This is an update of a previously unpublished article I wrote eight years ago. It is no coincidence that I chose a father and son theme for a June posting because this month is when Father's Day is celebrated in the United States and Canada. The small blue Roman numerals in brackets are those of the reference Endnotes at the end of the article.
LEWIS SWIFT AND SON
Copyright 2012 RICHARD
TAIBI
Many astronomy
enthusiasts know of Lewis Swift (1820-1913) solely because of his comet discoveries
during the late nineteenth century. However,
he was equally successful in finding hundreds of nebulas, the term used then for
objects that we now know to be immense gas clouds in our galaxy, and also for entire
galaxies beyond our own. In fact, Swift
discovered more of these deep-sky objects than anyone else, except for William
and John Herschel[i].
Scattered through
Swift’s many publications are brief references to his son Edward. Lewis revealed that Edward made his own discoveries
while assisting his father at the telescope.
This article is the history of the Swift father-and-son celestial discovery
team during the years 1884-1895.
The Family’s Background
Edward Doane Swift
(1870-1935) was Lewis’ youngest son, born during Lewis’ second marriage to
Caroline Doane Topping. Edward was almost
two-years-old when the family moved to Rochester, New York in 1872. Lewis hoped that the hardware business he opened
in Marathon, New York, would improve in the larger city near the shore of Lake
Ontario. For the next seven years, 1873-1879,
Lewis continued his searches for comets and found three of them using his four-and-a-half-inch
comet-seeker telescope. Lewis’ successes
brought him world-wide fame and honors from learned institutions and
astronomical societies alike. In 1879 he
was awarded a gold medal from the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna; he
was named a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and was awarded an
honorary Ph.D. by the University of Rochester.
Swift gave
frequent public astronomy lectures and encouraged the people of Rochester to
view the heavenly bodies through his telescope.
Eventually, Swift’s local and international reputation attracted the
attention of Hulburt Harrington Warner (1842-1923), a local patent medicine millionaire. Warner wanted to add to his social stature by
endowing a public observatory. He asked
Swift to join him in this venture by raising money for a sixteen-inch refracting telescope. When Lewis succeeded in raising donations
totaling $12,500 from Rochesterians, Warner offered to house the telescope in a
grand, $100,000 limestone observatory that was to be attached to a large
residence for the Swifts[ii]. The
telescope, observatory and house were all built in 1882. To appreciate the
construction costs, $12,500 in 1882 was worth about $275,000 in 2010 United
States Dollars, and $100,000 was approximately equal to $2,200,000 in 2010[iii].
The observatory with
its sixteen-inch Clark refracting telescope was operational in early 1883, and
by July 9, 1883, Swift had decided to dedicate his research hours to hunting
nebulas[iv]. Lewis and Edward’s teamwork began with the
inauguration of the observatory. It is
only because Lewis Swift was such an excellent self-chronicler that we know
about Edward’s accomplishments. The tale of the two working together at night
during the next twelve years is an appealing account of mutual support and
achievement.
In 1884 Lewis
Swift informed Sidereal Messenger magazine
readers that he had discovered 197 new nebulas.
He added, “seven … were found by my son, a lad of thirteen years of
age[v]." In this way, a proud father informed the
world that Edward was his partner in celestial exploration. All 197 were additions to the nebulas already
found by William and John Herschel and other European astronomers.
Three years later,
Swift reported that the two were still
collaborating. “In this work, occasional assistance has been received from my
son Edward, now a lad of fifteen years, who has discovered twenty-one” of 540
nebulae found at Warner Observatory as of February 1, 1887[vi]. Actually, Swift had begun publishing lists of
nebular discoveries in 1885, in Astronomische
Nachrichten, a journal in which professional astronomers posted their
observations[vii]. In each list, he identified every nebula his
son found by adding the notation, “Edward,” at the end of its description[viii].
H.H. Warner awarded
$200 prizes to American comet discoverers.
But he also bestowed gold medals on astronomers “for scientific
investigation and discovery.” Warner
relied on Lewis Swift’s judgment in making these awards. Paternal pride undoubtedly had a role in the
award of a gold medal to Edward “for discovery of nebula” before he was
seventeen-years-old[ix].
Edward’s credits appeared
in most of his father’s Astronomische Nachrichten
catalogues. Edward discovered his
first nebula on August 8, 1884[x],
and his last find was made October 17, 1891, when he was twenty-years-old[xi]. In all, Edward found forty-seven new nebulas,
almost four percent of the Swifts’ total of 1240 discoveries[xii].
We can get a sense
of the Swifts’ close collaboration in one account Lewis Swift provided to Sidereal Messenger readers in 1888.
Edward, the director’s seventeen
year old son and his only assistant had discovered another (nebula)…near (the
star) Vega…But stranger than these, the young tyro … found one and his father,
a second (near) Epsilon Lyrae, that wonderful double-double (star) which has
been a target for all the great telescopes of the world, and which astronomers
have scanned without suspicion that two undiscovered nebulas were near. (The one) seen by the younger observer was
the fainter of the two, he overlooking the brighter one subsequently captured
by his father[xiii].
California Comets
Lowe Observatory
had a level roof area on which Swift’s comet-seeker could be used, just outside
and adjacent to the sixteen-inch's dome.
Two anecdotes suggest that Swift and his son searched the skies
together, often with one man at the eyepiece of the large Clark refractor and
the other using the comet-seeker nearby.
The first is an account of how Edward found a comet on November 20, 1894.
One evening during the first year
of our joint work on Echo Mountain, my son was at the great glass searching the
west for nebulas, while I was outside the Observatory engaged in
comet-seeking. Finding a suspect in the
southwest, I repaired to the large telescope for better examination of the object
found, but, as it was only a nebula, went again to my quest while he, leaving
the telescope very nearly where I had used it, resumed his work and a few
minutes later whistled for me and together we watched an undoubted comet which
soon showed motion, not only, but also revealed a faint, short tail. This proved to be the long lost DeVico comet
of 1844, lost for fifty-one years…[xv]
On every available occasion I have
made a prolonged and desperate effort to detect this exceedingly faint comet
(Barnard’s comet of 1884) which has eluded observation ever since its discovery
in 1844…On the morning of June 30, I observed, not far from the ephemeritic
place of the comet, a faint, fairly large, nebulous object so cometary in
appearance that I called in my son Edward, who was engaged in comet-seeking
on the roof of the dark room just at hand, who instantly
exclaimed, as he placed his eye to the telescope, ‘It is a beauty’…
(However, after) watching it for a
half hour no motion was observed…Upon mature reflection it seemed that this
body might, after all, be a comet, and, if so, undoubtedly Barnard’s. The morning of July 3rd found both
my son and myself on hand and eager to know if the suspect still held its
former place, but ere that region rose above the mountain a dense fog had
enveloped us. The next morning, that of
July 4th, the sky was beautifully clear, however, and the
sixteen-inch telescope showed the triangle and the double star as we had
previously seen them but the object was gone[xvi].
The Partnership Ends
…I saw to my astonishment a
beautiful comet instead of the expected nebula.
A single glance assured me of its cometary character which its motion
after a time confirmed.
But then a
discordant note occurred in Swift’s account.
Whereas all of the previous mentions about Edward had revealed the young
man to be near his father’s side, this occasion was different.
(The comet’s) announcement was
delayed for several hours because of the absence of my son, Edward D., the
assistant astronomer, and the only telegrapher on the mountain, who had gone on
his annual vacation. No telegram was
possible until the electric car could convey me to Altadena ,
the nearest telegraph office, at 8 a.m.[xvii]
Regardless of this
speculation, father and son were forced by circumstances to face the changes
that life brings. A sad one was Caroline’s
death in March 1897. For another, Lewis’
vision began to fail at age 80, in 1900. Even if Lewis’ “good eye” had not
failed him, Lowe’s financial collapse sealed the observatory’s fate. Swift’s astronomical career was at an end[xix]. Lewis’ only major material asset was the
Clark telescope and he needed to sell it to finance his retirement. The sale of the telescope meant that Edward
needed to find other means to continue astronomical pursuits or find another
career.
In 1901, the
astronomical world was notified that Lewis had “…disposed of his astronomical
equipment to the Pasadena Marathon , New York Marathon ’s history.
It contained a complete list of Lewis’ astronomical honors.
It served as curriculum vitae for his father and served to update
Marathoners about his father’s accomplishments.
Edward wrote that his father, “… has left behind him a starry,
imperishable monument which will shine for untold ages to come[xxi]." After seeing Halley’s Comet for the second time
in his life in 1910, Lewis Swift died in
1913.
Edward’s participation
in astronomy appears to have ended in 1895. Despite the fact that Lewis
entrusted his observation log to Edward[xxii],
there is no evidence that it prompted Edward to resume astronomical work even
as a hobby. After the California years,
he moved to Buffalo, New York, which was then a thriving commercial center. Local historical records indicate that he
began a career with the Equitable Life Assurance Society of New York. Edward began as a cashier and ultimately became
assistant manager of the company’s Buffalo office. He married in 1903[xxiii]
and died three months after his wife’s death in 1935[xxiv].
Copyright 2012 Richard Taibi
ENDNOTES
[i] Peter T.
Wlasuk, “‘So much for fame!’: The story of Lewis Swift”, Quarterly journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, xxxvii (1996),
683-707, p. 683.
[ii] Ralph
Bates and Blake McKelvey, “Lewis Swift, the Rochester
[iii] Source:
Economic History Association’s EH.net calculator feature: How Much is that?
/Measuring worth:
http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/relativevalue.php. The cited equivalence is from the ‘Commodity’
calculator for ‘real price.’ EH.net
defines ‘real price’ as a measure using the relative cost of a (fixed over
time) bundle of goods and services such as food, shelter, clothing, etc., that
an average household would buy. This
bundle does not change over time. It
uses the Consumer Price Index.”. The URL was accessed June 4, 2012.
[iv] Lewis
Swift, History and work of the Warner
Observatory (Rochester, New York, 1887), 5.
[v] Lewis
Swift, “The nebulae”, Sidereal Messenger,
iv (1884), 1-4, p. 3. Note that 'nebulae' has the same meaning as 'nebulas.'
[vi] Swift, op.cit. (ref.iv), Addenda and p. 5.
[vii] Lewis
Swift, “Catalogue No. 1 of nebulae discovered at Warner observatory”, Astronomische Nachrichten, cxii (1885),
2683.
[viii]Ibid.,and Swift, op.cit.
(ref. iv), 5.
[x] Swift, op.cit. (ref. iv).
[xi] Lewis Swift, “Catalogue No. 10 of nebulae discovered at Warner Observatory”, Astronomische Nachrichten, cxxix (1892), 3094.
[xii] Lewis
Swift, “Ups and downs, and here and there of an astronomer”, Popular Astronomy, ix (1901), 476-9, pp.
478-9.
[xiv] Wlasuk, op.cit. (ref. i), pp. 699-700.
[xv] Lewis Swift, “Accident comets”, Popular Astronomy, iv (1896-7), 138-141, p. 140.
[xvi] Lewis
Swift, “Probable observation of Barnard’s comet of 1844”, Popular Astronomy, iii (1895-6), 17-19, pp.17-18.
[xviii] Lewis Swift, “Catalogue no. 11 of nebulae”, Astronomische Nachrichten, cxlvii (1898), 3517; and Lewis Swift, “List No. 12 of nebulae discovered at Lowe Observatory, Echo Mountain, California, for 1900.0”, Popular Astronomy, viii (1899), 568-9.
[xix] Swift, op.cit., (ref. xi), 479.
[xx] William W. Payne, editor, Popular Astronomy, ix (1901), 224.
[xxi] Edward D. Swift, “Lewis Swift, Ph.D., F.R.A.S.”, “Grip’s” historical souvenir of
[xxii] Lewis
Swift, “Remarkable nebulae”, Popular
Astronomy, x (1902), 160.
[xxiii] 1910
Census of the United States ,
New York , Erie County
[xxiv] Irene
Marks Rupp to Richard Taibi, 1 September 2000 and 19 March 2001, a letter in the
author’s archives. Ms. Rupp is a
genealogical researcher living in a suburb of Buffalo , New York
Copyright 2012 Richard Taibi
June 4, 2012
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