Astronomical Transit
name: label: Maker
content: Repsold
notes: label: Description
content: This astronomical transit (or meridian circle) with an "A. & G. Repsold / Hamburg 1850" inscription was purchased for use at U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. New, it cost $4705. It is almost identical to the instruments that Repsold made for Struve and Bessel at the Pulkowa and Konigsberg observatories.
label: Description
content: From 1885-87, Prof. S.J. Brown, U.S.N., used it for determining the positions of 303 stars for the Astronomisches Gesellschaft. It was shipped to the new Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., in 1897, and transferred to Smithsonian in 1956. The extant elements include a 4-inch aperture refracting telescope with two 30-inch divided circles; a demounting cradle; and a reversing mechanism.
label: Description
content: Re: William Chauvenet, Spherical & Practical Astronomy (1863), pp. 282-285.
label: Description
content: Elias Loomis, An Introduction to Practical Astronomy (New York, 1889), p. 505.
label: Description
content: "Repsold" in Encylopedia Britannica, 9th ed. (1894).
place: label: place made
content: Germany: lost & found/Germany, Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.314732
label: catalog number
content: 314732
label: accession number
content: 206331
objectType: label: Object Name
content: astronomical transit
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: brass (overall material)