Ohio History Journal

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PROFESSOR ROBERT WHITE McFARLAND'S

PROFESSOR ROBERT WHITE McFARLAND'S

HISTORY OF THE ASTRONOMICAL PIER

AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY

 

A recent issue of the Alumni News Letter of Miami

University published the history of the Astronomical

Pier at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, as it was writ-

ten by Professor Robert White McFarland, with a quill

pen in 1904, and sent to Dr. Clyde Fisher, an alumnus

of that institution, and now curator of astronomy, and

visual instruction at the American Museum of Natural

History, New York City. Following is the contribu-

tion of Professor McFarland:

 

THE ASTRONOMICAL PIER

Forty or fifty yards southwestwardly from the south door

of the main building there is a stone pier about three feet high

and about two feet square. Almost every stranger who sees it

asks what it was for. This article will give answer and in addition

thereto will state some general historical facts pertaining to the

subject.

The first third of the last century had passed before any

marked attention was given to astronomy in the United States.

From 1835 to 1840 there was a general waking up on the subject.

In the former year there was not a single pedestal for a transit

telescope on this continent. An extract or two may serve to

make the case clear. So far as known to me the first suggestion

of an observatory was made by Mr. Hassler, a Swiss mathema-

tician, who had settled in this country. The communication was

laid before Congress in 1807 by Albert Gallatin, a member of the

President's cabinet, I think. But the proposition met with no

favor and Mr. Hassler had proposed to have a coast survey in-

stituted and the observatory was to be used in connection with

that undertaking. About ten years later a beginning was made

in the survey and Mr. Hassler was put in charge of the work. But

Vol. XLI--21.             (321)