History of Thetford Center, (Orange County) Vermont United States of America

Our database does not include an historic photo for Thetford Center, (Orange County) Vermont, do you have one you would like to contribute? Contact Us!

Sherburne Wesley Burnham, astronomer, was born at Thetford, Vt., in 1840. He was educated at Thetford academy, adopted stenography as a profession, and during the civil war was with the army at New Orleans as shorthand reporter. At a book auction there he chanced to buy Burritt's Geography of the Heavens, and, becoming interested in the charts, the next clear night he traced out the constellations and principal stars in the heavens. This served to heighten the fascination of the study, and he purchased a cheap telescope, which he used until he exchanged it for a larger instrument. At the close of the war he removed to Chicago, where for many years he acted as court stenographer. On reading Webb's Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes, he determined to devote all his leisure time to astronomical investigations. When Alvan Clark & Sons of Cambridge, Mass., set up the great telescope in the Dearborn observatory in the University of Chicago, Burnham ordered from them a telescope with a six-inch object glass, costing eight hundred dollars. For an observatory he erected a large piece of timber in his back yard, around which he built what his friends called a "cheese box," surmounted by a dome, which could be easily turned. It was here that he made his first discoveries of double stars. Every clear night be spent in his "cheese box," leaving it only when the dawn sent the stars from his vision. He found his progress somewhat impeded by his lack of measuring instruments, but he overcame this difficulty by sending a list of his discoveries to Baron Dembowski, then the greatest living star measurer. These stars the baron took pleasure in verifying and measuring, and this resulted in a friendly correspondence, which lasted until the baron's death in 1881. Soon after this Mr. Webb began a correspondence with the American astronomer, resulting in his election as a fellow of the Royal astronomical society, his work creating great excitement among European astronomers. In March, 1873, his first catalogue, comprising eighty-one newly discovered double stars, was published in England, and at intervals he published four more catalogues, making three hundred new double stars, all close and difficult, discovered and catalogued in less than two years by an amateur astronomer, who worked with a six-inch telescope. This was more than all the observations of the previous twenty years had contributed to this part of astronomy. Mr. Burnham was corresponding with many of the leading astronomers of Europe, and when M. Angot came to the United States to visit the principal American observatories, he was amazed to find the crudity of the working place of Burnham. Later, however, he was given access to the great 18 1/2 inch telescope at the Dearborn observatory, and he became as great an expert in the measurement of double stars as Baron Dembowski. He was dissatisfied with the micrometer in general use, and invented one which was afterwards almost universally adopted. He had for four years been a regular contributor to many prominent European journals, and had published nine catalogues, embracing nearly five hundred of his new double stars, when it was proposed that he be permitted to use the telescope in the Dearborn university, and then the president of the Chicago astronomical society asked, "Who is Mr. Burnham?" He kept persistently on with his work, and achieved enviable fame in the world of science; he discovered and measured more than one thousand double stars. In 1879 he was recommended by Prof. Simon Newcomb, and employed by the trustees of the Lick observatory to test the atmospheric and other conditions of Mount Hamilton, the proposed site of the observatory. He received a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society, London, in 1894, and became an associate of that society in 1898. He was professor of practical astronomy at the University of Chicago and published a general catalogue of stars discovered by him, which was issued in volume I of the publications of Yerkes Observatory, 1900.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Thetford Center, (Orange County) Vermont

Biographies: