skyandtelescope.com • NOVEMBER 2019 33
was formed, offi cers were elected, a constitution was adopted,
and Mitchel was directed to travel to Europe to procure a
telescope. By mid-June, after stopping in Washington, DC,
to solicit political support for the effort, in Philadelphia to
examine the Central High School’s observatory, and at West
Point to procure letters of introduction to European astrono-
mers, he embarked across the Atlantic.
In whirlwind travel through England, France, and Ger-
many, Mitchel visited renowned astronomers and telescope
makers. At the optical works of the Munich fi rm of Merz
and Mahler, he found a completed 11-inch lens (which
Mitchel usually called a 12-inch, the inch not yet having
been standardized). He ordered a telescope to be made with
it, exceeding his $7,500 budget by more than $2,000. He also
received intensive hands-on tutorials on effectively using a
large equatorial refractor and a transit instrument by no less
than the Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy himself at the
Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and at the private observatory
of well-known British astronomer Sir James South.
Back in Cincinnati, a wealthy landowner offered four
acres atop a nearby hill named Mount Ida for the prospec-
tive observatory. To lay the cornerstone in November 1843,
Mitchel invited 76-year-old former U.S. President John
Quincy Adams, who for decades had been advocating for
a national observatory; the hill was subsequently renamed
Mount Adams in his honor.
To economize on money and time, each day after teach-
ing at Cincinnati College, Mitchel himself toiled alongside
his day laborers in constructing the building. He further
pledged to work as observatory director for 10 years without
pay. Finally, in January 1845, after an arduous journey across
the Atlantic to New Orleans and up the Mississippi River, the
heavy wooden crates containing the disassembled telescope
fi nally arrived.
Two days earlier, however, disaster had struck: Cincin-
nati College burned to the ground, taking with it Mitchel’s
$2,000-per-year teaching job. Nonetheless, Mitchel and his
workmen labored through the snows of February and March
to fi nish the observatory building. The fi rst weekend of April,
the mighty refractor was mounted. Although fi rst light is
traditionally celebrated as April 14, 1845, Mitchel fi rst looked
through the telescope on April 7th, when he used the largest
telescope in the United States, second largest in the world, to
observe the waxing crescent Moon and the Orion Nebula.“Mans Can’t Make Moons”
Because Mitchel’s day job had literally gone up in smoke, he
needed income to support his growing family as well as the
observatory itself. Since his lectures had been so successful
in Cincinnati, he decided to try his luck speaking in other
cities. In December 1845, he lugged his projection apparatus
to Boston and placed advertisements in local newspapers,
announcing a spectacular and novel attraction: telescopic
images of celestial objects as viewed through the Cincinnati
Observatory refractor.Books by Ormsby
MacKnight Mitchel
Mitchel wrote or edited half a dozen books in his short life.
They sold extremely well and for decades were reissued
in multiple editions in the U.S. and the UK. His last book,
nearly fi nished at the time of his death, was published post-
humously. In chronological order:An Elementary Treatise on Algebra (Cincinnati: E.
Morgan, 1845).The Planetary and Stellar Worlds: A Popular
Exposition of the Great Discoveries and Theories of
Modern Astronomy (New York: Baker & Scribner,
1848). The most famous of Mitchel’s books, this
work purports to be a compilation of his lectures,
but its text diff ers substantially from verbatim lecture
transcripts printed in various newspapers. Mitchel
lectured extemporaneously and seems to have recon-
structed his lectures after the fact. The Planetary and
Stellar Worlds was reissued at least 18 times in the
last half of the 19th century. A British edition was
published under the title The Orbs of Heaven in 1851
and reissued at least another 10 times in the 1800s.Atlas, Designed to Illustrate Mitchel’s Edition of
the Geography of the Heavens (New York: Hunting-
ton & Savage, 1848).E. H. Burritt, The Geography of the Heavens, and
Class Book on Astronomy. Revised and corrected
by O. M. Mitchel (New York: Huntington & Savage,
1849).Popular Astronomy, or the Sun, Planets, Satel-
lites, and Comets (New York: Phinney, Blakeman &
Mason, 1860).The Astronomy of the Bible. (New York: Blakeman
and Mason, 1863). Published posthumously.FURTHER READING: F. A. Mitchel’s Astronomer and Gen-
eral (Boston: Houghton, Miffl in & Co., 1887) is an important
primary source about Mitchel. Kevin J. Weddle’s biography
of Mitchel appeared in S&T almost 35 years ago (S&T: Jan.
1986, p. 14). This article draws on Philip S. Shoemaker’s PhD
dissertation Stellar Impact: Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel and
Astronomy in Antebellum America (Madison: University of
Wisconsin, 1991) and numerous newspaper advertisements,
accounts, and transcripts of most of Mitchel’s public lectures
from 1842 through 1859, which were amassed by the late
historian Craig B. Waff. Gratitude is also expressed to the
Cincinnati Observatory Center’s historian John E. Ventre and
director Craig Niemi for additional primary source materials
PA and to Shoemaker and Ventre for manuscript review.
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