Abstract
EVERETT L. YOWELL has an interesting article with the above title in Sky and Telescope (3, No. 2; December 1943). He gives an account of the development of the Observatory from the days when Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel resigned his professorship of mathematics, engineering and mechanics at Cincinnati College, and later, in the spring of 1842, started giving lectures on astronomy. These lectures were so well received that Mitchelannounced his intention of building and equipping an observatory; and immediately he solicited membership for a society, each member to subscribe for a share at 25 dollars. It is remarkable that in spite of many initial difficulties—lack of funds in particular—Mitchel began the erection of the building with one carpenter and one mason as foremen, and on November 9, 1842, ex-President John Quincy Adams, then in his seventy-seventh year, laid the corner stone. In January 1845 the 11-inch refractor which Mitchel had purchased in Munich arrived; it was mounted in the springof the same year.
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One Hundred Years at the Cincinnati Observatory. Nature 153, 311–312 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153311d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153311d0