History – Page 2 – Space and Time. Stories from the Neuchâtel Observatory

To determine Swiss time the Neuchâtel Observatory observed the passage of the stars above the meridian using a telescope. To make sure that the telescope was correctly adjusted, it was required to scan the north-south axis and identify two marks serving as reference points. These marks still exist today. The southern mark in Portalban has a direct link to swisstopo since it was integrated into the national survey network.

Sighting mark in Portalban (left), sighting mark in Chaumont (right)

What is a meridian sighting mark?

It is a stone construction which had to be visible with the meridian telescope. In order to enable the Neuchâtel Observatory to cover the north-south axis and thus determine the time at which the stars pass over the meridian, two telescopes had to be built. One to the north and the other to the south. If the telescope did not detect these marks, they had to be readjusted.

In 1959, the lack of precision of the meridian telescope and the arrival of atomic clocks sounded the death knell for the use of sighting marks. However, they are now part of the heritage of the Neuchâtel Observatory and swisstopo.

Where are these marks?

The Observatory of Neuchâtel had three sighting marks built. The closest was on the Mail hill, 80 meters from the Observatory. It no longer exists today. The northern sighting mark was erected in Chaumont, 3 kilometres from the Observatory. The third was built in Portalban, on the shores of Lake Neuchâtel, 9.5 kilometres south of the Observatory. Like the mark in Chaumont, the Portalban sighting mark still exists

The southern sighting mark in Portalban

The first mark in Portalban was rather crude. Indeed, in 1861, the Observatory had a black diamond painted on a rock on a white background. The second version of the mark was also created in 1861 and consisted of an obelisk 3.10 meters high. A white diamond surrounded by black was also painted on the stone structure.

The link between the Portalban sighting mark and swisstopo

In 1927, the Portalban sighting mark was integrated as a first-order fixed triangulation point and as a third-order triangulation point by the Federal Topographic Service (swisstopo). This fixed point was therefore measured precisely, and its coordinates are well known. As a result, the point is protected by federal law and cannot be dismantled. In 1886, a levelling pin was sealed on the sighting mark. swisstopo is responsible for its inspection and renovation. And its condition is checked every 12 years.

September 30, 2020October 1, 2020

Portalban, in the line of sight of the Neuchâtel Observatory

The association “EspaceTemps”, which wants to safeguard the scientific heritage of the former Neuchâtel Observatory, inaugurated the renovated Portalban calibration sight this afternoon. For the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo, it is a 1st category marker of the national triangulation, for drawing up the map of the country. But let’s go back to 1861, when this calibration sight had another function…

Report on the television channel CanalAlpha (in French)

Calibration sight of Portalban to calibrate the meridian telescope of the Neuchâtel Observatory. It was renovated during the year 2020 by the EspaceTemps Association.

September 24, 2020September 24, 2020

Introduction Central European Time in Switzerland

In the 19th century, every town in Switzerland had a different time!
Article in L’Illustré, “Le changement d’heure, quelle histoire!”, October 2018

Graphic published in a supplement to the “Berner Tagblatt” on 3 June 1894 about the introduction of Central European Time (Mitteleuropäische Zeit, M.E.Z.) in Switzerland two days earlier. While the watch in the centre is at noon… © Berner Heim/Swiss National Library

There was a time when there was, for example, a difference of 1 minute and 57 seconds between Geneva and Lausanne, 3 minutes and 8 seconds with Neuchâtel, 4 minutes and 1 second with Fribourg and 4 minutes and 50 seconds with Sion. As Jakob Messerli, Director of the Museum of History in Berne, writes in an article on time measurement, “In the mid-19th century, mechanical clocks were still set throughout the country according to sundials. The creation of the federal state in 1848 did not lead to any unification of time measurement systems and each Swiss locality continued to have its own time. With a difference of 18 minutes between the extreme points of the territory, from east (Val Müstair) to west (canton of Geneva)”. It was the installation of the telegraph network in 1852 that sounded the death knell for the coexistence of different times in the territory. The acceleration of communications required a unified system. In 1853, the Federal Council adopted the Berne mean time for all postal and telegraphic traffic. From 1860 onwards, this time was set daily by the Neuchâtel Observatory. In the second half of the 19th century, the railways also aligned themselves with Berne time, which became the national standard and Berne, the time capital of the country, in the second half of the 19th century. Yes, we were living on Berne time without always suspecting it. And for those who were indifferent to the clock stories, we can still hold on to the timeless Latin saying: “If you want to put a price on days, don’t count the hours!”.

September 15, 2020September 15, 2020

Mark Twain, giant Sequoia

When “Mark Twain” was cut down in 1891, the giant Sequoia was 1,341 years old and measured 331 ft (100.9 m) high and 90 ft (27.4 m) in circumference at the base. Today a stump is all that remains of the once thriving tree that might have survived another thousand years. A cross section is on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; the curator at the time marked on its annual rings selected events of human history.

Photo Credit: Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia and Fact Index (1947)

September 8, 2020September 10, 2020

The Dangerous Game of Precision Timekeeping

From sundials and time balls to the six pips and smartphones, David Rooney charts the human quest to be bang on the dot of time.

Article on Vanity Fair by David Rooney

The bestselling author Marie Corelli, inspiration for the eccentric Lucia in E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels, refused to change her clocks after the UK’s Summer Time Act was passed in 1916. She described people who went along with the practice of advancing time in summer months as “the sheep of humanity”. Instead, she believed in the sun and sailors. In Mapp and Lucia’s town of Tilling, real time was God’s time, and not to be trifled with.

But Corelli was wrong to hold that Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was any truer than its hour-offset sibling. It is often claimed that the development of railways across the U.K. from the 1830s onwards led to the standardisation of time—to the use of GMT across the whole country, rather than the myriad local times kept by sundials on churches and public buildings in each town or village. It is true that railways ran better with one single time on their timetables. But local time clung on longer than we might assume. It was not until 1880 that a law was passed defining GMT as the U.K.’s standard, and in the end it was more about the Victorian temperance movement demanding liquor licensing with time restrictions than it ever was about railway timetables.
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June 2, 2020

Chronophotography

The chronophotography is a set of stop-action photographs of rapidly moving things in order to study and measure the motion. Pioneers of this technique included artist Eadward Muybridge (1830-1904) and scientist Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904).

Marey-wheel photographs of unidentified model with Eadweard Muybridge notation.
Thomas Eakins, Motion Studies, Philadelphia, 1884
The Library Company of Philadelphia

May 25, 2020

Memento mori

Memento mori means “remember that you are going to die” and is a formula of medieval Christianity. Expressing the vanity of earthly life, it refers to the “art of dying”, or Ars moriendi. It induces an ethic of detachment and asceticism. It is close to another Latin locution: “Sic transit gloria mundi” (“Thus passes the glory of the world”).

Its origin dates back to Greco-Roman antiquity, when a slave stood beside a victorious general during his triumph (parade) to remind him of his mortal condition. The phrase “Hominem te esse” (“You too are only a man”) was also used.

This vision of the human condition gave rise to many artistic representations.

Antonio de Pereda y Salgado (1611-1678)
Allegory of vanity, 1634,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Vanity still life, Anonymous, 17th century

Vanity, or Allegory of Human Life – Philippe de Champaigne, 1644

May 2, 2020

A brief history of art, from the Renaissance to the 20th century

How can you tell Leonardo da Vinci from Michelangelo?
A Monet from a Manet? A Picasso from a Braque?
And this sculpture, should it be attributed to Bernini or Rodin?
To answer these questions and many others, Orange and the Rmn-Grand Palais have once again joined forces to propose a MOOC in 5 sequences.
The MOOC A brief history of art gives the keys to understanding works from the 16th to the 20th century, and solid tutorials to learn how to read a painting, a sculpture or even a monument. All this in a playful and practical form.
It will allow everyone to refresh their knowledge and rediscover the masterpieces of our artistic heritage. It can also be a solid base for all pupils and students preparing their art history exams.

Interesting project to see how to popularize art history to the public. The trailer is very successful with these photo montages!

April 25, 2020

Jules Verne

From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 20 Minutes is an 1865 novel by Jules Verne. It tells the story of the Baltimore Gun Club, a post-American Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, and their attempts to build an enormous Columbiad space gun and launch three people—the Gun Club’s president, his Philadelphian armor-making rival, and a French poet—in a projectile with the goal of a Moon landing. Five years later, Verne wrote a sequel called Around the Moon.
The story is also notable in that Verne attempted to do some rough calculations as to the requirements for the cannon and in that, considering the comparative lack of empirical data on the subject at the time, some of his figures are remarkably accurate. However, his scenario turned out to be impractical for safe manned space travel since a much longer barrel would have been required to reach escape velocity while limiting acceleration to survivable limits for the passengers.
The character of Michel Ardan, the French member of the party in the novel, was inspired by the real-life photographer Félix Nadar.

An episode in the series “The extraordinary travels of Jules Verne” which was inspired by the novel From the Earth to the Moon, published in 1865. Source: leblob.fr

April 25, 2020

Georges Méliès

Article on Vox

Georges Méliès, 8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938), was a French illusionist and film director who led many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Méliès was well-known for the use of special effects, popularizing such techniques as substitution splices, multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted colour. He was also one of the first filmmakers to use storyboards. His films include A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904), both involving strange, surreal journeys somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films, though their approach is closer to fantasy.