Telescope Base and Mount
date: label: Date made
content: ca. 1874
name: label: maker
content: Clark, Alvan
notes: label: Description
content: This 5-inch equatorial refractor (numbered 860) is one of eight identical telescopes (numbered 856-863) that Alvan Clark & Sons made for the United States Transit of Venus Commission for the 1874 transit of Venus across the face of the Suns. It was also used to observe another transit of Venus in 1882. In 1886, the equipment used for these observations was given to the U.S. Naval Observatory, which loaned it out to astronomers. Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906), Director of the Allegheny Observatory, borrowed this telescope to observe the total eclipse of the sun from Pike's Peak, Colorado in 1878. Later, while serving as the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, he borrowed it again to observe a total solar eclipse from Wadesboro, North Carolina in 1900. Note that this catalog number refers to the telescope base and mount.
label: Description
content: Ref: Deborah J. Warner and Robert B. Ariail, <i>Alvan Clark & Sons: Artists in Optics</i> (Richmond, 1995).
label: Description
content: Samuel P. Langley, "Report of Professor S. P. Langley," <i> Astronomical and Meteorological Observations, made during the year 1876, U.S. Naval Observatory, Part II</i> (Washington, 1880), p. 203-210.
label: Description
content: Samuel P. Langley, <i>The 1900 Solar Eclipse Expedition of the Astrophysical Observatory of the Smithsonian Institution</i> (Washington, 1904).
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
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: 2006.0182.03
label: accession number
content: 2006.0182
label: catalog number
content: 2006.0182.03
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Telescope base and mount
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 78 in x 40 in x 35 in; 198.12 cm x 101.6 cm x 88.9 cm