Astronomical Observatory
Father Joseph Carrier was in France during 1866. Napoleon III,
considering well how Notre Dame might be an outpost of French culture
and power, presented Father Carrier with a fine telescope, over seven
feet long, with a six inch aperture. The South Bend papers said it was
worth 25,000 francs. An observatory was erected in the garden before
the college building. The telescope was mounted on a portable stand
under a revolving roof eighteen feet in diameter.
In 1870 another telescope was procured from Solomons in Dublin. It was
a smaller instrument, a little over four feet long, and mounted on a
tripod. It was kept in the University Parlor. Professor Arthur J.
Stace introduced the young men to astronomy. Not a little of their
time, if we are to judge from the numerous photographs, was spent in
posing alongside the telescope. Such photographs were very welcome to
the parents back home.
-- Notre Dame -- One Hundred Years / by
Arthur J. Hope, C.S.C.
[On September 22, 1877,]
the heavens being propitious, an unusual cavalcade halted at the
college gates. In a four-horse carry-all fifteen or twenty ladies,
members of a South Bend "literary club," had come to peer through the
telescope. With much swishing of skirts, and cacaphony of soprano
voices, they alighted and were decorously conducted to the observatory
by Professor Howard. The professor "operated the instrument and replied
with instructive clarity and commendable patience to the numerous
questions that were showered upon him." We are told that the mysteries
of the heavens were so fascinating, and the night so beautiful that
many of the ladies were loath to leave.
-- Notre Dame -- One Hundred Years / by
Arthur J. Hope, C.S.C.
based on
Notre Dame Scholastic, Volume XI (1877-78), page 75.