The story of Pittsburgh: Education

Bibliographic data

Multivolume work

Identifikator:: 1831622599

Document type:: Multivolume work

Title:: The story of Pittsburgh

Place of publication:: Pittsburgh

Publisher:: First National Bank

Year of publication:: 1919-1930

Collection:: Economics Books

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Volume

Identifikator:: 1831623714

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-241132

Document type:: Volume

Title:: Education

Volume count:: Vol. 1, nr. 14

Place of publication:: Pittsburgh

Publisher:: First National Bank

Year of publication:: 1928

Scope:: [ca. 80] Seiten

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Multivolume work

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Allegheny observatory

Collection:: Economics Books

surpassed in size by only two other refractors in the world, each of which was 15 inches in diameter, and one of them was at Harvard College. In 1865 the observatory became the possession of the university, with a modest endowment fund, and Prof. Samuel Pierpont Langley was made director, continuing 20 years. Langley’s skill as a draftsman and illustrator enabled him to make the finest drawings of sunspots ever executed. At that time, visual observations were the only means of the study of the sun. The photographic plate has since super- seded the eye, aided by many modern instruments, including the spectograph and spectroheliograph: but Langley’s visual observations, made in Pittsburgh, are now regarded as classic. He not only studied the solar spectrum visually, but he also used a very delicate thermo instrument called the bolometer, extending human knowledge of the spectrum far into the infra-red, much beyond the power of the eye to see. This region of the spectrum mapped by him is that part from which the earth gets most of its heat energy, affecting the thermometer, but not the eye. While at the Allegheny Observatory, Langley made his experiments on the lifting power of the air by means of a whirling table on which were mounted planes tilted at various angles—the precursors of the wings of the airplane. Langley himself constructed the first airplane after he left Pittsburgh and went to Washington as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The failure of his plane to make a flight greatly distressed him. He had the right idea, however, and its lack of success was not due to the plane itself, but to the failure of the launching apparatus, which, instead of directing the plain upward, threw it downward into the Potomac River. Much ridicule was heaped upon Langley for his attempt at air flight, and he found it impossible to obtain the necessary funds to continue his experiments. However, this same machine, in the hands of the Wright Brothers, made a suc- cessful flight, long after the death of Langley, proving that he was the inventor of the airplane. James E. Keeler was another director who did excellent work. His principal achievement was the spectroscopic proof of the constitution of Saturn’s rings, by a spectrograph of his own design.

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