Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
By the early years of the twentieth century, astronomers regarded photography as one of the most valuable tools at their disposal, a technique which not only provided an accurate and reliable representation of astronomical phenomena, but also radically changed the role of the astronomical observer. Herbert Hall Turner, professor of astronomy at Oxford, wrote in 1905: ‘The wonderful exactness of the photographic record may perhaps best be characterised by saying that it has revealed the deficiencies of all our other astronomical apparatus – object-glasses and prisms, clocks, even the observer himself.’ H. C. Russell, government astronomer in Sydney, suggested that photography might in the future make the observer redundant: ‘In many cases the observer must stand aside while the sensitive photographic plate takes his place and works with the power of which he is not capable… I feel sure that in a very few years the observer will be displaced altogether.’ Such visions were not uncommon at the time, emanating from the trust invested in the photographic process after the spectacular achievements of the late nineteenth century.
The Airy Papers of the Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives are cited courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and of the Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory. The Herschel Letters and other papers from the Royal Society Archives are cited courtesy of the Royal Society.
A portion of this research was done in preparation for an M.Phil, thesis at Cambridge University in 1988; subsequent work was done in 1991. I would like to thank Adam Perkins, curator of the Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives, for his assistance with the Airy Papers, Jim Bennett and Michael Dettelbach for their helpful comments, and especially Simon Schaffer, for his advice and encouragement.
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6 Owing to lack of enthusiasm in many of the twenty-one observatories involved, the project was never finished. The factual information in this paragraph can be found in either of the two most comprehensive accounts of the history of astronomical photography: de Vaucouleurs, Gérard, Astronomical photography, London, 1961Google Scholar; and Norman, Daniel, ‘The development of astronomical photography’, Osiris 1938, 5, 560–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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