Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/417

Rh Its cupola was placed upon it to accommodate one of Mr. Bond's telescopes, and at that time was suitably domed.

Mr. Bond's chief work at Cambridge for the first two or three years was a continuation and extension of his observations for the Navy Department in regard to the earth's magnetism. He was assisted by his son, W. C. Bond, Jr., whose death in 1842 was regarded as a loss to science. Renewed exertions were now made to secure an adequate observatory and set of instruments. The site was purchased in 1841. A brilliant comet that appeared in 1843 furnished a favorable occasion for raising a subscription. The best telescope that could be produced in Europe, a refractor of fifteen inches aperture, equatorially mounted, was ordered from Merz & Mahler, of Munich, and ground was broken for a pier for it in the summer of the same year. In September, 1844,



the instruments were removed from the Dana House to the new observatory, and Mr. Bond entered upon a series of observations for determining the latitude and longitude of the new station.

Mr. Bond's first recorded observation in Cambridge was of date December 31, 1839, and his appointment as director of the observatory dates from February 12, 1840. During the first eight years of his connection with Harvard College he is to be regarded as a benefactor rather than an employee of the institution. The official report for 1846 states that up to that time the labors of Mr. Bond had been "entirely unrequited, except by the gratification of his love of science and of home," and suggest that this devotion to the institution at Cambridge was the more marked in that