Los Angeles herald., 1910-01-14


~ Xxi whose name it bears, for 1t
keznEzsN was on the 14th of January,
1742, that Haley died. After
he had recognized the comet, ana pre-
dicted its return in 1858, he said that
he woull not live to see 1t return but
that he hoped an impartial posterity
would do him the justice to remember
that he had forecast its reappeaf-
ance. For the third time since then
it is now coming toward us, and for
the third time the world will unite in
honoring HALEY for his astonishing
knowledge in predicting its movements.
Edmund HALEY was the son of an
English soap-boiler and first saw the
light of day in 1856. He was mathe-
matician from his cradle. The study
of the universe of worlds was second
nature to him, and by the time he was
2O-when the most serious thing the
average boy thinks about is sweet
hearts-he published q paper on the
orbits of the principal planets, and
had studied sun-spot so intently that
he was able to deduce from his studies
the fact that the sun rotates around
its axis the same as the earth.
B,- the time HALEY was 22 he dad
completed visit to st. Helena, where
he made a map of the southern half
of the heavens He was only "a years
OF age when he made his memorable
tour of Europe, the result of which
was his prediction that the comet
which bears his name would return
on schedule time. He was the first
man in astronomical history who so
far mastered the movements of COM
ct as to be able to say whittier 1T went
or whence it should return. 1t was
he, Also who led the astronomers to
observe the transits of Venus, in order
to establish the SUMS parallax, Upon
the determination of the parallax of
the sun has depended more astronomi-
cal knowledge than any other one
thing.
HALEY became the royal astronomer
of England in 1920, and continued in
that office until his death. One of the
most interesting condolences in the
whole history of astronomy and mathe-
matics was the fact that he and New
ton, working upon entirely indepen-
dent lines, had both undertaken to
prove that the centripedal force in the
universe was one varying inversely as
the square of the distance. When he
visited Newton for the purpose of en-
listing his aid in finally determining
the truth of his conclusions, he found
that the discoverer of the law of graVi-
ty had mapped out the same conJec-
ture and had taken the same means
to prove it.
There is abundant evidence that Hal
ley was a much better astronomer and
mathematician than he was sailor
In 1892 he had perfected theory rela-
tive to the variation of the magnetic
needle. Later he was given ship
and sent into the western seas to make
the observations necessary to the con-
firmation or refutation of his theory
His crew mutinied and he had to put
back to England with his work un-
finished. But he tried again and his
second trip was successful.
But while his life was an unbroken
record of things accomplished, his
name will be perpetuated more through
the periodic return of his comet than
through all the other things he did
Think of it! A man still too young
to be eligible to a seat in the United
States senate, taking into his mental
grasp a wandering object in space
which goes more than three thounsand
million miles away from the sun, lay
ing out it's course as a civil engineer
might lay out a mile race track, and
foretelling it's return with almost as
much accuracy as one might forecast
the return of friend who had gone
away on a holiday vacation! To ac-
complish this he had to approximate
its speed, its direction, the distance
it had to travel, the shape of it's or
bit, a dozen things which even now
are beyond the grasp of the lay mind.
The mind cannot conceive of how
far Halley's comet has Travelled in the
three-quarters of century since it
last looked upon the earth. During all
these years 1t has been reeling off dis
tance at the rate of more than 10000
900 miles month, or 2,500,000 miles "a
day, with never a stop for breath. 1t
left us so far behind in space that the
little distance of $4,000 900 miles which
will separate it from us in May seems
no more than a step across lots to see
a nextdoor neighbor.
Assuming that there is the same pro-
portion of people over so living today
as there was in 1900, and that every
person who was years old when the
comet last appeared, can remember it,
there will be about 100000 people in