Creighton University

As the first wireless signals were telegraphic, inasmuch as they consisted of dots and dashes, I took no interest in them because I was too old to hope ever to become proficient in them. A second reason was that I did not want to waste my time on what I considered a useless fad. But when the subject assumed an astronomical phase, I at once changed my attitude.

It came about in this way. On August 25, 1913 a circular letter was received from the Naval Observatory at Washington, D.C. stating that from October 1 from April 25, of the next year a long series of wireless time signals were to be exchanged between the Arlington station near Washington and the Eiffel tower in Paris, and that all astronomers within receiving distance of either of these nations would thus have an exceptional opportunity of determining their longitude with the greatest precision.

The first thing I did accordingly was the consult Dr. F. H. Millener, who was then generally acknowledged to be the greatest expert in wireless in the city. He suggested to me to string six parallel stranded wires, two feet apart and two hundred feet long, and to raise them on steel masts thirty or forty feet above the college roofs, together with burying five feet deep in the earth an elaborate copper ground connection. While he guaranteed this outfit to be most satisfactory, he was frank enough to admit that the flimsy wiring of a youthful amateur might work equally well in the reception, at least, of signals, which was in this case really the only requirement. As this elaborate construction would cost over six hundred dollars  [in 2000 almost $11,000] and would moreover be very conspicuous, I was not in a mood to act precipitously.

As has happened to me so frequently in my life, Providence came to my help in an efficient manner and at an opportune time. George G. Gerhard, 1710 Dorcas street, of his own accord presented me with a complete wireless receiving outfit, and William Reinhardt, another youthful amateur, kindly adjusted it for me after I had strung first one, then two, and finally four. almost invisible wires from the top of the college tower to various distant parts of the roofs. With this simple installation, whose most vital part was a galena detector, and which practically did not cost me a cent although it entailed several hours of labor we heard the principal stations all over the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to the Gulf and even to Panama. Its most elegant scientific feature was that no power of any kind was required. such as a converter attached to the electric current, or even a single dry cell. For many years the Arlington time signals were heard with it distinctly almost every day (except Sundays and holidays) at 9 P. M. and sometimes at 11 A. M.

On December 8th I made my first wireless determination of the longitude. The method was briefly this. At Arlington there was a clock, or at least a kind of a clock, that sent one hundred and one signals in one hundred seconds, so that each beat would gain one one-hundredth of a second on the home clock. Once therefore in one hundred seconds the two clocks would be coincident. If a mistake of one second was committed in timing this coincidence exactly, the error in the time would really be only one one-hundredth of a second.

My wireless station was in the northwest corner of the physical cabinet, to which I had run the wires from both clocks at the Observatory. In setting a stop-watch to the beats of the solar chock. I had practically its own face before me, so that I could see the seconds and was not under the constraint of counting them and thus incurring the risk of error and worry. Another great advantage was that the clock signals came early in the evening, so that when storms or the inconsiderate interferences of local amateurs prevented their reception, I did not need to go to the Observatory to observe the transits of stars.

The American and French astronomers had divided themselves each into two parties. While one American and one French party was in Washington, the other American and French party was in Paris. All used perfectly similar apparatus and instruments, fitted out of course with the latest refinements and accuracy. After observing thus for three months. the parties exchanged places, the Washington men going to Paris and vice versa, and then continued their work for another three months.

The results of this campaign were published in 1916 in the Appendix to Publications of the United States Naval Observatory, Second Series, Volume IX. The probable error is less than one three-hundreths of a second of time, so that the relative position of certain fixed points in the Observatories of Washington and Paris is uncertain by about the length of a yard.

In this report there is also a list of the American Observatories that actually participated in the work and that communicated their results to the Naval Observatory for publication.

This list is rather small, Containing as it does, only seven observatories, hut that of the Creighton University is among them. They are: (1) Case. Cleveland, Ohio;
(2) Columbia University, New York; (3) Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska; (4) Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa; (5) Elgin, Elgin, Illinois; (6) Illinois Watch Company, Springfield, Illinois; (7) Flower, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Along with the name of the Observatory are given the names of the astronomical observer, the radio observer, and the computer, as well as the number of nights on which observations were made, and lastly the resulting longitude. The largest number of nights is twelve, the rest are nine and eight, then two with four (one of which is the Creighton University) and two with three.

The first wireless determination of our longitude in this series was, as said before, made on December 8, 19 13, and the others on January 23, February 2 and 3, 1914. Having on each night found the corrections to our clock by star observations, it was only on October 19, 1914 that I received those of the Washington clock and could thus know the longitude. Although my own observations were satisfactory enough, there seems to have been some systematic error somewhere which made this wireless determination inferior to that of the telegraphic ones of August 5, 6, 7, 1887. Someday I or one of my successors may discover this error, just as happened to me on February 12, 1923 when I found a mistake I had made at the very beginning of a long computation on August 22, 1886, thirty-six and a half years before.

However, any student that is interested in the wireless determination of his longitude now has this opportunity on almost every clear night. Wireless time signals are now plentiful and so conveniently received, and that even automatically on a chronograph, that it is not at all likely that any astronomer would now use any other method.

If the reader would like to have a few more details in regard to the wireless installation at the College, he may find it in the Creighton Chronicle for November and December 1913, February 1914 and October 1916, April 29 1939 Page 2, as also in Popular Astronomy in December 1913 and January 1914.

My interest in wireless was confined to the daily time signals. Towards the end of my regency in the physics department, speech and music began to replace the telegraphic dots and dashes, and broadcasting stations suppressed the interfering and chattering amateurs, I doubt if I would now devote much time to wireless. Speeches and music and singing and the like are too monotonous for my taste. Trying new "hook-ups" do not appeal to me as it did to my successor, Mr. Perk, who liked nothing better than to completely dismantle his apparatus and pull out every wire, and then wire it all over again on a new plan.

On Sunday October 6, 1918 the Observatory was supremely and exceptionally honored by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which was said on the upper level west of the round house. It was celebrated it 1 o'clock by the pastor Fr. McNeive, and was the only one ever said there. The reason fur this unusual honor was that, on account of the rapid spread of the Spanish influenza at the time, all indoor gatherings had been forbidden by the city health authorities. Although the people had been notified only after 7 o'clock the night before, there was a large congregation present which packed half the available space on the north lawn, The altar was a long table tastefully ornamented with palms and the vesting place was the transit room. The weather was ideal.

On the following two Sundays mass was celebrated just outside the main entrance of the college. On October 27 even this outdoor gathering was prohibited, but by the end of that week the ban was entirely removed, For further particulars see the chapter on "During the War."

The visitors to the Observatory may be divided into two classes, distinguished and ordinary ones, understanding by the first professional astronomers or persons otherwise high in social standing.

It may be taken for granted, of course, that our great benefactor Mr. John A. Creighton came to the Observatory frequently, either alone or in company with friends he had brought along.

As no record was kept, to many knowledge, of what transpired at the Observatory except what I myself jotted down in my private notes and only in 1909 transferred and continued in a special notebook, I can speak only what came under my own personal observations. With this limitation, the first professional to come to our Observatory was Professor G. D. Swezey, of Lincoln, on May 4, 1900. His object was to determine his personal equation wish with me after a telephonic exchange of signals for longitude a few nights before. The circumstances of this event have been given already.

On November 29, 1912 Professor Swezey came again, this time to try out our transit to see what an instrument of that size could do as he was contemplating the purchase of a similar one for his own observatory. He handed our transit in professional style.

The second great man to visit the Observatory was Fr. Jose Algue, director of the famous Manila Weather Observatory. While his specialty was rather meteorology than astronomy, he had distinguished himself in the latter while at the Georgetown College Observatory in the design and use of a novel zenith telescope, which permitted the simultaneous observation of two stars, one north and the other south, but at equal zeniths distances, one directly, and the other by reflection from a basin of mercury. For this purpose he had mounted two equal telescopes so that they faced in opposite directions in the same tribe [plane?], while their common focus was in the middle. A small photographic plate was placed in contact with an equal and fixed one of ordinary glass on which the instrumental meridian was drawn, so that the light of one star passed through this glass to reach the photographic film, and the light, of the other passed through the glass of the photographic plate itself. This ingenious instrument was tested at Georgetown and then taken to Manila, where, however, the weather service was so absorbing that it has never yet been put to actual use, like the great nineteen inch equatorial, the largest possessed by the Jesuit Order, for which no astronomer could ever be spared.

In meteorology Fr. Algue has done even greater work. Barely to mention his weather predictions, without which no ship captain dares to leave port, he has in vented an instrument called barocyclonometer, which enables a sailor to find the direction and distance of a storm center, and which is said to have already saved a million lives.

At the time of his visit to our Observatory on June 20 and 21, 1904 he was en route from the World's Fair in St. Louis, where he had installed a big display of the Manila Observatory, with a large hundred-foot relief map of the Philippine Islands, to Manila, whither he was conducting FF. Vihallolnga and McGeary, the latter of whom was to be his assistant.

The mention of the World's Fair in St. Louis brings to my memory the week called the week of Scientific Congresses that I spent there from September 18th to the 24th. I must say I was not a little surprised at Fr. Dowling's generosity, but I gladly give him the credit that is due him. And I am sure I made the best use of my opportunity. The chief event to interest me was my being able to attend the sessions of the American Astronomical Society (of which, however, I did not become a member until December 28, 1911), and best of all, to be taken under Fr. Hagen's aegis and allowed to dine in the "Tyrolese Alps" with all the big astronomers of the United States and several foreign ones, to each of whom I was personally introduced.

The third professional astronomer to visit the Creighton Observatory was Fr. Richard Cirera, director of the Ebro Observatory, near Tortosa, in Spain. This observatory was designed on a comprehensive plan, since it has astronomical, meteorological, magnetic, and seismological departments. It publishes every month the numerical results of its observations, together with a diagram which gives all these in graphic form, so that if one has a theory that certain weather conditions, earthquakes, or other phenomena have an intimate connection with certain others, it is easy to compare their curves and see if their maxima coincide, or the like. Fr. Cirera came on August 22, 1910, and departed the next day for the International Solar Conference which was to be held at the Mount Wilson Observatory, near Pasadena, in California.

On September 15 following, Fr. A. Cortie, of the Stonyhurst College Observatory, in England, passed through Omaha on his return from Mt. Wilson. Fr. Cortie was in his day (he died in June, 1925) the greatest living authority on the connection between sun spots and terrestrial magnetism. He did great work also on the spectra of stars, and wrote many papers in astronomical journals. He was a prominent member of the Royal Astronomical Society, and of many others. Both Fr. Cortie and Fr. Cirera happened to come at a time when the interior improvements of the Observatory were going on, so that they could not see our instruments to advantage.

Another great man to honor our Observatory with his presence was George W. Ritchey, of Mount Wilson, who arrived on March 2, 1911, and gave a lecture in our auditorium on how the Mount Wilson Observatory was built and on the work it had already done. Professor Ritchey was originally a structural engineer, and as such had designed and built the mounting for the sixty-inch mirror, then the largest in the world, which he had personally ground to perfect shape. He then, of course, tested his telescope on the hitherto inaccessible small objects in the heavens, and by his skill obtained the most superb photographs, many of which he exhibited on the screen in our hall. Professor Ritchey acquired even greater fame later on when he constructed the Hooker telescope on Mount Wilson with its hundred inch mirror. He is now (1926) engaged in figuring a still greater mirror for an observatory in France.

On June 6, 1915 Professor Joel Stebbins visited our Observatory, He had been a student under Professor Swezey in Lincoln, and when I first met him in that capacity, it took me only a few minutes to see that he was made of the right metal. He became director of the Illinois State Observatory, and is now director of the Washburn Observatory, in Madison, Wisconsin. His title to renown rests on the minute light variations he has measured in variable stars with instrumental means.

For all classes of these visitors "eternal vigilance" has to he my watchword, for fear they would inadvertently do great harm by touching parts of the instruments that only an expert would know how to handle. This continued attention embraced especially the observing chair, in which one hundred and fifty pounds of lead (practically only about one hundred were effective on account of friction) counterbalanced the weight of the observer, Two pawls or racks facing in opposite directions securely locked the chair in position, until the right one was released for the upward motion by pressing a pedal, and the left one similarly for the downward trip.

The "scientific" method of operating the observing chair, which students understood immediately, was to stand up on the base board of the chair, catch hold of a peg high up on each side, put the right foot on the right pedal, throw the weight of the body on the hands and bend the knees gradually. The chair would then rise as fast as one desired, and when the work was skillfully done, stop at the proper height. Both feet should then be off the pedals. In descending, the left foot was put on the left pedal. When one's weight was about 150 pounds, the chair would go down smoothly, if it was greater, both hands should grasp the side rails and control the speed of descent by the proper amount of friction. Very light persons would rise without any effort, but had to be pulled down or do it themselves. But especial care had to be taken not to touch the right pedal at the moment of alighting, for then, as there was no weight in the chair, the 150-pound counterpoise might pull up the empty chair so violently as to break the pawl and then, in its uncontrolled uprush, crash into the telescope and wreck it beyond repair.

While the "scientific" method of ascent was not grasped by everybody, the next best one was to sit in the chair, with the right foot on the right pedal, and to pull oneself up within the hands. The effort required to do this, increased of course, with the weight of the person in the chair. Some people, especially the older and heavier ones, seemed absolutely incapable of lifting themselves, even with the hundred pound counterpoise to help them, and these had then to be raised and lowered bodily as so much "dead weight." When men were available, I used always to commandeer their services, but when the party consisted of women only - well, let the reader figure it out.

One night Father Magevney, the president of the University, came to the Observatory. We instructed him how to operate the chair and showed him by experiment. But as he was rather heavy, and had evidently never practiced much hanging on his hands, he could make no headway, and even several of us could not help him. He then got the idea that we were playing a trick on him, heft the Observatory in bad humor and, as far as I can recall, never visited it again. But how he, as president of the University, could imagine that some of his own professors would do such an unmannerly and impolitic thing, or as a religious Superior impute such an unworthy motive to any of his own subjects, is more than I can understand.

The greatest vigilance, however, had to be employed in the descent of heavy people. There was first the continued dread that the occupant of the chair would, in forgetfulness of the order to notify me, intentionally press the left pedal, or do so accidentally, and then fall suddenly with the chair to the bottom thus running risk of either breaking it or injuring himself or herself internally, and then - such is the perverseness of human nature-- suing the University for not having the proper safety appliances. There was almost an equal danger when persons of light weight contrary to instructions kept their foot on the right pedal when getting off the chair, for then the chair would ascend and threaten to lift the foot above their head. This happened one time when I had a large party consisting of women only. I had left a girl securely seated in the observing chair while I went to the transit room to show what was there to half the party. I heard the chair move, and as once rushed over to it to find the girl already in a horizontal position with a foot on the pedal and going up. The helpless women hardly knew what to do, but they looked "daggers" at me for having such an inhuman contrivance in the Observatory. And all this (Continued from Page 3) and in similar cases, against reiterated and reiterated orders and directions! But I learned two lessons there and then, first never to have a party of women only, except Sisters in the summer school who had accustomed themselves to obey orders, and secondly, never to divide any party except when I had a reliable and trained student to manage the big telescope. But even he, and much more so the chair operators required occasional supervision, the latter, as a class, being very unreliable. Showing visitors the moon required therefore about ten times as much mechanical vigilance as knowledge of astronomy.

The reader may ask why I never made the observing chair safe and fool-proof. Well, even after giving the matter much thought, I could never find a practical solution, which did not involve other and worse inconveniences. Nor has any ever been proposed to me.

For the same reason that I performed all the experiments I could in any lectures in physics, I invited the Sisters of the first summer school, 1913, to come in sections and look at the moon. I did that the next year also and for some following ones. But then I realized that I was overtaxing my physical endurance. One hour of lecture with experiments and two hours of laboratory, with from forty to sixty papers to read every day, during the hot season of the year, was enough for one man. So that towards the end of my career I declined to open the Observatory at all, even to one class, because with the way that women keep secrets, that one class would have made it impossible for me to refuse all.

In the beginning I used to admit visitors quite freely. But I soon found our that by far the greater number knew practically nothing at all about astronomy and had not even done any reading in it. I then began to look upon their desire so visit the Observatory as a polite expression of good will towards me and the College. To test their sincerity, I used to tell them that, as the moon at about the time of its first Quarter was the best object to look as through the telescope, they should consult any almanac or calendar, and then telephone to me a few days before that, when I would assign them a given day and hour. This invariably ended the matter for nine-tenths of them. The few that did remind me, I then admitted.

Of course, all these applicants imagined that I was in the Observatory every night and all night, and even all day, that I had a telephone within arm's length, and would be highly pleased to admit visitors at any time that they should choose to come, even unannounced. Some did actually foist themselves upon me in this way. Had I no voice in the matter? Was I under any obligations to admit them at all? I was to entertain them for a couple of hours. And what were they to do? Enjoy themselves, and be profuse in thanks! Was my time not worth anything to me and to The Creighton University? I could not in decency charge a fee. Other persons not so situated could, and did. One man in this city had a five-inch telescope and another a four-inch. I was glad to be able to direct many of my applicants to them. And they made good money in the summer of 1924, when Mars was nearest the earth.

But honestly, did I never get any cash for my services? Yes, once, not counting the offers of single cigars which I could not use because I never smoked. The incident was this. Some time before the opening of the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha in 1908, or that of the Greater America in the following year, Mr. Grosjean conceived the idea of buying a telescope, setting it up in the grounds, charging ten cents a peep, and realizing a handsome profit. He came to me to become acquainted with the most interesting objects in the heavens to look at. I showed them to him for three hours. He then insisted on my accepting three dollars from him, because, he said, as this was a business venture with him, it was only fair that he should pay me for my services. Before ordering a telescope, however, he re-examined his case, and found that he would have to secure ten thousand peeps through it just to come out even. As he had no hopes for such a large number, he gave up the idea. His three dollars in cash were thus the only monetary recompense I ever received for my work in the Observatory.

Once I received a fee of another sort. We had two brothers named McWhorter in the college. With their parents they came several times to the Observatory. In return the mother sent up one of the boys at times with the family auto, in the days when autos were still very rare, and invited the members of the faculty to a drive. One night, while in the Observatory, one of the party noticed a little brown jug in which I kept lubricating oil and used also as the material for a joke. He wanted to know what was in it. "Well," said I," you know it gets very cold in here when the temperature is near zero and the dome is open. And then the poor astronomer needs some refoscilation." "Oh, you haven't got that in there?" he asked somewhat doubtingly. I offered to give him a drink if he would promise to take it. He was, of course, not dare-devil enough to do that. "Now, that gives me an idea" said Mrs. McWhorter and the next day she sent me a bottle of benedictine!

As the Observatory is so prominently situated on the college grounds, it could not but attract the attention of at least some of the students, who then expressed their desires to see its interior and to look through the telescope. When it was at all possible for me, I always showed the instruments to those who came to me during the day time. Inviting them at night had many practical inconveniences and impossibilities. First, a good night had to be selected when there was something in the heavens to be seen. Secondly, except the students who lived in the dormitory nearby, the rest had to come great distances and to make a special effort to do so which they would then forget. Thirdly, the capriciousness of the weather often caused disagreeable disappointments. Fourthly, why should I give so many precious hours to individuals or small groups whose minds, like those of most visitors, were complete astronomical blanks? The net result in practice was therefore that, except for the students in the class of astronomy, very few others ever looked through the telescope. Will the reader suggest a solution? Astronomy is not like the other sciences in that one may do observational or experimental work in it at any time that one pleases and in all weathers.

A few years ago I received a circular letter from Mr. (or shall I call him Prof?) Earle G. Linsley, of the Chabot Observatory, Oakland Public School, Oakland, California, asking me what I did to popularize astronomy, especially to school children. I replied that with my hands full of teaching all day, with extras thrown in. there was little inducement for me to spend my nights in the Observatory in the self-imposed occupation instructing and entertaining people who, as a class, had never given astronomy a thought before, most of all, children who did not have the first ideas of astronomical things. It was, first, above any man's physical endurance, and secondly such sparse information as I could import to individuals would be only wasting the energies that I could and was bound to employ in more profitable and necessary things. Then, how could I alone and single-handed attempt to enlighten the tens of thousands of school children in this city?

Now, the man that sent me this questionnaire, is salaried by the Oakland School Board. He has nothing else to do but to entertain visitors at the Chabot Observatory where he has, if you please, a twenty-inch telescope while ours is but a five inch! Sending the school children to the observatory is most likely the order of the school board, and not his own idea, and we may take it for granted that the children that come have first been instructed by their teachers.

His twenty-inch telescope, which I saw at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915 is by far too big for the purpose. A three-inch will give better ideas to a beginner in showing them the mountains on the moon, the moons on Jupiter, the ring of Saturn, the cluster of the Pleiades and the Milky Way, than a much larger instrument, as I know by experience, because it is only after one is well acquainted with a heavenly body in its entirety that one can appreciate or even understand the details that a larger telescope reveals.

It would have been immeasurably more practical and productive of greater results, if the money spent on that twenty-inch telescope with the observatory and salaried official, had been used first in purchasing a three-inch telescope for each school, then in educating one or two teachers in each place for the purpose, and in giving them some remuneration for the time and labor they would devote to the children. In this way at any given moment one child in each school could be looking through a telescope, instead of only the one in the whole city at the large instrument. But even after this, how many nights in a year can or will a child come, and what is the net profit its young mind will acquire? Take any institution which possesses a small telescope: how many times in a year is it actually used by the same person? One of the many modern fads!

After my health had given way in 1922 I had to decline all visitors. The only exception I made was for a few nights at the time of the nearest approach of Mars on August 22, 1924.

The students that made use of the Observatory may also, like the visitors, can be divided into two classes, ordinary and advanced. By ordinary ones I mean those who were members of the class of astronomy. This was taught five hours a week during the second half of the year in the graduating class, the claws of Philosophy, as it was called. It was purely descriptive, of course. And the students soon found out that it was not all poetry, because I explained and required them to give proofs that the earth really turned on its axis, that it went `round the Sun, and the like. I admitted them to the Observatory as often as I could or they cared to come. I tried to impress upon them, and upon all student visitors, the fact that the Observatory was primarily built for their education. The time, however, was too short and their education not sufficiently advanced to enable them to use the instruments, especially the transit, to full advantage. This was done to some extent by the advanced students, practically all of them Jesuits, who came during the vacation months. And some even came several times.