The Day the World Discovered the Sun

by Mark Anderson

  3. William Tooke, View of the Russian Empire During the Reign of Catherine the Second (London: T.N. Longman & O. Rees, 1800), 2:45.

  4. Russians still used the old Julian calendar. The new Gregorian date (in use across most of Europe) was January 19.

  5. Chappe, Siberia, 338–340. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1816), 3:368–369. James Forfar, “The Czarina Elizabeth,” Gentleman’s Magazine 250 (1881): 606.

  6. “The Life of Catherine II, Empress of Russia (review),” European Magazine and London Review 34 (1798): 390. History judges Peter III somewhat less harshly—partly as a victim of a propaganda campaign masterminded by his wife (and likely assassin), Catherine.

  7. All quotes in Chappe’s lecture are from “Mr. L’Abbé Chappe d’Auteroche,” Memoire du passage de Venus sur le soleil (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of the Sciences), 1762. Translation by Mark Anderson.

  8. Harry Woolf, The Transits of Venus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 118–119, 145–147.

  9. It was only in the nineteenth century, after the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, that the Russian empire would stretch to the Pacific.

  10. Chappe, Siberia, 320–321.

  11. Michael Reidy, Gary Kroll, and Erik Conway, Exploration and Science: Social Impact and Interaction (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007), 19.

  12. Richard Watkins, Jérôme Lalande: Diary of a Trip to England, 1763 (Kingston, Tasmania: Richard Watkins, 2002), 161.

  13. 3”/26” = 0.12 (dist. betw. eyes vs. length of arms), while 6356 × 2 km/150,000,000 km = 0.000085 (diam. of earth vs. AU, solar distance, or astronomical unit). Remember that the equivalent parallax distance for face would be nose-to-eye distance versus arm’s length.

  14. Woolf, Transits, 145.

  15. Lalande’s tendency toward snap judgments would one day cost him the discovery of the planet Neptune. Although he observed it in 1795, no one recognized it as a planet for another fifty-one years. Instead, Lalande reported that he observed just another “star,” although his notebooks reveal he’d seen the position of the “star” shift over time. E. M. Standish, “Early Observations and Modern Ephemerides,” Highlights of Astronomy 12 (2002): 327–328.

  16. Nevil Maskelyne, “An Account of the Observations Made on the Transit of Venus, June 6, 1761, in the Island of St. Helena,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 52 (December 1761): 199–200.

  CHAPTER 4: THE MIGHTY DIMENSIONS

  1. John Dobson, Chronological Annals of the War (Oxford: Clarendon, 1763), xiv, http://tinyurl.com/34qvxmy.

  2. “From the top of the tower in Dunkirk, you can see the Thames.” Jérôme Lalande: Diary of a Trip to England, 1763, trans. Richard Watkins (Kingston, Tasmania: Richard Watkins, 2002), 8, http://watkinsr.id.au/Lalande.pdf.

  3. In “Fiction or Fact?” in The Enigma of the Age: The Strange Story of Chevalier d’Eon (London: Longmans, 1966) 11–25, Cynthia Cox sorts through claims and legends of d’Éon’s possible embassage en femme. D’Éon ultimately developed such a contemporary reputation as a transgendered spy (to use a modern term) that in 1771 the London Stock Exchange sold financial instruments that effectively constituted bets as to whether d’Éon was a man or a woman. Jonathan Conlin, “The Strange Case of the Chevalier d’Eon,” History Today 60, no. 4 (2010): 45–51.

  4. Louis XV to d’Éon, June 3, 1763, in Correspondence secrète inédité de Louis XV, sur la politique étrangère (Paris, 1866), 1:293–294; Gary Kates, Monsieur d’Eon Is a Woman (New York: Basic, 1995), 93–94.

  5. Jérôme Lalande, 12.

  6. Owing to the ambassador’s illness, D’Éon was serving a dual role as interim ambassador. The Memoirs of Chevalier D’Éon, trans. Antonia White (London: Anthony Blond, 1970), 123–124.

  7. Contemporary description of the act in “The History of the Last Session of Parliament,” London Magazine 32 (1763): 680–681, http://tinyurl.com/2brot2g.

  8. David Alan Grier, When Computers Were Human (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 28.

  9. Jérôme Lalande, 17.

  10. The European Magazine, April 1783, 252, http://tinyurl.com/38kh4du.

  11. Jérôme Lalande, 20.

  12. “The King does not live in Kensington at present” (emphasis added). Jérôme Lalande, 20.

  13. Charles Eyre Pascoe, London of To-Day (Boston: Roberts Bros., 1890), 324, http://tinyurl.com/2b6dv3t.

  14. Nevil Maskelyne, The British Mariner’s Guide . . . (London: Nevil Maskelyne, 1763), i–ii.

  15. Maskelyne, British Mariner’s Guide, v; (Jérôme) Lalande, Connoissance des mouvemens célestes pour l’année 1762 (Paris: L’Impreimerie Royale, 1760), i, http://books.google.com/books?id=gJ0AAAAAMAAJ. Translation by Mark Anderson.

  16. Jérôme Lalande, 13.

  17. Maskelyne, British Mariner’s Guide, iii.

  18. Review of The British Mariner’s Guide in The Monthly Review 28 (May 1763): 406, http://tinyurl.com/6ywvjsb. By contrast, see Gentleman’s Magazine 43 (1773): 228–229, http://tinyurl.com/4w2o5n6, for a vitriolic critique of the Mariner’s Guide.

  19. Derek Howse, “The Lunar-Distance Method of Measuring Longitude,” in The Quest for Longitude, ed. William J.H. Andrewes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 156.

  20. Derek Howse, Greenwich Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 66–67.

  21. British Palladium 12 (1764): 110; Monthly Chronologer 28 (September 1759): 505; Annual Register 10 (1761): 138, http://tinyurl.com/6hgg9r5; http://tinyurl.com/6yavmce; http://tinyurl.com/6jcumcr.

  22. Jérôme Lalande, 29–30; Derek Howse and Anita McConnell, “Jeremiah Sisson,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

  23. Isaac Newton, letter to Josiah Burchett, secretary of the Admiralty, August 26, 1725, in Correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. H. W. Turnbull et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959–1977), 7:330–332.

  24. “Id vero an ipsi Daemone possible nescio.” David S. Landes, Revolution in Time (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 166–167.

  25. On the “isochronal corrector” and “bimetallic strip,” see William J.H. Andrewes, “Even Newton Could Be Wrong,” in Quest for Longitude, 217–219.

  26. Jérôme Lalande, 30.

  27. Anthony Randall, “The Timekeeper That Won the Longitude Prize,” in Quest for Longitude, 244–245.

  28. Nevil Maskelyne to Edmund Maskelyne, December 29, 1763. National Maritime Museum PST/76/f.100–1, in Derek Howse, Nevil Maskelyne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 49.

  29. Ibid.

  30. John Oldmixon, The British Empire in America (London: J. Brotherton, 1741), 161–162.

  31. Nevil Maskelyne, “Astronomical Observations Made at the Island of Barbados . . .” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, December 20, 1764, 389–392, http://tinyurl.com/47lzfmp.

  32. Howse, Maskelyne, 50–51.

  33. Randall, “Timekeeper,” 247.

  34. Wendy Wales, “Biography of Charles Green,” Cook’s Log 23, no. 4 (2000): 1775.

  35. Sixty years later, the author and diplomat François René de Chateaubriand would look back to the 1763 treaty and wonder how “the government of my country would let perish her colonies that for us today would be an inexhaustible source of prosperity.” Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amérique (Paris: Gabriel Roux, 1857), 219. Translation by Mark Anderson.

  36. Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche, remarks to the Académie Royale des Sciences, November 14, 1764, in Ferdinand Berthoud, Traité des horloges marines . . . (Paris: J.B.G. Musier, 1773), 539–541. Translation by Mark Anderson.

  37. There has been some confusion on this point (e.g., Gould), but Berthoud says Chappe tested the “Montre Marine No. 3” in November 1764. Ferdinand Berthoud, Traité des horloges marines, contenant la théorie, la construction, la main-d’oeuvre de ces machines, et la maniere de les éprouver (Paris: J.B.G. Musier Fils, 1773), 539–545.

  38. Although the Tre
aty of Paris may have ended the Seven Years’ War, the king’s admirals were still playing catch-up with the superior British fleet, preparing for the next inevitable go-round on the high seas. Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and the Seven Years’ War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 245.

  39. Chappe, “Table de la marche de l’Horloge Marine” in Berthoud, Traité, 544.

  40. Ibid., 542 fn.

  41. Harrison’s watch gained and lost seconds on a similar scale—but more predictably so. At 42 degrees Fahrenheit, the Harrison marine chronometer gained 3 seconds per 24 hours; at 52 degrees, 2 seconds; at 62, one second. These known inaccuracies could then be subtracted, yielding Harrison’s groundbreaking results. Randall, “Timekeeper,” 247 fn.

  42. Chappe/Berthoud, Traité, 545.

  CHAPTER 5: THE BOOK AND THE SHIP

  1. S. A. Wepster, Between Theory and Observations: Tobias Mayer’s Explorations of Lunar Motion (Springer: New York, 2010), 126.

  2. Owen Gingerich and Barbara Welther, “Planetary, Lunar, and Solar Positions, A.D. 1650–1805,” Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 59S (1983): xxi, http://doiop.com/LunarsAccuracy.

  3. Don’t be deceived by the units. The earth rotates through 360 degrees every 24 hours—or 360/24 = 15 degrees every hour. So discovering that one lies, for instance, 3 “hours” from Greenwich means that Greenwich is 3 × 15 = 45 degrees of longitude away.

  4. Mary Croarken, “Tabulating the Heavens: Computing the Nautical Almanac in 18th-Century England,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 25, no. 3 (2003): 48–61.

  5. E. G. R. Taylor, The Haven-finding Art: A History of Navigation from Odysseus to Captain Cook (London: Hollis & Carter, 1956), 263.

  6. “St. Dunstan’s in the West,” in London and Its Environs Described (London: R. & J. Dodsley, 1761), 2:254–255; James Holbert Wilson, Temple Bar: The City Golgotha (London: David Bogue, 1853), 55–56.

  7. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, abridged ed. (London: C&R Baldwin, 1809), vol. 33 (1691), 448. The Royal Society began meeting at Crane Court in 1710. Halley was appointed Astronomer Royal in 1720.

  8. Thomas Hornsby, “On the Transit of Venus in 1769 . . .” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 55 (1765): 343–344.

  9. John Black, Travels Through Norway and Lapland During the Years 1806, 1807, and 1808 (London: Henry Colburn, 1813), 259.

  10. Harry Woolf, The Transits of Venus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 176. Bayley did obtain Venus transit data from nearby North Cape, but it was inferior to the Venus transit observations collected in Vardø (at the invitation of the king of Denmark) by Father Maximilian Hell and Joannes Sajnovics, the subject of Chapters 7, 9, and 12 of the present book.

  11. Royal Society Council Minute Book, 5:176–178, 181–200.

  12. Hornsby calculated that the transit time observed in California would be some seventeen minutes different from the transit time observed in Lapland—providing data good enough to map out the whole solar system with the kind of 99.8 percent accuracy Edmund Halley had dreamed about.

  13. Andrew Steinmetz, The History of the Jesuits (Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1848), 2:463.

  14. RS: CMB, 5:183.

  15. RS: CMB, 5:184–198.

  16. RS: CMB, 5:282–285.

  17. Brian Lavery, “Slade, Sir Thomas (1703/4–1771),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004; Brian Lavery, The 74-gun Ship Bellona (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1985), 7–9.

  18. Alexander Dalrymple, “Memoirs of Alexander Dalrymple,” European Magazine and London Review 42 (November 1802): 325.

  19. Dalrymple, Account (London, 1767), ii–iv.

  20. Dalrymple, an easy target, has nevertheless been slandered by history. In his defense, see Howard T. Fry, “Alexander Dalrymple and Captain Cook: The Creative Interplay of Two Careers,” in Captain James Cook and His Times, ed. Robin Fisher and Hugh Johnston (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979), 44–47 fn. 17.

  21. Patrick Brown, “The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica,” Monthly Review or Literary Journal 15 (1756): 340.

  22. Warrant Entry Book entry, cited in Arthur Kitson, Captain James Cook (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1907), 89.

  23. Karl Heinz Marquardt, Captain Cook’s Endeavour: Anatomy of the Ship, rev. ed. (London: Conway Maritime Press, 2001), 11–14.

  24. Marquardt, Captain Cook’s Endeavour, 14–18.

  25. Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook letter to John Walker, August 17, 1770, in Kitson, Captain James Cook, 219.

  26. Philip Stephens, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/26/101026391.

  27. RSA: MSs (General) MS.633 in Andrew S. Cook, “James Cook and the Royal Society,” in Captain Cook: Explorations and Reassessments, ed. Glyndwr Williams (Suffolk, UK: Boydell, 2004), 46 fn. 38.

  28. RS: CMB, 5:299.

  29. Andrew Kippis, The Life of Captain James Cook (Paris: J.J. Tourneisen, 1788), 1:209–212 fn.

  30. It was a good thing, too. The Aurora’s forthcoming passage to India would end in a gruesome shipwreck off the Cape of Good Hope. And in a crowning irony, the man who’d lobbied ultimately to die in Green’s place, William Falconer, was the best-selling author of an epic seafaring poem. “The Shipwreck, by William Falconer,” National Maritime Museum (UK), www.nmm.ac.uk/explore/collections/by-type/archive-and-library/item-of-the-month/previous/the-shipwreck,-by-william-falconer.

  31. For example, The Public Advertiser (May 25–26, 1768), in Glyndwr Williams, “The Endeavour Voyage: A Coincidence of Motives,” in Science and Exploration in the Pacific, ed. Margarette Lincoln (Suffolk, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 1998), 11.

  32. The London Magazine, or Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer 37 (June 1768): 328.

  33. Wayne Orchiston, “James Cook’s 1769 Transit of Venus Expedition to Tahiti,” in Transits of Venus: New Views of the Solar System and Galaxy, ed. D. W. Kurtz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 54; “An Account of Jesse Ramsden,” European Magazine and London Review 15 (1789): 92.

  34. Gowin Knight, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/15/101015719.

  35. RS: CMB, 5:289–290.

  36. James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1805), 7:361.

  37. Patrick O’Brian, Joseph Banks: A Life (Boston: David R. Godine, 1993), 68–69.

  38. George Robertson, The Discovery of Tahiti: A Journal, ed. Hugh Carrington (London: Hakluyt Society, 1948), 207–208.

  39. Edward Smith, The Life of Sir Joseph Banks (London: John Lane, 1911), 15–16.

  40. The St. James’s Chronicle (June 11–14, 1768), in Williams, “Endeavour Voyage,” 13.

  41. The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, ed. J. C. Beaglehole (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society/Cambridge University Press, 1955), 1:4. Entry for August 26, 1768.

  42. The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, 1768–1771, ed. J. C. Beaglehole (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1962), 1:158. Entry for September 10, 1768.

  CHAPTER 6: VOYAGE EN CALIFORNIE

  1. Chappe, A Voyage to California: To Observe the Transit of Venus (London: Edward & Charles Dilly, 1778) 13–14; James J. Fusco, “Abbé Chappe d’Auteroche: Eighteenth Century Modernizer,” master’s thesis, Columbia University, 1969, 13–14.

  2. Andrew Dickson White, The Warfare of Science (New York: D. Appleton, 1876), 114–115; Johann Gottlieb Georgi, Russia: Or, a Compleat Historical Account of All the Nations Which Compose That Empire (London: J. Nichols, 1780), 3:355.

  3. Benjamin Franklin, letter to Jean Chappe d’Auteroche, January 31, 1768 (15:33b), www.franklinpapers.org. Chappe’s reply to Franklin, if any, has not been found. Chappe mentioned Franklin’s correspondence in A Journey into Siberia: Made by Order of the King of France (London: T. Jefferys, 1770), 227.

  4. Alexandre Guy Pingré, Mémoire sur le choix et l’état des lieux où le passage de Vénus
du 3 Juin 1769 pourra être observé avec le plus d’avantage (Paris: P. Cavelier, 1767), 17. Translation by Mark Anderson.

  5. Ibid., 78.

  6. Académie Royale des Sciences, Proc. Verb. fol. 242 v. in Harry Woolf, The Transits of Venus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 157 fn. 22.

  7. Jean-Dominique de Cassini, “Histoire Abrégée de la Parallaxe du Soleil,” in Chappe, Voyage en Californie pour l’observation du passage de Vénus sur le disque du soleil (Paris: Charles-Antoine Jombert, 1772), 155; translation by Mark Anderson; Woolf, Transits, 157.

  8. Angus Armitage, “Chappe D’Auteroche: A Pathfinder for Astronomy,” Annals of Science 10, no. 4 (1954): 288–291.

  9. Jean-Dominique de Cassini, “Description of Cadiz,” in Chappe, Voyage to California, 206.

  10. Chappe, Voyage to California, 7–8.

  11. Chappe, Voyage to California, 9, 15, citing Horace, Horati Carmina I.iii.9–11, trans. Samuel Maunder, in The Treasury of Knowledge and Library of Reference (New York: J.W. Bell, 1855), 2:100.

  12. Water density, Chappe discovered, is not a useful proxy for longitude. It only changed substantially when the ship approached a freshwater source, such as a river that feeds into a bay.

  13. Armitage, “Chappe D’Auteroche”; Chappe, Voyage to California, 11.

  14. Vera Cruz’s real traffic never approached the city gates. “In point of trade,” one contemporary chronicler wrote, “[Vera Cruz] is one of the most considerable places not only in the New but perhaps in the whole world. From this port it is that the great wealth of Mexico is poured out upon the old world.” John Campbell, An Account of the Spanish Settlements in America (Edinburgh: A. Donaldson & J. Reid, 1762), 142. Vertiginous piles of Mexican gold and silver passed through Vera Cruz on their way to Spain—but only via a more navigable nearby island fortress, San Juan de Ulua, where Spain’s plundered loot was stored and offloaded to awaiting galleons.