One Good Graf

An excerpt from The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

Herschel’s 40-foot telescope, from Leisure Hour, Nov 2,1867 (source)

One of my first reads of the new year has been Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. It’s full of one of my favorite features of the history of science—the sense that the people who made discoveries often had no idea what was coming next. It’s also a great complement to Arcadia, my favorite non-Shakespeare play.

In the excerpt below, Holmes describes the 40-foot telescope used by William and Caroline Herschel for their astronomical surveys:

The forty-foot would be higher than a house, extremely susceptible to wind, and very exposed to adverse weather conditions, especially frost, condensation, and air-temperature changes, which could “untune” the mirrors like musical instruments. The astronomer (Herschel was now approaching fifty) would be required to climb a series of ladders to a special viewing platform perched at the mouth of the telescope, from which a fall would almost certainly prove fatal. The assistant (Caroline) would have to be shut in a special booth below to avoid light pollution, where she would have her desk and lamp, celestial clocks, observation journals and coffee flasks. But she would see virtually nothing of the stars themselves.

Astronomer and assistant would be invisible to each other for hours on end, shouting commands and replies, although eventually connected by a metal speaking-tube. It would be rather as if they were the tiny crew of some enormous ship, one up on the bridge, the other below in the chart room, intimately dependent on each other, but physically isolated. Perhaps this was the premonition of a new kind of vessel: a spaceship flying through the starry night.

What have you been reading?

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I’m sorry for the slow start to the Tiny Book Club year. The guest I made plans with for January has had a conflict come up, and I’m working on a replacement reading and guest. I’m planning to pick something on the shorter and simpler side, and I’d love your thoughts on which direction to go:

• Something related to the present political situation (e.g. an excerpt from the Federalist Papers or Henry Adams—I note as I list these that they are probably neither short nor simple).

• Something very much not related to the present political situation (e.g. Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories”—and yes, his works are very much about virtue and leadership, and yet I suspect you all, like me, will still feel like reading and discussing them is a break from the rest of your time online).

Please let me know your preferences, and if you have particular nominations, and I’ll announce our reading next week.

Ex libris,

Leah