Invention Timeline - Sears Cook Walker, American Mathematician Who Built the First Observatory of Importance in the US
b. March 28, 2005 and d. January 30, 1853
American mathematician. He built in 1837 the first observatory of importance in the U.S. On Feb. 2, 1847, four months after the discovery of Neptune, he identified it with a star observed by Lalande, in May, 1795. With Prof. Alexander D. Bache he determined differences of longitude by telegraph (1849), and he introduced the chronograph for recording observations. his parallactic tables (1834) simplified the computations of the phases of an occultation. he published “Periodical Meteors of August and November” (1841); “Researches Relative to the Planet Neptune” (1850); and “Ephemeris of the Planet Neptune for 1848-’52″ (1852).
In your astronomical studies, the Earth on which you dwell will stand forth in space a suspended ball, taking its place as one of the smallest of the planets, and like them, pursuing its appointed path—the arbiter of times and seasons. Beyond our planetary system, now extended, by the discovery of Neptune, to nearly three thousand millions of miles from the sun, and throughout the vast expanse of the universe, the telescope will exhibit to you new suns and systems of worlds, infinite in number and variety, sustaining, doubtless, myriads of living beings, and presenting new spheres for the exercise of divine power and beneficence.
—Science and Art: D. Brewster
