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Petersburg I met a Moscow family, travelling. We occupied the same compartment car. It was a family consisting of a lady and her three daughters. When they found where I had been, they asked me, in excellent English, what had carried me to St. Petersburg, and then, why I was interested in Pulkova; and so I must tell them about American girls, and so, of course, of Vassar College.
In 1885, fifty-four years later, I counted seconds for a class of students at Vassar; it was the same eclipse, but the sun was only about half-covered. Both days were perfectly clear and cold." In 1873, Miss Mitchell spent the summer in Europe, and availed herself of this opportunity to visit the government observatory at Pulkova, in Russia. "Eydkuhnen, Wednesday, July 30, 1873.
It was, I think, sometime in 1878 that I received a letter from Otto Struve, director of the Pulkova Observatory, stating that he was arranging with his government for a grant of money to build one of the largest refracting telescopes.
The nature of this duty he thus illustrates: "From the Ptolemies of Egypt and Alexander of Macedon, from Julius Cæsar to the Arabian Caliphs Haroun al Raschid, Almamon, and Almansor, from Alphonso of Castile to Nicholas, the present Emperor of all the Russias, who, at the expense of one million of rubles, has erected at Pulkova the most perfect and best-appointed observatory in the world, royal and imperial power has never been exercised with more glory, never more remembered with the applause and gratitude of mankind, than when extending the hand of patronage and encouragement to the science of astronomy.
One great drawback to the growth of manufactures in Russia is the number of feast days, on which the native operators must one and all abandon their work, regardless of consequences. The astronomical observations made at Pulkova are not published annually, as are those made at most of the other national observatories; but a volume relating to one subject is issued whenever the work is done.
There is much to interest the visitor in a Russian peasant village, and that of Pulkova has features some of which I have never seen described. Above the door of each log hut is the name of the occupant, and below the name is a rude picture of a bucket, hook, or some other piece of apparatus used in extinguishing fire.
If he has capabilities of administration, our government does not yet believe in them. "The director of the observatory at Pulkova has the military rank of general, and he is privy councillor to the czar. Every subordinate has also his military position he is a soldier.
It is in the same particular one and four-fifth times as powerful as the instrument of the Royal Russian Observatory at Pulkova; and it surpasses the great Lick instrument by twenty-three per cent. What the practical results of the study of the skies through this monster instrument will be none may predict. Theoretically it is capable of bringing the moon to an apparent distance of sixty miles.
A 30-inch telescope for the Pulkova Observatory in Russia, the 36-inch telescope of the Lick Observatory in California, and, finally, the 40-inch of the Yerkes Observatory in Chicago, were the outcome of the movement. Of most interest to us in the present connection is the history of the 30-inch telescope of the Pulkova Observatory, the object glass of which was made by Alvan Clark & Sons.
About the same time a similar instrument of nine and a half inches aperture was imported for the National Observatory at Washington. To this period also belongs the construction of the Cambridge Observatory, with its fifteen-inch refracting telescope. Another of the same size was produced for the Royal Observatory at Pulkova, Russia.
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