Richard A. Proctor

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Percival Lowell, Viewing Venusians (1914)

September 15, 2013 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Photography, Science/Tech | Permalink

Astronomer Percival Lowell did some brilliant work in analyzing our solar system, but he took a wrong turn at Mars. In this classic 1914 photo, Lowell is examining Venus, but it was the Red Planet that burned him. At his Flagstaff Observatory, he “discovered” canals in Mars’ surface, which he felt must have been man-made–or at least Martian-made. These beliefs did not raise his stock in the scientific community. The opening of “Martians Build Two Canals in Two Years,” an article by Mary Proctor, daughter of early Mars mapper Richard A. Proctor, in the August 27, 1911 New York Times:

“According to a telegram dated Aug. 17, from Flagstaff Observatory, Arizona, Dr. Percival Lowell announces the rediscovery of two new canals of Mars, which were seen for the first time at the last opposition in 1909. The canals are now very conspicuous, and attracting world-wide attention because of their startling significance. 

Measurement of their dimensions shows each of them to be a thousand miles long and some twenty miles wide. In comparison, the canon of the Colorado River would be a secondary affair. What has been the cause of these vast chasms which have suddenly opened on Mars, where the internal forces are far less than could be possibly be the case with our planet? Nothing like it has ever been seen or heard of before. To witness the coming into existence on another world of a surface feature in what we know to be no airy cloud-built fabric, but the solidest of ground, is in its character an event so far of unique occurrence.

That these vast chasms have been caused by some internal disturbance is out of the question, for shattering of the sort would certainly have left its mark in yawning, cavernous abysses–such as are on our own planet in regions where volcanic disturbances have taken place. In the case of the new canals recently observed on Mars, such widespread, shattering effects are altogether absent, and as Dr. Lowell expresses it: ‘The outcome is purely local, and of most orderly self-restraint at that. An enormous change in the planet’s features has taken place, with no concomitant disruption beyond the bounds it set. The whole thing is wonderfully clear-cut.’

That the new canals were not a mere illusion or vagary of the imagination is proven by the fact that they are again visible, but they are as great a problem now as they were when first seen in 1909. Canals a thousand miles long and twenty miles wide are simply beyond our comprehension. Even though we are aware of the fact that, owing to the mass of the planet being a little less than one-ninth of the earth’s mass, a rock which here weighs one hundred pounds would there only weigh thirty-eight pounds, engineering operations being in consequence less arduous than here, yet we can scarcely imagine the inhabitants of Mars capable of accomplishing this Herculean task within the short interval of two years.”

Lowell’s sketches of the so-called Martian canals.

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Old Print Article: “Richard A. Proctor Dead,” New York Times (1888)

January 16, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"The malady as diagnosed followed the typical course of languor and malaise, rapid prostration, remission, recurrence, collapse and insensibility, convulsion, black vomit, and death."

The 19th-century British astronomer Richard A. Proctor produced one of the first maps of Mars, but he was cut down in America at age 51 by the scourge of yellow fever. An excerpt from a report of his final hours in the September 13, 1888 New York Times:

“Prof. Richard A. Proctor, astronomer, lecturer, and author, died last night at the Willard Parker Hospital, Sixteenth-street and the East River, where he was quarantined as a yellow fever patient from Florida. He was prostrated in Room 88 at the Westminster Hotel Tuesday morning, and the malady as diagnosed followed the typical course of languor and malaise, rapid prostration, remission, recurrence, collapse and insensibility, convulsion, black vomit, and death. Prof. Proctor was at the time of the the attack suffering from cardiac uraemic troubles, and for some time it was suspected that a violent pilous attack aggravated and accelerated these affections, but the diagnoses of experts were apparently confirmed in his last moments, when the characteristic ejecta were noticed.

Proctor's map of Mars.

The Professor has a country seat and observatory at Oak Lawn, Marion County, Fla. He left there on Saturday, intending to sail for Europe on the 15th, and he was one of the first guests to register at the Hotel Westminster on Monday morning. He came here by rail and his family remained at Oak Lawn. He appeared fatigued and languid after he had taken a bath, but he was alert and bustling during the afternoon and evening. Tuesday morning he told a bell boy that he was ailing and asked for lemonade and a word with Boniface W.G. Schenck. Mr. Schenck admits that when he learned the Professor was not well he decided on ascertaining exactly what was the matter with him, because he came from Florida, so when he hailed him in the corridor outside his room in his customary hearty fashion he scanned him closely. The Professor, who looked like a very sick man, repeated his request for lemonade.

‘Better put a ‘stick’ in it, Professor,’ suggested Mr. Schenck, and the result was that the invalid drank a goblet of whisky  and lemonade.

Then Mr. Schenck had a chat with his guest, and it prompted him to suggest that a physician be sent for. Prof. Proctor did not appear to consider that his condition warranted it, but he permitted Mr. Schenck to summon Dr. George S. Conant, who was once a diagnostician in the division of contagious diseases. After seeing his patient Dr. Conant visited Mr. Schenck and told him that the Professor was going to be a very sick man. He could not, he said, say what he believed was the matter with him, but his diagnosis warranted him in suggesting that an officer of the Board Of Health he called in consultation, and Dr. Cyrus Edson, Chief Inspector of Contagious Diseases, was summoned. He made up his mind in a few minutes, and told Mr. Schenck that it was extremely probable that the Professor would be dead in 10 or 12 hours of yellow fever, and suggested that his family be notified.”

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