Correspondence Respecting the Liverpool Observatory, Between Mr. John Taylor and The Rev. R. Sheepshanks, M.A. WITH Supplement to the Correspondence
Language: English
Published by George Barclay, London, 1845
- Softcover
- Used
Condition: Used - Good
£ 600.00
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Self-wraps 14x21cm. Printed and published by George Barclay. Correspondence 91pp (numbered (i)-xiv, (15)-91); Supplement 28pp, complete including the original title pages. Very good, tanned with some foxing, disbound from a larger volume with extraction residue along the spine. This work was prepared by the astronomer Reverend Richard Sheepshanks (1794-1855), then a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge, Member of the Board of Visitors of the Royal Observatory, and Foreign Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society. John Taylor, a Liverpool cotton merchant and astronomer, had criticised Liverpool Observatory's location. The Observatory had opened at Waterloo Dock in 1844 to provide accurate time for ship chronometers. Sheepshanks opens with a dedication to its Committee. He expresses his support by affirming "the utility of an accessible observatory to a mighty seaport" which he considers "your complete success", and provides a short account of it. He presents, with annotations, his public dispute with Taylor, which played out in a series of letters to the Editors of the Liverpool Times and Liverpool Mercury over a few weeks in 1845. The exchanges are heated, embellishing scientific argument with literary, historical and classical references, and frequent personal insult. In the Appendix to the main document, Sheepshanks critiques Taylor's correspondence on Halley's Comet, Encke's Comet, and on astronomy and photography at Rome. In the Supplement, he reopens and widens the dispute, informing the Editor of the Liverpool Mercury: "I am compelled, sorely against my inclination, once more to enter the lists against Mr Taylor, or rather, against 'that three-headed canus', of which he, the editor of the Liverpool Mercury, and their humble ally, Sir James South, are the component barkers. Each shall be replied to in due order". Sheepshanks, who had been appointed RAS Secretary in 1829, had fallen out with South, the Society's co-founder and President, in 1832 over the latter's refusal to pay for a telescope mount commissioned from Edward Troughton, as he considered it defective. Troughton sued, and with Sheepshanks' backing South had been forced to pay. South then destroyed the mount and sold off the "botchings" to local tradespeople. He kept the lens which he later presented to the Dunsink Observatory in Dublin. In 1866 Liverpool Observatory relocated to Bidston Hill due to the expansion of Waterloo Dock. Rare in commerce. (Reference: Michael Hoskin, "Astronomers at War: South v. Sheepshanks", JHA, xx, 1989).…
Seller Inventory # 6048
Bibliographic details
- Title
- Correspondence Respecting the Liverpool Observatory, Between Mr. John Taylor and The Rev. R. Sheepshanks, M.A. WITH Supplement to the Correspondence
- Author
- Sheepshanks, Richard; John Taylor
- Publisher
- George Barclay, London
- Publication year
- 1845
- Condition
- Good
- Binding
- Soft cover
- Language
- English
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