The Day the World Discovered the Sun (38 page)

16
. Robert Gunning, quoted in W. F. Reddaway, “Struensee and the Fall of Bernstorff,”
English Historical Review
27, no. 106 (1912): 277.

17
.
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
, July 22, 1768.

18
. Sajnovics, letter from Nidrosa [Trondheim], August 1768,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

19
. Ibid., July 23, 1768.

20
. Sajnovics, letter from Nidrosa, August 1768,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

21
. Ibid., July 25, 1768.

22
. Ibid., July 28, 1768.

23
. Ibid., July 26, 1768.

24
. Sajnovics, letter, August 1768,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

25
. Sajnovics, letter from Haffnia [Copenhagen], June 21, 1768,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary;
Sajnovics, letter, August 1768,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

26
. In his diaries, Sajnovics variously spells Borchgrevink's name Purgreving, Purkreving, Purkgrevin, and so on.

27
.
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
, August 8, 1768.

28
.
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
, July 30, 1768.

29
. Other officials played too. Sajnovics later wrote of the “concerts organized in our honor with a lot of mastery and artistry according to many. [Franz Joseph] Haydn, [Georg Christoph] Wagenseil, Gazmann and the other composers from Vienna are not entirely unknown here, and their creations are appreciated.” Sajnovics, letter, August 1768,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

30
.
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
, August 22, 1768; Per Pippin Aspaas, personal communication to author, July 24, 2011.

31
. Ibid.

32
. “There were a few little ladies who also wanted to join us using all sorts of excuses,” Sajnovics later recalled. “But Hell severely refused them.” Sajnovics, letter from Vardø, November 14, 1768,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

33
.
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
, August 22, 1768.

34
. Sajnovics, letter, November 14, 1768,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

35
.
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
, September 3, 18, 1768.

36
. William Guthrie,
A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar and Present State of the Several Kingdoms of the World
(London: Charles Dilly, 1794), 74.

37
. Tobias George Smollett,
The Present State of All Nations: Containing a Geographical, Natural, Commercial, and Political History of All the Countries in the Known World
(London: R. Baldwin, 1768), 1:102–103.

38
.
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
, September 25–26, 1768.

39
. Sajnovics, letter, November 14, 1768,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

40
.
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
, October 7.

41
. John Walker,
Elements of Geography and of Natural and Civil History
(Dublin: Thomas Morton Bates, 1797), 260; Jérôme (l'Abbé) Richard,
Histoire naturelle de l'air et des meteores
(Paris: Saillant & Nyon, 1770), 3:28.

42
. Per Pippin Aspaas, personal communication to author, January 2, 2012.

43
.
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
, October 13.

44
.
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
, November 12.

45
. NOAA Improved Sunrise/Sunset Calculator,
www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/sunrise.html
.

46
. Sajnovics, letter from Vardø, April 5, 1769,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

C
HAPTER
8: S
OME
U
NFREQUENTED
P
ART

1
. Charles Green, manuscript,
Endeavour
journal for September 11, 1768, PRO Adm. 51/4545, f. 97.

2
.
The
Endeavour
Journal of Joseph Banks, 1768–1771
, ed. J. C. Beaglehole (New South Wales: Angus & Robertson, 1962), 1:161.

3
. Stephen Forwood, manuscript,
Endeavour
journal for September 14, 1768, PRO Adm. 51/4545, f. 231.

4
. Charles Green, manuscript, September 14, 1768.

5
. Endeavour
Journal of Joseph Banks
, 1:161.

6
. Charles Green, manuscript, September 17, 1769, reports “complet[ing] our holds, having rece'd on board 3032 gallons of wine.”

7
.
The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery
, ed. J. C. Beaglehole (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 1:7–8.

8
. William McBride, “‘Normal' Medical Science and British Treatment of the Sea Scurvy, 1753–75,”
J. Hist. Med. and Allied Sciences
46 (1991): 167–169; R. Brookes,
The General Practice of Physic
(London: J. Newberry, 1765), 1:286.

9
. Endeavour
Journal of Joseph Banks
, 1:163–164.

10
. Anita McConnell,
Jesse Ramsden (1735–1800): London's Leading Scientific Instrument Maker
(Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 159–160.

11
. Joseph Priestley,
The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments
(London: J. Dodsley, 1767), 416.

12
. Endeavour
Journal of Joseph Banks
, 1:160, 2:276–278.

13
. E. G. Forbes, “The Foundation and Early Development of the Nautical Almanac,”
J. Navigation
18 (1965): 393–394; David Alan Grier,
When Computers Were Human
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 30–33.

14
. Maskelyne fired two of his “computers” when he discovered they were copying each other's results.

15
. Forbes, “Foundation.”

16
. Derek Howse, “The Principal Scientific Instruments Taken on Captain Cook's Voyages of Exploration, 1768–80,”
Mariner's Mirror
65 (1979): 120–123; A. N. Stimson, “Some Board of Longitude Instruments in the Nineteenth Century,” in
Nineteenth-Century Scientific Instruments and Their Makers
(Amsterdam: Rodpi, 1985), 109 fn. 20.

17
. Green, manuscript, f. 105.

18
. On his second and third voyages, Cook would also test some of Harrison's chronometers.
Astronomical Observations Made in the Voyages Which Were Undertaken by Order of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere
, ed. William Wales (London: C. Buckton, 1788), viii.

19
. Mark Twain,
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
(Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1898), 65.

20
. Green, manuscript, ff. 107–111; Endeavour
Journal of Joseph Banks
, 1:170.

21
. Fernando de Noronha's cornucopia of flora and fauna would have to wait to inspire Charles Darwin, who made it to the archipelago on his famous voyage on the HMS
Beagle
.

22
.
Journals of Captain James Cook
, 1:16 fn. 2.

23
. Endeavour
Journal of Joseph Banks
, 1:177.

24
. Dauril Alden,
Royal Government in Colonial Brazil
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 110–111.

25
. Cook, letter to the Royal Society, November 30, 1768, in Dan O'Sullivan,
In Search of Captain Cook: Exploring the Man Through His Own Words
(London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), 19.

26
. Lieutenant Gore diary, cited in Nicholas Thomas,
Cook: The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook
(New York: Walker, 2003), 44.

27
.
Journals of Captain James Cook
, 1:23.

28
. Green, manuscript, f. 125.

29
. Banks, letter to Lord Morton, in Patrick O'Brian,
Joseph Banks: A Life
(Boston: David R. Godine, 1993), 78.

30
. Endeavour
Journal of Joseph Banks
, 1:190–191.

31
. Richard Hough,
Captain James Cook
(New York: Norton, 1994), 68.

32
.
Endeavour
journal by (prob.) James Magra in Thomas,
Cook
, 44.

33
. Leslie Bethell,
Colonial Brazil
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 257, 286.

34
. Hough,
Captain James Cook
.

35
. Alden,
Royal Government
, 109.

36
. Thomas,
Cook
, 45;
Journals of Captain James Cook
, 1:31.

37
. Banks had his own cabin but preferred to sleep on a hammock in the ship's great cabin.

38
. Endeavour
Journal of Joseph Banks
, 1:212.

39
. Wales, ed.,
Astronomical Observations
, vii.

40
. Endeavour
Journal of Joseph Banks
, 1:214.

41
. Endeavour
Journal of Joseph Banks
, 1:217–218.

42
.
Journals of Captain James Cook
, 1:45.

43
. Endeavour
Journal of Joseph Banks
, 1:218–222.

C
HAPTER
9: A S
HINING
B
AND

1
. Joannes Sajnovics, letter from Vardø, April 5, 1769, in
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

2
. Sajnovics, letter from Vardø, April 5, 1769;Sajnovics, entry for December 23, 1768,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

3
. Barthold Georg Niebuhr,
The Life of Carsten Niebuhr: The Oriental Traveler
, trans. “Prof. Robinson” (Edinburgh: Thomas Clar, 1836), 39,
http://tinyurl.com/hell-niebuhr
.

4
. The hard work had already been done. Hell discovered that the atmosphere at Vardø wasn't much thicker, so he could get away with using refraction tables already tabulated for the Royal Observatory in Paris. Truls Lynne Hansen and Per Pippin Aspaas, “Maximilian Hell's Geomagnetic Observations in Norway 1769,”
Tromsø Geophysical Observatory Reports
2 (2005): 15,
http://geo.phys.uit.no/tgor/Hell-text.pdf
.

5
. Sajnovics, letter from Vardø, November 14, 1769,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

6
. Sajnovics, letter, April 5, 1769,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

7
. In 1770 Sajnovics wrote a book on the subject,
Demonstratio Idioma Ungarorum et Lapponum Idem Esse
, discussed below.

8
. Maximilian Hell, letter to “Father Höller,” April 6, 1769, Hungarian Electronic Library,
www.kfki.hu/~tudtor/tallozo1/hell/hell2.html
. Translated by Ilona Dénes.

9
. Per Pippin Aspaas, “Maximilian Hell's Invitation to Norway,”
Comm. in Asteroseismology
149 (2008): 16.

10
. Hell already knew gravity didn't pull precisely toward the earth's center, because of local variations in terrain and the earth's nonspherical imperfections. But he and Sajnovics spent nights during the dark months measuring stars' peak altitudes, which they could compare with star charts to better discover true vertical and thus their observatory's true horizon.

11
. Vienna University Observatory, Manuscripte von Hell,
Observationes Astronomicae et caeterae Jn Jtinere litterario Vienna Wardoehusium usqve factae. 1768. A.M. Hell
, trans. Per Pippin Aspaas (personal communication to author, August 15, 2011); J. A. Bennett,
The Divided Circle: A History of Instruments for Astronomy, Navigation, and Surveying
(Oxford: Phaidon, 1987), 114–117.

12
. Hell also had a feud with Niebuhr's mentor, Tobias Mayer, who championed the lunar method of determining longitude at sea. In England, Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne based his
Nautical Almanac
on Mayer's work. But Hell remained skeptical of Mayer's methods. Niebuhr,
Life of Carsten Niebuhr
, 3:39; I. W. J. Hopkins, “The Maps of Carsten Niebuhr: 200 Years After,”
Cartographic Journal
4, no. 2 (1967): 115–118.

13
. Sajnovics, letter from Vardø, June 6, 1769,
Sajnovics's Travel Diary
.

14
. Smoked glass covered the opening to the telescopes, which enabled the observers to point their optics at such a luminous body as the sun and not completely burn their retinas.

15
. For a detailed discussion of the Vardø transit, including assessment of reliability of each observer's data, see Simon Newcomb, “Wardhus,” in
Astronomical Papers Prepared for the Use of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac
, vol. 2, pt. 5 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Equipment and Recruiting, Navy Department, 1890), 301–305.