affected observatories in Berlin, London, and Paris. But the levels of noise,

pollution, and light that accompanied industrial, modern cities only intensified the

level of disturbance. In the case of the Paris Observatory, instead of moving the entire

observatory outside of the city, as many had proposed, in the 1850s its director Urban

Le Verrier opted to retrofit the meridian instruments with piers that stood independent

of the building vaults. This was supposed to help insulate the instruments from the

vibrations originating in the surrounding areas of the observatory. A few years later,

and thanks to Georges Eugene Haussmann’s grand urbanization projects, the Paris

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observatory came under new threats. Le Verrier raised the issue to the Academy of

Sciences, saying, “on street sides, we feel the embarrassment of noise, dirt, vibrations,

and above all lighting. This last obstacle is in truth the most considerable. Observing

above a line of gas lampposts located too close, it would be impossible to see weak

stars, let alone to measure their motions” (in Aubin 2003, 89). Thus were astronomers

directly confronted with the question of whether or not the modern observatory was at

all compatible within the modern cityscape? Ironically, “if cities” Aubin perceptively

remarks, “came to trouble observatories, it was as a direct consequence of the latter’s

culture of high precision” (Aubin 2003, 85).

III.

Despite these disturbances, the fact remains that the Paris Observatory continued its

astronomical activities well into the twentieth century. Given urbanization, how was

this possible? There are two strategies that are of interest. On the one hand, to

facilitate the delocalization of the urban observatory, astronomer’s emphasized and

strengthened its local embeddedness within a series of networks and power relations.

As the astronomer Hervé Faye put it with regard to the Paris Observatory,

“While the observatory constantly needs their cooperation, in turn scientists and

instrument makers need to have an easy and daily access to the observatory. It is not

only useful to astronomers, but also to navigators, travelers, and officers who come to

gather information, ask for computations, and train in observations, to physicists

whose work now has so many points of contact with astronomy, to the State for

geodesy and telegraphy, to the whole city, finally, for the exact determination of time”

(in Aubin 2003, 93).

On the other hand, an observatory might instigate or connect itself to large

international projects that extend its reach well beyond the confines of its urban

location. Capitalizing on new techniques and instruments developed by the Henry

brothers for photographing stars for the purposes of astrometry, the director of the

Paris Observatory initiated in 1886 one of the most ambitious international projects to

date. This was the Carte du ciel project, which in 1887 obtained the commitments of

20 observatories to collectively photograph the entire sky for stars of pre-specified

magnitudes. And since the telescopes to be used were to be modeled after the ones

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employed at the Paris Observatory, nearly half of the observatories ordered the

requisite, standard telescope from the Henry brothers. It has been argued that thanks

to the constraints imposed on it by the city, the Paris Observatory was able to extend

its reach and parcel out a large part of its own labour; and also to help internationally

establish new and emerging scientific techniques, modeled after some of its very own

practices and instruments (Aubin 2003, 99; Bigg 2000).

Under disappearing night-skies, at the end of the nineteenth century urban

observatories could no longer demand that positional measurements of the stars be

made directly off the surface of the heavens; but, rather, that measurements should be

also directly taken off thousands of photographic plates. Hans Blumenberg’s

observation with regard to the Carte du ciel project is worth mentioning, especially

when the “modern city dweller” is understood to include the urban astronomer: “One

will almost have to say that the modern city dweller, for whom the floods of

illumination of his streets make the heavens pale, now knows the starry heavens (from

countless widely distributed reproductions) only as an object of photography”

(Blumenberg 1996, 96). In the absence of the view of the stars, except through

mechanical reproduction, Blumenberg argues that the conditions were ripe for “the

technical simulation of the starry heavens [to] become actual in the museum.” In

particular, something like Carl Zeiss’ planetarium or what might be called the

“people’s observatory” becomes possible (Blumenberg 1996, 116).

IV.

In light of newly illuminated cities, however, the popular “longing” (Blumenberg

1996, 116) for the heavens is connected to another essential aspect of the observatory,

and that is orientation. There are different and interrelated facets to orientation that

include not only the consequences of orienting an observatory in space and time but

the observatory as a place of orientation or disorientation for the modern self. To

begin with, let us take the case of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, who is led by an

astronomer up a winding staircase of a lofty tower observatory. Upon reaching an

open platform at the top of the tower, Wilhelm is overwhelmed by the clear night sky

but gains composure at the sight of Jupiter with his naked eyes. But when invited by

the astronomer to look at the same planet through a telescope, Wilhelm is thrown into

deep confusion. The telescope, Wilhelm pointedly remarks, puts out of balance the

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outward sense with his inner faculties, leading to intense disorientation (Goethe 1821,

121). At the close of the eighteenth century, Goethe thus points us to the strength of

the moral compass required by an astronomer, regardless of the proverbial stability of

the tower (Irmscher 1993).

In contrast, consider bedazzled modern city-folk of the last part of the nineteenth

century, who, surrounded by gas-lit streets, “had stars of their own; biddable,

domesticated stars” (Stevenson 1881, 291). With the electric light arrive only more

crowds, surveillance, and commerce at night, which confound the senses and the

heavens (Schivelbusch 1983). At this time, the observatory is a place of refuge. As H.

G. Wells put it at century’s end, “Down there in the gaslight street such things are real

and solid enough, the only real things, perhaps; but not up here, not under the

midnight sky. Here for a space, standing silently upon the dim, grey tower of the old

observatory, we may clear our minds of instincts and illusions, and look out upon the

real” (Wells 1898, 266). So while at the beginning of the nineteenth century the

bourgeois is depicted as bewildered and perplexed by what is made visible on a visit

to an observatory, by the end of the century, the observatory comes to be depicted as a

place of repose and orientation both inwardly and outwardly to an otherwise overly

stimulated population. “No place,” wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes about the

observatory, “short of the temple of the living God, can be more solemn” (in Aubin

2011, 112). Indeed, many in the nineteenth century referred to observatories as

“temples of science.”2

Orientation, moreover, acted as an important source of stability in other ways. Among

the most important, to be sure, is how observatories are oriented in relation to space

and time. The ways in which a building might be spatially orientated in relation to the

heavens often characterized it as an observatory. It was precisely because of its

distinctive orientation that the nineteenth century English astronomer Richard Proctor

argued that the Great Pyramid of Giza was an observatory (Proctor 1888). And it is

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!2!It!might!be!pointed!out!that!observatories!might!even!be!used!as!makeshift!chapels,!as!was!the!newly!built!observatory!at!the!Cape!of!Good!Hope!by!the!first!Astronomer!Royal!(Warner!1995,!179).!In!other!cases,!people!even!found!refuge!and!care!in!an!observatory!from!war!and!military!occupation,!as!they!did!when!the!Americans!invaded!and!defeated!the!Spanish!in!the!Philippines;!this!was!the!Manila!Observatory,!built!and!run!by!the!Jesuits,!which!was!regarded!as!a!safe!zone!by!all!parties,!(Schumacher!1965,!267).!!

! 13!

because of its unique orientation, that many today believe Stonehenge to be one of the

earliest known observatories in the world.

Fig. 3 A simple meridian marker for the use at a private observatory. Image taken from Captain W. H. Smyth, A Cycle of Celestial Objects, vol. 1, London, 1844, p. 331.

Indeed, one of the most important acts in an astronomical observatory is finding the

meridian line through the north-south axis. Once determined by means of the

circumpolar stars and a transit instrument, the plane of meridian could be marked

down as a solid line through an observatory, especially in any room dedicated to

meridian instruments (as it is on the second floor of the Paris Observatory). By the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the most effective way to mark the meridian line

is with conspicuous meridian markers, one to the north and another to the south of the

observatory, each typically several meters distant from the observatory, and each with

a precisely placed dot and/or x on it (figure 3). These pillars were often laid deep into

the ground with a mind to permanence. In the case of the Royal Observatory at the

Cape of Good Hope, for instance, the pillars were made of English brick upon a bed

of stones to the depth of six or seven feet below the ground (Warner 1995, 162). By

thus fixing the local orientation of the observatory, these markers become essential in

calibrating, aligning or collimating the meridian instruments. But that is not all. The

alignment of the primary transit instrument with the line of the meridian at major

observatories like the ones at Paris, Puklova, Berlin, Cambridge, and the Royal

Observatories at Greenwich and at the Cape of Good Hope were all used as primary

reference points for military and civil cartographers, geographers, navigators, and vast

! 14!

ordnance and geodesic surveys (Alder 2002; Widmalm 2010; Schiavon 2010). It is no

wonder that the first Royal Astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope was compelled to

surround his meridian pillars with a protective spiky fringe of iron work and to forbid

“all persons from trespassing on the Observatory grounds—the dot having been

removed from its place (twice) by ill persons, with stones, sticks” (Warner 1995, 163).

The more precisely an observatory could be located and situated the more was it

susceptible to de-localization.3 And just as well determined stars acted as “zero points”

by which other stars could be relatively positioned, precisely located observatories too

could act as points of reference for other observatories. Or as John Herschel put it,

such observatories are the “zero points on earth which, like the standard stars in the

heavens, will serve for the determination of innumerable others. Already,” he goes on

to point out, “we are furnished with a conspicuous instance of its use in this respect,

in the determination of the longitude of Madras” (Herschel 1827, 488). And not

unlike the stars in the heavens, not all observatories were considered equal—some

outshone others. In many cases the standard points of reference were the major

metropolitan observatories in Paris, London or Berlin. Thus among the most

important series of measurements to be accomplished in the field was the

determination of the longitudes for these. This work went far in securing the location

of these major observatories; in securing more precise maps; in the determination of

the shape of the earth; and for opening up precise sites for other observatories in the

“periphery” like Madras (1786) or Algiers (1856). The reciprocal relationship

between determining the positions of stars and the determination of an observatory’s

position on earth not only created a circle of calibration, but went far in establishing a

vast network of observatories modeled after the network of stars in the heavens,

especially in the nineteenth century.

In addition to orientating an observatory in space, a well-collimated transit instrument

was crucial for orientation in time as well. To begin with, observatories have long

been associated with the determination of calendars—both secular and sacred. For

example, it was quite practical to use the minaret of a mosque to help with the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!3!In!some!cases!localization!overtook!delocalization,!as!in!the!case!of!Jules!Janssen’s!Mont!Blanc!Observatory!(Le!Gars!and!D.!Aubin!2009,!513).!!

! 15!

determination of time—it was, after all, the place from which the times for prayer

were called out five times a day, and from where lunar sightings were made

particularly to mark the beginning or end of the lunar month.4 A number of meridiana

in cathedrals in Italy (like San Petronio in Bologna) were used to help determine the

time of Easter, is another good example. These have been aptly referred to as “solar

observatories” (Heilbron 1999). But aside from the ancient business of calendars, by

the nineteenth century many observatories were involved in finding and distributing

local time for businesses and governments, railways and cities, mariners and the

courts, which all came to rely more and more on observatories for reliable time. In

some cases, the distribution of an observatory’s time was not only a source of

authority but was of revenues (e.g., Neuchatel Observatory, Harvard Observatory)

(see for instance Pickering 1892; also see Bennett 1980; Rooney and Nye 2009).

One of ways in which modern observatories might transcend the particularities of

their place was to make the all-important line of meridian running through the center

of their transit instruments, and the time defined by means of it, a central reference

point for others worldwide. In the 1830s, for instance, Gauss, the first director of the

Göttingen Observatory, set up an international association whereby all kinds of

observatories all over the world made observations of terrestrial magnetism on fixed

“term days”, all at precisely the same moment defined by Göttingen mean time

(Cawood 1977; for more on the Göttingen observatory as a site see Beuermann 2005).

But the best case is that of the Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris,

produced at Royal Greenwich Observatory since 1766. For the purposes of

determining the longitude at sea, this widely used ephemerides took as its prime

meridian the one determined—on a few different occasions—at Greenwich

Observatory. As such, many a sea-faring nation took up the convention of using the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!4!The!fourteenth!century!astronomer!Ibn al-Shāṭir set!up!a!sundial!on!the!balcony!of!the!main!minaret!of!the!Umayyad!Mosque!in!Damascus!(King!??).!This!extraordinary!sundial!showed!the!hours!of!the!day!in!various!systems!and!the!times!for!the!prayers.!In!addition,!the!central!minaret!of!the!mosque!of!Almohade,!built!in!1000!A.D.,!now!called!the!Giralda!in!Seville,!Spain,!is!said!to!have!been!used!as!an!observatory.!It!originally!stood!70!meters!high!and!was!constructed!atop!the!remains!of!Roman!and!Gothic!ruins;!see!(Gallichan!1903,!73f).!It!should!be!noted!that!in!Sayili’s!classic!(1960)!there!is!no!mention!made!of!minarets!being!used!as!observatories.!This!is!most!likely!due!to!the!curious!fact!that!Sayili!refuses!to!include!the!muwaqqits!or!astronomical!timekeepers!in!his!otherwise!elaborate!study!on!the!observatory!in!Islam.!As!a!result!of!this!exclusion,!Sayili!says!next!to!nothing!about!the!common!conjunction!of!observatories!and!mosques.!A!wonderful!example!of!such!a!structure!(or!Muvakkithane)!is!one!built!in!the!neo?classical!style!by!G.!Fossati!in!1853!for!the!Hagia!Sofia!in!Istanbul.!!!!

! 16!

meridian of Greenwich as the prime meridian. Thus by the time of the International

Meridian Conference in Washington D.C., and on 22 Oct 1884, for some it was only

natural that the meridian passing through the center of the transit instrument at the

Royal Observatory of Greenwich was adopted as the common zero of longitude and

standard of time reckoning throughout the world (Howse 1997).

An observatory is thus where space and time are ordered by means of their

inextricable relations. “In the observatory,” writes Captain W.H. Smyth, “time and

space are so intimately connected, as to be almost convertible terms” (Smyth 1844,

388). But by arranging time and space the observatory not only disciplines the world

but also other scientific institutions, persons and practices. Sir John F. W. Herschel

recognized this when he wrote that, “every astronomical observatory which publishes

its observations, becomes a nucleus for the formation around it of a school of exact

practice….a centre, from which emanate a continual demand for and suggestion of

refinement and delicacies, and precautions in matter of observation and apparatus

which re-act upon the whole body of science” (Herschel 1845, 640).

One powerful means to meet such demands was most certainly the publication of the

results of an observatory. Both Tycho Brahe and Hevelius had printing rooms in their

observatories. Though many nineteenth century observatories too had rooms

dedicated to printing, when it came to standards for how to order and prepare

observational results for publication, the decisive factor came with Friedrich Bessel’s

Fundamenta astronomiae (1818). In this work, Bessel (1784-1846), who began his

career as an accountant, took on the task of systematically reducing James Bradley’s

observations of the positions of 3,222 stars made from 1750 to 1762 at the Royal

Greenwich Observatory. The reductions accounted for instrumental errors, and those

caused by the earth’s atmosphere (refraction). Apparent star positions at the time of a

specific observation (observation epoch) had to be reduced to a common point in time

(mean epoch)—in this case 1755—so that they would be freed of the effects of the

motion of the earth and of the site of observation. To achieve this Bessel had to also

determine and apply the constants of precession, nutation, and aberration to Bradley’s

data. This pioneering work affected ways in which an observatory’s particularities

might be silenced by means of how data were ordered and treated after they have been

collected, in order to ready them for publication. Bessel’s work heralded in a new

! 17!

regime of observation, one that was incorporated in the publications of many national

observatories.

V.

We have seen how observatories were stabilized by means of some combination of

instruments and buildings, and their orientation. However, by the middle of the

nineteenth century, another factor came to be accentuated, especially for public or

national observatories; namely, the role of the director. The American astronomer and

the director of the Nautical Almanac Office in the United States, Simon Newcomb

(1835-1909) articulated this change well when he reminded his readers: “Heretofore,

the practice has usually been first to decide upon the observatory, and to plan the

building; next to provide instruments; and lastly to select an astronomer, and, with his

advice, to decide what direction the activities of the establishment should take. This

order of proceedings should be reversed” (Newcomb 1881, 379) The model

directorship for Newcomb and many others besides was Sir George Airy’s of the

Royal Observatory at Greenwich. Airy’s influential style of directorship was premised

on the following ideas: (1) that the primary task of a national observatory was to

engage in positional or meridian astronomy (Airy 1838, 440; Meadows 1975, 42); (2)

that the work involved in this kind of astronomy could be broken up into distinct parts

and streamlined, permitting a division of labour that could be controlled, checked, and

made routine by means of standardized paperwork and technique (Grier 2005; Aubin

2009); and (3) that the observer in this assembly line be treated like any other

astronomical instrument that can be calibrated and have its errors accounted for. It

should be noted that the bulk of the work involved not so much observations made at

telescopes as much as a mass of calculations that ensued after the former were

made—this was an explicit legacy of Bessel’s procedures. Consequently, under

Airy’s long tenure (1835-1881) as an observer of observers, the work done at the

observatory has been described as a “business-like routine” (Safford 1899, 963), a

factory, and bearing in mind all that went on in the calculating rooms, an

“accountant’s office” (Maunder 1900, 15; Smith 1991; Ashworth 1994)

Considering the nature and extent of the labor involved and Airy’s directorship as

ultimate overseer and superintendent of it, it is certainly not surprising that early in his

tenure he was already being called a “despot” (in Bergland 2008, 103). It should also

! 18!

not be too surprising that an American astronomer Maria Mitchell made this comment

about Airy in 1857 on her visit to England. Back home in the United States

observatories were on the rise, many of them not as government schemes but on the

initiative of citizens themselves (see Elias 1856). Among the most prominent of these

was the observatory built by selling shares to the citizens of Cincinnati; some even

paid off their shares by constructing the building itself (see Mitchell 1850;

Hertherington 1983). These collective building projects were explicitly contrasted to

European observatories built by monarchs (Adams 1843, 38, 64; Mitchell 1850, v).

This democratic spirit spread to other parts of the country, inspiring observatories

such as the Dudley observatory in Albany, New York. The Board of Trustees, who

represented the citizens that contributed to its construction, elected the German

trained American astronomer Benjamin Gould (1824-1896) to be its first director.

However, Gould turned out to be among that ilk of directors—which included Edward

Pickering and Edward Holden—that preferred Airy’s methods. It was with these

American directors in mind that when in 1899 there ignited a controversy as to what a

new Naval Observatory for the United States should look like, that some demanded

that it not resemble Airy’s system of governance. One participant in this controversy

wrote that while Airy’s “machine system” might be in vogue and “so enthusiastically

befriended by directors of observatories, it should have no place in its organization. It

should not be a one-man institution…. In a single word, the organization of the

institution should be democratic and not autocratic” (Myers 1899, 475).5

Over the course of the nineteenth century as the observatory space was

professionalized divisions between private and public observatories only hardened,

and in some cases fed into controversies that helped to cast light on the diversity of

perceptions regarding the role of the observatory. Take once again the case of Dudley

Observatory who’s Board of Trustees had hired Benjamin Gould to act as its first

director (1856-1858). A fierce power struggle ensued, but for our purposes what is of

interest is that their bitter disagreement centered on what each took the observatory to

be. On the one hand, the Board of Trustees accused Gould of treating citizens who

wished to visit the observatory with “incivility” or with denying them access !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!5!For!an!account!of!the!controversy!in!which!this!statement!was!made!and!for!a!comprehensive!account!of!the!history!of!the!Naval!Observatory!of!the!United!States,!see!(Dick!2003,!166?168;!299?336).!!

! 19!

altogether. To the Trustees this was a source of “mortification” because, as they put it,

“it was important to excite and to maintain a popular interest in the [Observatory]”

(Anonymous 1858, 75). Indeed for them the observatory was supposed to have a

popular function as well as a scientific one.

For Gould, on the other hand, these fundamentally incompatible conceptions of the

institution were grounded on a failure to understand the astronomical task of a public

observatory. As opposed to private observatories where an interest in the “natural

history of the heavens” and extra-meridian observations often led to sensational

discoveries, the public observatory is not a place of discoveries but rather of routine

labor which goes into the observation, calculation and reduction of the “fundamental

facts and data of the science” (Gould 1859, 96). Quoting Bessel, Gould even goes as

far as to argue that the domain of the former “is not of astronomical interest” (Gould

1859, 94). With this conception of a public observatory, Gould set out to equip it with

instruments of precision and measurement, a meridian circle and a heliometer (an

instrument used by Bessel to make the first successful measurement of stellar parallax

in 1838) rather than telescopes with photographic cameras attached. Considering the

abstruse character of his instruments and aim, Gould lays down the “principle” that

“the highest functions of a well equipped and properly directed public observatory are

precisely those which would be likely to meet with the least popular appreciation”

(Gould 1859, 95). As such, Dudley Observatory “ought not to be a place where

observation is interrupted by curious visitors, who suppose the establishment to be

sort of exhibition, or where the instruments are continually liable to serious

disturbance by idle and meddlesome fingers, which might, by a thoughtless or even

accidental touch, destroy in one second the results of the labor of weeks” (Gould 1859,

97f)—risking the very stability of the observatory. Ultimately, the elitist Gould was

run off the premises of the observatory by a hired mob (Boss, 1968; Olson 1971).

At the end of the century, “popular observatories” came to be supplied for the demand

that had long been felt (see: Wolfschmidt 2007; Wolfschmidt 2008; Bigg 2010;

Molvig 2010). Starting with the Urania Volks-Sternwarte in Berlin (1888-89),

followed by the Volks-Sternwarten in Zurich (1905-07), Vienna (1909-10) and

Munich (1912-25), popular observatories sprung up to fanfare and large audiences.

But if a contemporary report is to be trusted, it seems that regular “troubles” caused

! 20!

by “curious idlers” at the Berlin Observatory was at least one source of motivation for

the construction of the Berlin Urania, Wilhelm Foerster’s brain-child, which would

“free” him as director from such regular annoyances (Sawerthal 1889, 346).6 By this

time, however, despite the ever-hardening divisions along the lines of physical versus

positional astronomy on the basis of the labor and management of observatories, there

is a cross over between astrometry and astrophysics that occurs on the basis of

photography (Gill 1891). But in addition, due to the vanishing role of the gentleman

or amateur astronomer (and thus role of the private observatory) at the beginning of

the twentieth century, it was the university observatories that began to take over—

especially in Britain—the interdisciplinary work of astrophysics, along with its

increasingly enormous instrumental, personnel, and operational costs (Hutchins 2008;

Higgitt 2014).

In 1909, the director of the Harvard Observatory wrote that the future of astronomy

would take the following form: “There will be at least one very large observatory

employing one or two hundred assistants, and maintaining three stations.” These

stations would work in coordination with one another. While two would be remote

observatories employing the same instruments and set to the same kind of

observational work, one in the southern and the other in the northern hemispheres, the

data that they produced would be dealt with elsewhere, in a third station. The third

station “will be near a large city where the cost of living and of intellectual labor is

low”, and where, after processing and analysis, the results could be prepared for

publication and printed (Pickering 1909, 115). Edward Pickering’s “Utopian” visions

are extraordinary, for they were to capture many of the essential characteristics of

twentieth century observatories. Given the nature of their aims and organization, even

remote space telescopes such as the Orbiting Astronomical Observatories (OAO),

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!6!It!should!be!pointed!out!that!not!all!visitors!to!observatories!were!driven!away.!Those!particularly!with!astronomical!fame!or!letters!of!introduction!were!welcome,!as!was!Gould!when!he!travelled!Europe!shopping!for!instruments!for!the!Dudley!Observatory.!Indeed,!it!was!quite!a!common!practice!for!those!starting!up!observatories!to!go!on!a!trip!and!visit!other!famous!observatories.!Travel!journals!of!those!visiting!observatories!are!of!particular!interest,!such!as!the!Danish!astronomer,!Thomas!Bugge’s!journal!from!his!tour!of!eleven!observatories!in!1777!(Pedersen!and!de!Clercq!2010).!In!fact,!there!is!a!long!and!interesting!history!of!visitations!to!observatories.!One!of!the!most!intriguing!is!the!visit!of!one!Cha?ma?lu?ting!in!1267!AD!to!the!court!of!the!Chinese!Mongol!Emperor!Kublai!Khan!(Yuan!Shih?tsu’).!The!visitor,!whose!Arabic!name!was!Jamal!al?Din,!traveled!from!the!Maragha!Observatory!with!information!about!seven!instruments!unknown!to!the!Chinese,!see!(Hartner!1950).!!!!

! 21!

NASA’s Hubble Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Hipparcos satellite are

essentially in accord with the spirit Pickering’s plans. However, besides the dramatic

rise of significance of multiple wavelengths invisible to the human eye for astronomy

(not to mention the switch from analog to digital technologies), what the director of

the Harvard Observatory did not foresee was that numerous nations would take on the

responsibilities in the twentieth century for the building, funding, and operations of

international or multinational observatories. Rather than a single man, networks of

national governments and international bodies or associations begin to play a

fundamental role in the formation and stability of observatories (Smith 1989).