Edward Charles Pickering, the present director of the observatory, was appointed in 1876. He was born in Boston and is of the Essex family of the name, Colonel Timothy Pickering being his great-grandfather. He is a graduate of the Lawrence Scientific School of the class of 1865. During the next two years he was a teacher of mathematics in that department of Harvard University. Later and up to the time of his appointment as director, he was professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A system of teaching physics called the “laboratory method” was introduced by him there, and his text book illustrative of the method has to a great extent been adopted by like institutes. Astronomy, as a department of physics, came into the general course, and the attention necessarily given, for the purposes of instruction in the institute, to the technics of that subject, and to demonstration, served as preparation and discipline for the official responsibilities which he afterwards assumed.

He was a member of the Nautical Almanac party for observing in Iowa the total solar eclipse of 1869, and was in like service in the following year as a member of the United States Coast Survey party which observed in Spain a recurrence of that event.

When he came to the directorship he found the observatory to be well equipped as to instruments and its small working force efficiently employed. Their number was but five or six, which was all the means of the institution permitted of.

Like pecuniary restrictions continued until 1879, when a subscription was completed providing for the institution, $5000 annually for five years. Since then much larger gifts have been bestowed and the instrumental equipment, in recent years especially, has been whatever the latest demands or suggestions of science called for; the observatory staff has been augmented from time to time, till it now numbers about 40 persons, and the field of observation has been extended to include the southern hemisphere of stars.

Upon the premises at Cambridge where in 1876 stood only the main observatory and a lesser adjunct structure are now eight or ten others, a cluster of small wooden buildings, domed or otherwise adapted for astronomical uses, each containing a costly instrument of the most approved device; and besides these a dwelling house has been transformed into a hall, or rather a workshop of photography, and makes the northernmost structure of the little city of science which has been set upon Summer House hill.

Upon Mt. Wilson, in California, in north latitude, and Mt. Harvard, in Peru, in south latitude, stand other unpretentious buildings, from within which observers of the Harvard corps nightly search through the translucent upper atmosphere of those regions to the respective poles. This aggregation of means has yielded ample returns; to say which is to signify that during the period under consideration the institution has made a noteworthy record, and that its affairs have been guided with befitting skill and judgment.

The total permanent funds at the beginning of the present term amounted to about $170,000. The subscription for five years was intended for immediate expenditure. At the end of that period a permanent fund of $50,000 was obtained in like manner. In 1885 was added to the permanent funds the bequest of Robert Treat Paine of his whole estate, of which $164,198 became at once available. In 1886 was made the first of a series of annual gifts of large sums of money by Mrs. Anna P. Draper of New York as a memorial of her husband, the late Prof. Henry Draper. These gifts have constantly been applied in furtherance of photographical observation, especially in that line of investigation which Dr. Draper himself began in his lifetime. In 1887 the bequest of Uriah A. Boyden, amounting to $238,000, became available. This bequest has conditions providing for astronomical work at considerable elevations as free as possible from disturbing or obstructing conditions of atmosphere. The income of the Paine fund may be applied generally.

In pursuing the inquiries thus suggested, and others, the observatory has adhered to its traditions, wherein original investigation has been directed to the physical rather than the mathematical side of astronomical science.

In his first annual report the present director outlined the immediate policy, in the then restricted state of the finances, to be to keep employed chiefly the two most costly and effective instruments, the great equatorial and the meridian circle. The latter was already in constant use in the work of the Cambridge zone.

With reference to the former, the report having named the several specialties which the great observatories of this country had taken, each to itself, said: “Photometry offers a field almost wholly unexplored with large telescopes either in this country or abroad. It has therefore been selected as that to which the greater portion of the time of our telescope will be devoted.”

The investigation thus entered upon, together with the zone observations just mentioned, and the continuation by ampler and in some particulars radically different methods of investigations in spectroscopy and photography, have given the institution a wide renown. But hardly less conspicuous are certain other achievements in the long list which makes the complete record. Without attempting to give any of these rank, still less to repeat the list, a few may here be mentioned upon the ground of their presumed popular interest.

In 1878 the utility of the time signal service was increased by causing a time ball to be dropped every day at exact noon from a conspicuous point in Boston within view of the shipping of the harbor. The time was that of the meridian of the State House in Boston. When the standard or 75th meridian time went into general use the practice was conformed thereto. Indeed, the terms of the proposition might be reversed so as to indicate that, in the final determination, the responsibility was put upon the observatory to lead off in the matter.

There had been some discussion in the public prints and elsewhere of the advisability of adopting a common meridian time for large areas. In the report of the observatory for 1878 the theoretical presentation of the case which had been made by those advocating the change was sanctioned, and the new time was recommended as sure to be of public convenience if generally accepted. General consent was somewhat slow in its manifestation, but eventually the managers of all the principal railroads of New England agreed to adopt the plan if the time-signalling system of the observatory should be made to correspond in respect to clock connections, time ball, etc.

This was instantly agreed to, and with due prior public notice the new time went into use Nov. 18, 1883, and the Boston noon ball was first dropped on that day at exactly five hours later than the noon of Greenwich.

In 1880 the full routine of meteorological observation was abandoned, as several institutions were doing like work. The record of the observatory in meteorology, which had continuously been kept up for 40 years, was reduced to proper form for printing, and was published in 1889. Certain observations of this kind have, however, been continued in the record to the present date.

In 1888 a plan of co-operation was agreed upon with the N. E. Meteorological Society and Mr. A. L. Rotch of the Blue Hill, Mass., Observatory, by which their results, which are of a comprehensive character, have since been published in the annals of the Harvard Observatory.

In 1877, in co-operation with Miss Mitchell of Vassar College Observatory and her assistants, observations were made at Cambridge for determining the longitude of the Vassar Observatory. Between Feb. 15, 1879, and Jan. 3, 1880, like observations were made in co-operation with officers of the Winchester Observatory of Yale College to ascertain the longitude of that institution. Between June 2 and June 23, 1883, similar work was done to fix the longitude of McGill Observatory in Montreal.

In the summer of 1888 ten evenings were given for observations for the longitude of Smith College in Northampton. The observers were Miss Byrd, teacher of astronomy at that college, and Miss Whitney, professor of astronomy at Vassar College. Harvard’s contribution in the affair consisted in providing facilities on the spot, including the use of a transit instrument. These are instances, which among others go to show that because of infinite painstaking at Harvard in the earlier years it has become the Mecca to which all on this continent who wish to be perfectly assured in the matter of longitude may prudently make a pilgrimage.

In 1881 an arrangement was entered into for prompt communication as to unusual celestial phenomena, discoveries, etc., among astronomers in this country and in Europe. A cipher code, the invention of Messrs. S. C. Chandler and John Ritchie, Jr., of the observatory staff, was put into use. It is known as the “Science Observer Code,” and as it is superior in accuracy to former codes has been widely recognized. In 1883 Harvard observatory was made the official distributing centre for this class of news, by consent of the Smithsonian Institute, which had previously performed the service.

Upon the occasion of the transit of Mercury across the sun’s disk in May, 1878, all the available telescopes of the observatory were put to use. The results, which included many photographs, were satisfactory, considering the unfavorable weather. During the like transit of Venus, on Dec. 6, 1882, six telescopes being in use, large additions were made to the important data which planetary events of this kind may supply.

In August, 1886, a small party provided with instruments belonging to the observatory made an expedition to Grenada, near the northern coast of South America, for observation of the total solar eclipse of that year. The expedition was in charge of Mr. W. H. Pickering, who afterwards became a member of the observatory corps.

On Jan. 1, 1889, a large party, under the same direction, observed a recurrence of the event in California. The observations were mainly photographical. Excellent results were obtained in both cases, though less in amount in the former, because of unfavorable weather.

Much has been done during the term in cometary investigation, but latterly comets have been observed, as a rule, only immediately upon discovery and towards the end of their visible period, or after they had got beyond the reach of any but the most powerful telescopes.

In the summer of 1883 the director journeyed in Europe and visited the principal observatories there. In the following annual report he names as an important result of his journey the obtaining of copies of unpublished manuscripts of Argelander and Sir William Herschel. The former are memoranda of observations of variable stars and the latter of observations made more than 100 years ago of the light of all stars of Flamsteed’s catalogue.

The work on the Cambridge zone of stars was completed, as respects the primary plan of observation, on Jan. 26, 1879, and at that stage was regarded as one of the largest astronomical undertakings ever carried through in this country.

The reduction of the data was accomplished in 1883, but as was expected, a necessity for reobservation appeared in certain cases. This work was done between Oct. 9, 1883 and Aug. 9, 1884. The observer from the beginning had been Prof. William A. Rogers. He resigned his position as assistant professor in the observatory in 1886, but continued to serve as editor of the published results. The whole series makes half a dozen or more volumes of the annals. The European supervisors of the general undertaking, well pleased, apparently, with the early instalments of manuscript returns, assigned to Harvard the work of reobservation of another zone, that between 9° 50' south and 14° 10' south. This work is still in progress. Each zone comprises about 8000 stars or nearly 17,000 in all.

The publications of the observatory during the present term in the form of annals, and as contributions by members of the corps to various journals of science, have been numerous and extensive. At the beginning of the term but four volumes of annals had been issued, though about an equal number were in some stage of progress in the printers’ hands, publication having gone on slowly from lack of means. At the present time the continuous series of 22 volumes has been issued, excepting the second or supplementary parts in two or three instances. These parts are nearly ready, and the manuscript for about half a dozen more volumes in regular succession has, in part or whole, been given to the printer.

A review of what has been done during the present term in the departments of photometry, spectroscopy and photography will be comprised in the next and closing number of this series.