It is notable that science was far from central in the argument. The focus was instead on how America lagged behind Europe in the field. Although his writings and orations show John Quincy Adams to have been a firm believer in the importance of science and exploration for their own sake, he chose to tailor his arguments for observatory funding to appeal to American pride and prestige.
Adams’s observatory plan was unprecedented in its ambition as a federal government enterprise. Following on his impassioned inaugural speech, his official proposal came forward in 1826, requesting an initial outlay of about $15,000 and an annual operating cost of $4,000 ($9 million and $2.4 million respectively in PWC-ratio terms; $312 million and $83 million in GDP-ratio terms).28 Large government projects, such as canals, roads, and surveys, were relatively common at the time, and much more costly—the Erie Canal, a state-level initiative, was estimated at $7.14 million when completed in 1825, while the federal National Road project that connected towns from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois, totaled some $6.8 million in appropriations between 1811 and 1838.29 However, no scientific or institutional project of parallel magnitude had yet been undertaken. Not surprisingly, therefore, he faced strong, even vitriolic, opposition to the idea. The states saw such a federal project as encroaching on their jurisdictional responsibility over education, which was seen as intertwined with astronomy. These concerns were not entirely ill placed, as Adams was explicitly trying to use astronomy and the observatory to create a potent national symbol of a unified America. The newly independent, and only loosely federated states had little interest in seeing any such symbol established with their funds. They greeted the proposal with such ridicule and opposition that, as Loomis reported in 1856, the president’s phrase “light-houses of the skies,” often misquoted by his opponents as “light-houses in the skies,” became associated with spurious, wasteful ideas to such an extent that it was used as a political slur even into the 1850s.30 As A. Hunter Dupree put it, “No more hated proposal existed and nowhere had more pains been taken to prevent the creation of a new agency.”31 The notion of a federal observatory had become such a polarizing issue that, in 1832, long after John Quincy Adams had left office (although he was still a member of Congress), the legislature took pains to ensure that it would not resurface. An act in that year for the continuance of the survey of the coast included the proviso that “nothing in the act should be construed to authorize the construction or maintenance of a permanent astronomical observatory.”32
Congress was right to be concerned about the idea’s resurrection. The determined Adams would try again to establish a national observatory over a decade later when a new opportunity arose with the Smithson bequest. James Smithson, an Oxford-educated mineralogist, chemist, and successful investor, had left his legacy to the United States, in spite of never having visited the country, on condition that it be used “for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” The bequest touched off a transoceanic court battle and a broad, years-long debate in America about the appropriate use of the funds. There was much to argue about as the bequest, when eventually accepted in 1836, amounted to $508,318.46 ($299 million in PWC-ratio terms; $6 billion in GDP-ratio terms). Although a number of small private and college observatories had been established in the interim, the country still lacked a major or national observatory. Adams seized the opportunity to relaunch his campaign for such an institution, arguing that it would be the most fitting fulfillment of Smithson’s wishes.33
As chair of the House of Representatives Committee on the Smithsonian Bequest, Adams threw himself anew into his campaign for an astronomical observatory. The characteristic soaring Adams prose, which the father had used to rouse the Continental Congress to vote for independence, was employed by the son in praise of the importance of astronomy for the nation and for mankind in general:
The influence of the moon, of the planets—our next-door neighbours of the solar system—of the fixed stars scattered over the blue expanse in multitudes exceeding the power of human computation, and at distances of which imagination herself can form no distinct conception; the influence of all these upon the globe which we inhabit and upon the condition of man, its dying and deathless inhabitant, is great and mysterious, and, in search for final causes, to a great degree inscrutable to his finite and limited faculties. The extent to which they are discoverable is, and must remain unknown; but to the vigilance of a sleepless eye, to the toil of a tireless hand, and to the meditations of a thinking, combining, and analyzing mind secrets are successively revealed, not only of the deepest import to the welfare of man in his earthly career, but which seem to lift him from the earth to the threshold of his eternal abode; to lead him blindfold up to the Council Chamber of Omnipotence, and there stripping the bandage from his eyes, bid him look undazzled at the throne of God.34
Adams was not advocating for science in general, but for astronomy in particular. He was a strong supporter of science, but he evidently placed even greater value on the exploration of the heavens: “There is not one study in the whole circle of sciences more useful to the race of man upon earth or more suited to the dignity of his destination, as a being endowed with reason, and born to immortality, than the science of the stars.”35 His position seems to have stemmed partly from a belief that astronomy was a frontier of limitless potential, defining it as the “systematic and continued scientific series of observations on the phenomena of the numberless worlds suspended over our heads—the sublimest of all physical sciences, and that in which the field of the future discovery is as unbounded as the universe itself.”36 For Adams, astronomy was part of a higher calling. “The science of astronomy,” he wrote, “is the intercourse of immortal man with the universe.”37 This lofty prose, common throughout Adams’s writing on astronomy, harkens back to the association of astronomy with religion as seen in early colonial America. Adams translates this to a more humanistic Enlightenment context, arguing that the exploration of the heavens has a special role in the destiny and purpose of humanity and that it is therefore deserving of special government support. The rhetoric even rose to identifying astronomy as the core mission of humanity: “So peculiarly adapted to the nature of man, is the study of the heavens, that of all animated nature, his bodily frame is constructed, as if the observation of the stars was the special purpose of his creation.”38 Adams placed astronomical observation into a narrative that emphasized exploration and discovery, writing, “there is no richer field of science opened to the exploration of man in search of knowledge than astronomical observation,” and stressing, “the express object of an observatory is the increase of knowledge by new discovery.”39 This focus on astronomical discovery was somewhat novel in reference to a national observatory. The national observatories at Greenwich and Paris had served largely utilitarian functions for navigation and timekeeping, although considerable exploratory astronomy had been conducted by the observatories’ astronomers once they were established. The first national observatory to be established with a direct mandate to engage in such exploration from the beginning was the Pulkovo Observatory in Russia, and it seems to have been the purpose and scale of Pulkovo that directly influenced Adams’s proposal.
The Pulkovo Observatory, which had been founded outside St. Petersburg in 1839, was the brainchild of astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve. Struve had convinced Tsar Nicholas I, then pursuing a suite of policies to promote Russian nationalism, to build the world’s most well appointed, and thus most expensive, observatory as a symbol of Russian greatness.40 Adams had lived in St. Petersburg from 1809 to 1814 as the first United States minister to Russia and was well versed on the details of the project. He went to pains to point out to his fellow Americans the extent of the support the observatory received:
A plan was accordingly prepared in April, 1834, with estimates of the expense required for the erection of the building, and for the purchase of suitable instruments for observation; the first amounting to 346,500 rubles, and the s
econd to 135,000 rubles—the value of the ruble being 74 cents of our currency. The Emperor immediately issued an order to commence the work, under the direction of three commissioners, members of the academy; and that 100,000 rubles should be placed at the disposal of the minister of publication instruction, for the prosecution of the work. It was accordingly commenced, vigorously prosecuted, and finally completed, at a cost of little less than one million rubles.41
The scale of the Pulkovo Observatory led Adams to propose an observatory of similar scale for America. Based on information regarding costs for observatory construction, maintenance, salaries, and instruments received from George Airy, the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich, Adams’s report proposed that the annual interest on the capital of the Smithson bequest be used to pay for an American national observatory over a course of seven years. The proposed expenditure amounted to $210,000 ($113 million in PWC-ratio terms; $2.4 billion in GDP-ratio terms), with the appendix of the report later advising that the amount be increased to ten years of the interest for a total of $300,000 ($161 million in PWC-ratio terms; $3.4 billion in GDP-ratio terms).42 Adams’s broad plan for the Smithson bequest was to use the annual interest from the principal to fund the establishment of relevant projects and institutions in perpetuity. He preferred an astronomical observatory to be the first such project, given his belief that it was the preeminent science and his conviction that the support of astronomy was an important step for the young American republic to take in its development and to mark its standing in the world.
In his rhetoric, Adams relied heavily on an appeal to American pride and specifically noted the esteem in which even autocratic Russia was held on account of its efforts in astronomy. Adams’s committee report from 1840 merits quotation in length:
Here is the sovereign of the mightiest empire and the most absolute government upon earth, ruling over a land of serfs, gathering a radiance of glory around his throne by founding and endowing the most costly and most complete establishment for astronomical observation on the face of the earth. . . . And this event is honorably noticed in the National Institute of France, one of the most learned and talented assemblies of men upon the globe noticed as an occurrence in the annals of science noticed for honor and for emulation. The journalist of a free country, applauding the exertions of a land of serfs to promote the progress of science, avows that he should blush for his own country, had he not at hand the evidence of her exertions not less strenuous for the advancement of the same cause.
The committee of the House, in applying to their own country that sensibility to the national honor which the French journalist attributes to self-love, would gladly seek for its gratification in the same assurance that she is not lagging behind in the race of honor; but that, in casting their eyes around over the whole length and breadth of their native land, they must blush to acknowledge that not a single edifice deserving the name of an astronomical observatory is to be seen.43
The similarities to the rhetoric used in Congress in 1840 and in the 1950s and 1960s to bolster support for the American space exploration effort are striking. There is a basic appeal to American pride, an emphasis on the implications for international recognition and prestige, and even an explicit reference to a “race of honor.” The parallel to the rhetoric of the Cold War space race is complete, with Adams situating this “race” as one between an autocratic Russian state and a proudly democratic America.
Unlike in the 1950s, however, the appeal to national pride and prestige was unsuccessful. The continued widespread opposition to Adams’s conception of a large federal observatory could not be overcome. Nevertheless, Adams’s vision of an institution that focused on supporting new research and discovery influenced the ultimate use of the Smithson bequest. This broad-ranging vision allowed the Smithsonian Institution to contribute to the exploration of the heavens in ways that even Adams had not foreseen. The Smithsonian became a significant early advocate and source of support for astrophysics research, with noted American astrophysicist and early flight pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley becoming the institution’s third director and establishing the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in 1890 with $10,000 for solar astronomy work.44 Perhaps even more significantly, it was the Smithsonian Institution that published American spaceflight pioneer Robert Goddard’s “A Method for Reaching Extreme Altitudes” and provided him with his first significant financial support. Indeed, it is the Smithsonian Institution, shaped in the early nineteenth century by John Quincy Adams’s passion for astronomy, that best embodies the continuity of U.S. space exploration efforts across the centuries and that also houses the secular temple of American spaceflight, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
In addition to the legacy of the Smithsonian, Adams was also successful in raising the status and importance of astronomy in American life. He arguably did more than any of his contemporaries to generate and cultivate the demand for astronomy and the observatory-building enthusiasm that took hold throughout the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. When one of the first major American observatories was established in Cincinnati in 1843, it was in no small part due to the prominence and visibility that Adams had given to astronomical science. The seventy-seven-year-old Adams made the grueling trip from Boston to Cincinnati to deliver his last major public oration, the dedication address at the observatory atop the newly renamed “Mount Adams.”
Although both his attempts to establish a national observatory failed, Adams set a rhetorical tone that would long endure in the advocacy of American space exploration. He drew heavily on the view, first espoused in America by the Puritans, that astronomy “elevates those who study it because its object is God’s handiwork.” 45 To Adams, the science of astronomy was a duty to the spirit of America’s forefathers, to God, and, in the best Enlightenment tradition, to the fulfillment of humanity’s potential. Mindful of his pragmatic Jacksonian audience, however, he also emphasized more down-to-earth benefits, principally international prestige and navigational improvement: “That by the establishment of an observatory upon the largest and most liberal scale, and providing for the publication of a yearly nautical almanac, knowledge will be diffused among men, the reputation of our country will rise to honour and reverence among the civilized Nations of the earth, and our navigators and mariners on every Ocean, be no longer dependent on English or French observers or calculators for the tables indispensable to conduct their path upon the deep.” 46 The lofty personal motivations allied to practical arguments, the emphasis on national identity, and the explicit reference to international prestige would reemerge in the Congressional Record during discussions of the U.S. transit of Venus expeditions in the late nineteenth century and in the twentieth-century debates on the space programs.
More importantly, however, John Quincy Adams was a catalyst for the development of a popular interest in astronomy in America. The numerous failed attempts to establish even basic facilities for astronomy by some of the most influential American individuals and organizations of the day speak to the dearth of interest and support for astronomy prior to Adams’s presidency. Within a few years of Adams’s “light-houses of the sky” inaugural address and national observatory proposal, the first large aperture telescope would be imported from Europe to Yale. The first cluster of American observatory construction in the late 1830s coincided with the renewal of Adams’s campaign for astronomy in connection with the Smithson bequest. Most tellingly, Adams played a key role in three of the four large observatory projects of the 1840s: his efforts were a major, if indirect, impetus to the establishment of the U.S. Naval Observatory; he was directly involved in fund-raising for astronomy at Harvard; and he was honored and feted at the inauguration of the Cincinnati Observatory, for engendering the new public esteem of astronomy that had allowed for the observatory’s establishment. Adams’s contribution to the development of American interest in the exploration of space was extensive. But there were also other forces that propelled American interest in astrono
my in the mid-nineteenth century, forces that were arguably more basic and widespread among the population of America than either the lofty motives that buttressed Adams’s support for astronomy or the scientific interests of professional astronomers, and it is to an exemplar of these that we now turn.
From the mid-1830s, and for the next four decades, the construction of observatories accelerated rapidly as part of what has been referred to as the “American Observatory Movement.” 47 Although the general chronology and personal narratives of the leading individuals of the movement have been reasonably well sketched, there has been comparatively little attention paid to the question of how the necessary financial support was mobilized to give this movement its momentum. The focus here is to explore that question through examining the dynamics behind the founding of a number of individual observatories. As a backdrop, however, it is also valuable to look briefly at how the exploration of the heavens was perceived within the mass culture of the period. Such an investigation could fill volumes, and the subject is indeed deserving of such a comprehensive treatment. Although the examination here is only one example of how large observatories were perceived in the popular culture of the time, it is a particularly revealing one: the “Great Moon Hoax” of 1835. This is not a representative example by any means. On the contrary: it was a unique and era-marking event, the circumstances of which throw into high relief some of the contemporary trends in the popular perception of astronomy.
The Long Space Age Page 4