Omar W. Nasim - The Astronomers Chair: A Visual and Cultural History

The Astronomers Chair

A Visual and Cultural History

Omar W. Nasim

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Nasim, Omar W., 1976- author.

Title: The astronomers chair : a visual and cultural history / Omar W. Nasim.

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020047211 | ISBN 9780262045537 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Astronomy--Equipment and supplies--History. | Chairs--History. | Chair design--History. | Astronomical observing chairs

Classification: LCC QB85.8 .N37 2021 | DDC 522/.5--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047211

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To my wife

List of Figures

A relief originally made for Giottos Campanile in Florence in the workshops of Andrea Pisano, showing Gionitus, whom the thirteenth-century Florentine scholar Brunetto Latini considered to be the fourth son of Noah and the founder of astronomy. The relief is now housed in the Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Florence.

A frontispiece by Albrecht Drer to De scientia motus orbis (1504), a Latin translation of the Arabic work by the Persian-Jewish astronomer Mshallh ibn Athari (740815 CE). It portrays the astronomer seated in a specialized chair. Source: Typ 520.04.561, Houghton Library, Harvard University, via Wikimedia Commons.

An engraving by James Basire illustrating the transit room of Dr. John Lees Hartwell House observatory, where William Henry Smyth (17881865) often came to socialize and observe. Source: des Hartwellian; or, Notices of the Manor and Mansion of Hartwell (London, 1851).

Engraving of a drawing by Austen Henry Layard of a large bas-relief (236.22 200.66 cm) excavated by him near modern-day Mosul, Iraq. It portrays Neo-Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II seated upon his throne, with footstool, during a court ceremony. Source: Austen Henry Layard, The Monuments of Nineveh, from Drawings Made on the Spot (London, 1849), plate 5.

A specialized marine chair devised to facilitate telescopic observations of Jupiter and its moons while aboard a moving ship in order to determine longitude. The chair was designed in 1757 by the German polymath Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (17231795). It was published in his Sella marina observandis eclipsibus satellitum Jovis accommodata, in Acta Literaria Universitatis Hafniensis (Copenhagen, 1778).

Photograph of the interior of Sydney Observatory (18621930) presenting two different seating arrangements for the equatorial telescope, mounted in the English manner. Source: Photographer unknown. Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, New South Wales, Australia.

An astronomer shown seated at one of the observing chairs employed at the Paris Observatory. Illustration by Lon Bennett in Jules Verne, Lle hlice (Paris: J. Hetzel, 1895), 249.

Maria Mitchell at the Vassar College observatory. A rare nineteenth-century instance of a female astronomer depicted at the observing chair. Photographed by Henry Sherman Wyer in 1878, who printed postcards from it in the early part of the twentieth century. Reproduced with permission from the Division of Medicine and Science, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

Henry Alfred Lenehan (18431908), one of the principal transit observers at his worn-out adjustable chair at the Sydney Observatorys transit circle. For a short period, Lenehan acted as the observatorys director. Source: Photographer unknown. Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, New South Wales, Australia.

Hand-colored wood engraving of Tycho Brahe seated at the center of his observatory Uraniborg on the island of Hven. Source: Tycho Brahe, Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica (Wandesburg, Germany, 1598). Courtesy of SLUB Dresden.

In this lithograph (1852) by T. H. Maguire, the Astronomer Royal, George Airy, is portrayed seated in a studio armchair while holding a telescopes eyepiece. Courtesy of Wellcome Collection.

Assistants at work with the Great Equatorial at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, including one who is illustrated seated at the chair and observing. Source: Leisure Hour 11 (1862): 40.

The Northumberland Equatorial at Cambridge Observatory was designed, along with its iconic chair, by George B. Airy. Source: Detail from an engraving by James Basire in G. B. Airy, Account of the Northumberland Equatoreal and Dome Attached to the Cambridge Observatory (1844), plate XIX, figure 27.

The Troughton 10-foot Transit Instrument displayed with its mechanical chair. Source: Drawn by J. Farey, engraved by T. Bradley, and printed in William Pearson, An Introduction to Practical Astronomy (London, 1829), plate 16.

Plan of the Earl of Seftons country house, Abbeystead, which included zones of the house segregated by gender. Notice the separate staircase leading to a clutch of bachelor bedrooms above. Source: Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978), 298.

Drawing room and parlor chairs. Source: Thomas Sheraton, The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers Drawing-Book: In Three Parts (London, 1793), plate 31.

A number of subspecies of drawing room chairs, differentiated by material, form, function, and nation. Source: Thomas Webster, An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Economy (London, 1844), 247.

Ungraceful Positions, illustrated and explained. Source: T. E. Hill, Hills Manual of Social and Business Forms: A Guide to Correct Writing with Approved Methods in Speaking and Acting in the Various Relations of Life (Chicago, 1888), 148.

Christmas Presents for 1868, lithograph by Honor Daumier. Seated on her throne, Europe hands out weapons to all kinds of foreigners with diminutive stature. Source: Le Charivari, December 23, 1867. Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.

Portrait of a phlegmatic. Source: Gaspard Lavater [Johann Kaspar Lavater], LArt de Connatre les Hommes Par La Physionomie, vol. 8 (Paris, 1807), 143, plate 487.

A man sitting erect in a chair; representing pride as a type of the sentiment of self-esteem, a phrenological faculty. Source: Engraving by Charles Devrits in Hippolyte Bruyres, La phrnologie: le geste et la physionomie (Paris, 1847), plate 48. Courtesy of Wellcome Collection.

A page from the English retailer Maple & Co.s French catalogue, exhibiting seat furniture decked out in Persian patterns. Source: Maple & Co., Catalogue Illustr dAmeublements (London, 1889), 14.

Anonymous British artist, English Interior in India