The other work to which I refer was the application to astronomy
and to the determination of longitudes of the chronographic method
of registering transits of stars or other phenomena requiring an
exact record of the instant of their occurrence. It is to be
regretted that the history of this application has not been fully
written. In some points there seems to be as much obscurity as
with the discovery of ether as an anaesthetic, which took place
about the same time. Happily, no such contest has been fought over
the astronomical as over the surgical discovery, the fact being
that all who were engaged in the application of the new method
were more anxious to perfect it than they were to get credit for
themselves. We know that Saxton, of the Coast Survey; Mitchell and
Locke, of Cincinnati; Bond, at Cambridge, as well as Walker, and
other astronomers at the Naval Observatory, all worked at the
apparatus; that Maury seconded their efforts with untiring zeal;
that it was used to determine the longitude of Baltimore as early
as 1844 by Captain Wilkes, and that it was put into practical use
in recording observations at the Naval Observatory as early as
1846.
At the Cambridge Observatory the two Bonds, father and son,
speedily began to show the stuff of which the astronomer is made.
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