| Sir Robert Ball Lecturer |
| Let me take you back to the last decade of the 19th Century; Cambridge was one of the main centres for astronomical research at the time, and up at the Observatory the leading figure was John Couch Adams.
He had been in residence in Cambridge since the late 30’s,...... graduating with distinction in 1843, ......predicting the position of Neptune in 1845 ( OK correction—jointly predicting ).......and becoming Lowndean professor in 1858, following in the footsteps of Roger Long and John Smith. This was a position he held until his death in 1892, which left the Lowndean chair vacant. Over in Ireland, at Dunsink, was another Observatory director. He was Sir Robert Ball, and had held the position and the title Astronomer Royal for Ireland for 18 years. He was 52 years of age and had a growing family to support.... His salary in Ireland was not great and he believed he could do better. The vacancy at Cambridge was his chance to advance his career and his status in the scientific world...... He applied for the vacant chair .... He was successful and in a letter to his mother pointed out that it was ….. “ the highest scientific chair in England, if not in Europe, the Solar System, no … the Milky Way, indeed the highest in the whole Universe.” One might have expected great things from Sir Robert following his arrival here. No doubt much scientific work was done at Cambridge during Ball’s tenure, but very little has been written about his involvement in any major discoveries. Ball was by this time already a successful author and lecturer. His duties as Lowndean Professor required him to be on campus for only five months of the year, and much of that time would have been taken up in tutoring. So he had plenty of spare time to follow other, more lucrative pursuits. But how did he get started on the climb to this highest of scientific chairs? Let me take you back … 30 years and more …. to Ireland …… and the autumn of 1859. The members of the Dublin Philosophical Society were assembled for their monthly meeting. Who would have guessed that the young undergraduate about to give his very first talk to the students of Dublin’s Trinity College, would go on to become one of the Victorian era’s greatest lecturers? The subject that evening was “The Gulf Stream”, and the lecturer was the 19 year old Robert Ball. He must have impressed his audience as a year later his fellow students elected him President of the Society. It was to be another 10 years, however, before he would give his first lecture to a paying audience. This was at the Athenaeum in Belfast on 4th February 1869, and was entitled “Some Recent Astronomical Discoveries” He made the grand sum of 14 shillings; he was offered more, but declined, saying he was happy just to recoup his expenses. In later years, as we shall discover, he was not nearly so generous. Prior to this he’d had ample opportunity to hone his presentation skills. He was a member of the Dublin Literary Society, the Trinity College Dining Club, and the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland where his father had been secretary. He was invariably called upon to address the meetings. In addition he was a frequent guest of William Stokes, the eminent surgeon, of stethoscope fame, whose residence at 5 Merrion Square Dublin was described as the centre of all the wit and learning that Ireland possessed. Ball was to meet many influential people at these dinner parties, which always concluded with elaborate charades in which all the guests participated. A few weeks after his Belfast lecture, he was invited to talk to the Royal Dublin Society at their afternoon lectures. He drew on his experiences at Birr Castle, where he had been tutor to the sons of Lord Rosse. He expounded on “Nebulae” as seen through the 72” Leviathan of Parsonstown. He illustrated the talk by showing his audience an enlarged copy of the magnificent engraving of the Orion Nebula, which Lord Rosse had painstakingly drawn over many years. Lord Rosse was so proud of this work that he had it permanently engraved by James Basire, and sent copies to observatories around the world. There is a fine framed copy in Burlington House; sadly it no longer adorns the walls; like so many other objects from the past, it rests quietly in the RAS archives. Ball enlightened his audience by telling them that the nebulae were so far away that if one were to be immediately struck from existence by an omnipotent force, posterity for many generations thereafter might still observe, measure and draw the object long after it had ceased to exist! Ball left Birr Castle in 1867 to take up a new position at Dublin’s Royal College of Science as Professor of Applied Mathematics and Mechanism. He was soon to come across a book by the Reverend Robert Willis, a Professor of Mechanics at Cambridge, called “A System of Apparatus for the use of Lecturers and Experimenters in Natural Philosophy”. Ball made good use of the book and the Willis apparatus in his lectures to students on Experimental Mechanics; little realising that it would later set him on the path to his true vocation. Ball’s first venture into book publishing came as a result of the Willis apparatus. Macmillan & Co. agreed to publish a book based on the experiments, and although not a best seller, it prompted several enquiries, the most important of which came from the Midland Institute in Birmingham. This enquiry in the summer of 1874, included a request for him to lecture on mechanics, but it came at a time when Robert Ball was making a career change. He had been appointed Andrews Professor of Astronomy at Dublin University. The chair carried with it the position of Astronomer Royal for Ireland. Ball was the 4th incumbent after Brinkley, Hamilton and Dr Brunnow. He felt a little awkward lecturing on mechanics at a time when he had decided to devote his time and energy to astronomy. Not easily dissuaded, Mr Cresswell, the BMI director in charge of the lecture department, suggested to Robert that he should spend a week in Birmingham, give two lectures on Astronomy and between times, teach the staff at the Institute all he could about the Willis apparatus. Ball agreed, and that was how he started as a public lecturer on astronomy. It was 1874 and the subject of his first lecture was the great astronomical event of that year, the Transit of Venus. He prepared many diagrams and slides, including one showing how the Earth revolves eight times to Venus’s thirteen. He quoted the work of Halley, gave details of the great expedition of Captain Cook to the South Seas, and explained why the next series of transits would not occur until the beginning of the next millennium; To quote him exactly “until the flowers are blooming in the June of 2004” Ball was looking ahead more than 100 years, and here we are today, only a little more than a fortnight away from the momentous event. Let us hope for clear skies. His concluding lecture at the Institute that week was “A Night at Lord Rosse’s Telescope”. Never one for resting on his laurels, he also visited and lectured at Hanley to the Potteries Mechanic’s Institute, and at Gloucester, before returning to Dunsink. Thus ended the first of his lecture tours. He was to become a regular visitor to the Midlands and to the BMI in particular. He had the honour of giving the inaugural lecture at their new hall when it opened on 24th October 1881. The lecture was called “A Glimpse through the Corridors of Time”. This lecture was a resounding success. It was immediately put into print and published in 2 parts in Nature, who sold out both editions on the strength of it. It was also published in pamphlet form by Macmillan (1882), and generated a fair amount of correspondence for Ball, as some of his statements about the “time and tides” controversy met with disagreement. Ball was talking about a time when “the earth spun round in a few hours and the moon was quite close to it; it is not difficult to imagine” he said “how the earth and moon were originally one body” One of his close friends, Sir George Darwin did not entirely agree with him, though Professor George Minchin, the famous geologist, said “I cannot refrain from calling your Birmingham lecture a singularly beautiful and instructive one ………. The whole story is the most wonderful imaginable”. In 1891 Robert Ball was elected President of the Midland Institute, and the subject of his presidential address was spectroscopy and entitled “The Movement of the Stars”. He enthralled his audience with the very latest advances in the subject, ending his address with the very apt phrase … “Let there be Light”. It was in 1880 that he began a fruitful relationship with the Gilchrist Educational Trust, a charitable body, part of whose remit was to provide lectures throughout the British Isles, particularly in small towns and villages. The lectures were always science based, and the previous lectures on astronomy were given by Richard Proctor. In late 1879 Ball was approached by the Trust who told him that Proctor was about to embark on a world lecturing tour, which would keep him abroad for two or three years. Eventually Proctor settled in the United States, where he pursued his career in Astronomy and also published the very successful Knowledge magazine. Robert Ball agreed to take his place and his first Gilchrist tour took him to Lancashire and Yorkshire, to the towns of Rochdale, Accrington, Huddersfield, Preston and Bury. In Rochdale, the first town on the circuit, he was met by his host for the day, Mr John Petrie, the Mayor of Rochdale and lecture chairman. He lived outside the town in Castleton and Ball was his guest for the night. Petrie was also a magistrate and cotton manufacturer employing over 300 men. The Gilchrist lecture tours suited Ball as he was able to leave the organizing to the Trust. All he had to do was turn up at the venue some twenty minutes before the start, to set up his slides etc. He almost always lectured to packed houses; Gilchrist would arrange 800-seat venues wherever possible. Not surprisingly, many people would have to be turned away. The Gilchrist Lectures were designed for the working classes, and in the early years, local dignitaries worried that they would be poorly attended. Ball recounted that on his first visit to Blackburn, the Mayor was very concerned that there would be a poor turnout. To make matters worse, it was raining heavily. Ball, in his easy-going Irish manner, tried to cheer up his host, but to no avail. On reaching the hall, in the torrential rain, not a soul was to be seen, with the exception of two policemen standing in the doorway. The Mayor became desperate and exclaimed “I knew it would be so; the thing is a total failure!” He asked one of the policeman “Is there anyone inside?”; the constable replied “The place is packed, and we had to turn away two hundred half an hour ago. Sometime later, Ball was to remark that in Chipping Camden he lectured to 500 people, which represented 1/8th of the town’s population. Quite an achievement. Tickets for Ball’s lectures were snapped up well in advance, and there were fabulous stories of ticket touts selling them at many times their face value. This was invariably the case, with Ball getting caught up in the crowds on several occasions. On 7th January 1890 he arrived at the Free Church in St John’s Street, Goole, to find that there was a huge crowd waiting outside, and many people walking away looking downcast. A passer-by told him it was no use trying to get in as it was a sell-out. Ball eventually got to a side door where they were still letting people squeeze in. When he tried to gain entry, the doorman asked him for his penny. Ball told him he was the lecturer, to which the doorman replied “Go on, I’ve heard that one before!” He eventually got in, and lectured to the audience on “Other Worlds”. During his talk, he discussed observatories and mentioned that as his train approached the town he had noticed a very tall building near the station and thought to himself “what a splendid observatory they must have here” Of course everyone, including Ball, knew it was the water tower; nevertheless it greatly amused the audience. In trying to convey to the audience the distance of the nearest star, he alluded to Henry Wilson, the chairman, who was manager of the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway. Ball suggested that if he were ever to extend the railway to Alpha Centauri, he recommended that the fare should be calculated at 100 miles per penny. How much would this immense journey cost? Take to the booking office 5000 carts each carrying a ton of sovereigns, £700,000,000, an amount then equal to the National Debt. Would they get any change? They would have to expect a long wait whilst the clerk counted the money and not be too surprised when they were asked for another £103 million before getting the ticket. In the audience were a lot of noisy children. The chairman announced that in future children under 14 would not be admitted. Whilst in Goole he met Fielden Sutcliffe, an old Trinity college friend and he had an interesting tour of the docks, where Sutcliffe was chief engineer, and saw how the coal was brought down in barges and then hoisted bodily out of the water to be unloaded onto waiting ships. Ball took a keen interest in all that was going on around him, and on several occasions descended into the depths of the earth to see the workings at the coalface. These first hand experiences helped illuminate many of his lectures. A visit to Bristol, for example, could not go by without watching the tide come in from a vantage point on the Clifton suspension bridge. A spectacle he used to illustrate his Time and Tide lectures. As we shall see later, Ball’s lectures were well planned affairs, but occasionally a mishap would occur. He often toured with two lectures, alternating between towns, but taking with him the necessary slides for both. On reaching the end of a tour in the North, he lent a box of slides to a friend, thinking he had no further use for them. On arrival at Leeds railway station in the late afternoon, he found the town placarded with the announcement that he was to lecture on “Krakatoa”. These were the very slides he had loaned to his friend. His remaining slides were for his “Moon” lecture, not altogether appropriate for the advertised event. He consulted with the secretary of the Institution and decided that Krakatoa was what was expected and he would make do with what he had. He asked if a terrestrial globe could be obtained, and a very large one was found in the basement. Unfortunately it had scarcely reached ground level, when it fell with a loud crash, back into the basement, breaking in two. Ball however used this incident to good effect as he told his audience that the globe, like Krakatoa, had suffered the effects of an unforeseen local earthquake. His lecture tours were also opportunities for Ball to satisfy his own enquiring mind and quest for knowledge. Not for him the dingy hotel rooms of provincial towns. He much preferred to stay at the home of some local dignitary, where he could be assured of good food and company. Following his first BMI lecture he stayed with Follett Osler at 86 Harborne Road in Birmingham. Osler was the famous glass manufacturer, whose Crystal Fountain was the centrepiece of the Great Exhibition in 1851. Later that week he moved round the corner into Augustus Road, where he was the guest of Osler’s close friend, Alfred Elkington,. His Newhall Street factory in Birmingham employed 800 men, and produced all types of electro-plated wares. In the 1950s the factory became the main building for the Museum of Science and Industry. Another Birmingham friend with whom he stayed in later years was Dr Lawson Tait, the eminent surgeon and gynaecologist who once performed a series of 116 operations without a single fatality. For one whose purpose in life was to keep people alive, he had a morbid interest in the Whitechapel murders, and one wonders what Sir Robert thought of his Jack the Ripper theories. Birmingham was not his only port of call in the Midlands. He lectured in most of the areas towns, particularly Wolverhampton, West Bromwich and Walsall. He would often stay at Old Fallings Hall, just outside Wolverhampton. It was the home of his sister, Amelia Charlotte following her marriage to William Millington MD, a prominent local physician. He gave many lectures around Birmingham over the years; one evening he might be found giving the Presidential address to the 50 members of the exclusive Vesey Club in Sutton Coldfield, whilst the next he would be in Walsall with an audience of 1100 working men. Whilst Robert Ball had an encyclopaedic memory for all things scientific and astronomical, he often struggled to recall people, events and places, especially those on his lecture tours. He would frequently be greeted by someone who would say,”I’m afraid you don’t remember me, but you stayed with us on a lecture tour a few years ago.” He often had to admit that he had no recollection of the visit. However, he always wanted it to be remembered that he retained the most grateful and pleasant recollections of the unstinted hospitality shown to him. Naturally he remembered those notables who were always in the public eye, like the Marquis of Ripon; he stayed with him on a number of occasions, at a time when the Marquis was Grandmaster of the Freemasons. In St Helens he would stay with the Pilkingtons, and was fascinated by his tour of their glassworks. No doubt he would also have visited Chance Brothers whilst in Birmingham, though I have yet to find evidence of this. His interest in glass was not just astronomical; for many years he was scientific advisor to the Irish Lights Board, and of course Chance were the main supplier of the optical systems for lighthouses around the world. I should mention here that Sir Robert was a very keen and able photographer, and liked to show off his slides to appreciative audiences, particularly when his subject was the Irish coastline. Every summer he would join the members of the Irish Lights Board on a 3 week steamship cruise round the Irish coast, examining all the lighthouses. He carried out many tests with gas, oil and electricity to see which gave the best light in different conditions. One of the main problems was fog, and in later years he enlisted the help of Ernest Rutherford who at the time was experimenting with electromagnetic waves. He was very interested in all the flora around the Irish coast and would make frequent trips ashore to gather samples, armed with a well thumbed copy of “Bentham’s British Flora”. A selection of the hundreds of photos he took has been published recently in a book called “For the Safety of All”. Particularly interesting are the photos of the construction of the Fastnet light, which Ball described as “the most beautiful light in the world” Ball was an expert; unlike me, he never used notes. When asked about this he would reply, “How can a lecturer expect an audience to remember his lecture if he is unable to recollect it himself.” He was always able to captivate his audience with his subject matter, and as an example of the way he would get the attention of his audience, here is the start of one of his lectures: “I try in these lectures to give some account of an exceptionally great subject, a subject; I ought rather to say, of sublime significance. It may, I believe, be affirmed without exaggeration that the theme which is to occupy our attention, represents the most daring height to which the human intellect has ever ventured to soar in its efforts to understand the great operations of nature. The earth’s beginning relates to phenomena of such magnitude and importance that the temporary concerns which engage our thoughts must be forgotten in its presence. Our personal affairs, the affairs of the nation, and of the empire indeed of all nations and all empires, nay, even all human affairs, past, present, and to come, shrink into utter insignificance when we come to consider the majestic subject of the evolution of the solar system, of which our earth forms a part. We shall obtain a glimpse of what that evolution has been in the mighty chapter of the book of Nature on which we are now to enter”. During his lectures Ball would describe in simple terms the workings of the Universe, drawing comparisons to everyday objects. When describing the Sun and its relationship with the Earth, he would compare a coconut with a mustard seed, and when describing its heat, if the Sun expended £10,000,000 then the Earth would get just a penny’s worth. All the coal on Earth if burnt would not give out as much heat as the Sun in 1/10th of a second. He predicted solar panels when he stated that collecting the heat over 10 sq.yds. would power a 100hp motor. He also loved to quote the poets. At the end of “An Evening with the Telescope” and in an effort to impress on his audience the vast size of the Universe and the number of stars it contained, he would recite these lines from his fellow countryman, William Allingham …. But number every grain of sand, Wherever salt wave touches land, Number in single drops the sea, Number the leaves on every tree, Number earth’s living creatures all, That run, that fly, that swim, that crawl; Of sands, drops, leaves, and lives, the count Adds up into one vast amount, And then for every separate one, Of all those, let a flaming sun, Whirl in the boundless skies, with each Its massy planets, to outreach All sight, all thought; for all we see Encompassed with infinity, Is but an island. He was not very tolerant of disruptions from latecomers, who were often the more well to do, who invariably occupied the 6d seats in the front rows. He was quite happy therefore to have a good chairman who could rattle on for ten minutes at the start, whilst the latecomers got settled. He was sometimes accused by these same persons in the front row that he spoke too loudly. He would say that he did so in case there was a deaf old man in the back row who had paid his penny and was entitled to hear what he had to say. Ball would not venture too far from home to lecture unless he was being well paid for it. There were often complaints about his high fees; some venues even thought he should impart his knowledge for free. His stock answer was that he had a wife and 5 children to support, and had no intention of travelling half way across the country unless he was suitably rewarded. But did he make money at it? Were his earnings from lectures greater than those from his books? In a letter to Dr Rambout on 17th October 1897 he said “Lecturing is a more permanent source of income than writing, for the same lecture will be available scores of times, while there is (or ought to be) a limit to the number of times the same thing can be written. Then, too, lecturing is an amusing occupation, a rest and a change.” Mark Butterworth is in possession of a number of Ball’s letters, and in one he confirms his lecture fee of 15 guineas. We also know that when he died he left an estate valued at £12045, an amount equivalent to almost three quarters of a million pounds today. Although most of his public lectures were in towns and villages up and down the country, he was also a prominent speaker in the capital, where his most notable and well remembered appearances were at the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. He was first invited to give these lectures by Warren De la Rue, which he accepted but not without some misgivings. He was in awe of those who had preceded him; men like Faraday whose rule was that there should be one experiment every two minutes. These lectures lasted two weeks and he was asked to give these lectures in the winters of 1881, 1887, 1892/3, 1898 and 1900. Intended for children, the adults often outnumbered them three to one. Ball would say to the youngsters “Well children, you and I will not mind all these grown-ups…. if they will only behave themselves properly” These lectures formed the basis of Starland, one of the many books he wrote on popular astronomy. In addition he frequently took the floor at the Royal Institution Friday evening discourses. These had been started by Faraday back in the 1820’s and were popular, not just with scientists, but with eminent persons not usually seen at such gatherings. His first Friday lecture on 11th February 1881 was “The Distances of the Stars”. During one of these Friday lectures, a lamp caught fire, but before panic broke out, a lady in the front row calmly stepped forward and threw her cloak over the lamp, extinguishing the blaze in an instant. This alarmed Ball, as a letter in the Times that very morning had criticised the Royal Institute for failing to provide adequate fire exits in their lecture halls. He was often asked if he ever tired of lecturing, to which he would reply … ask a good golfer if he gets weary hole after hole … Ask W G if he ever tired of scoring century after century. When you have some skill in your art … the exercise of it is delightful. In the early part of his career, he would lecture every day of the week including Sundays, but after several years, gave up Sunday lectures to stay at home. He did however once lecture on Christmas Day. It was on one of his American tours and The Rev. Newell Hillis, pastor of the Plymouth church in Brooklyn, engaged him to speak to 2500 young people. He regaled his audience with “Time & Tide and Fire-Mist”. His oratory alone would have kept his audiences spellbound, but Ball was also an expert in the use of visual aids, particularly the magic lantern. This would occasionally result in problems as we learn from the account in the Walsall Advertiser of the disruption to his first lecture in the town …. The enjoyment of the Literary Institute lecture by Sir Robert Ball on Wednesday last was much interfered with by the incompetent mis-management of the gas. The members of the Institute must look to Mr Alfred Stanley as responsible for this. Never did an audience, however, behave better under prevailing circumstances. May Walsall audiences ever conduct themselves without any approach to panic, under whatever circumstances may arise. I’ve no doubt Mr Stanley was embarrassed about this, he was a local businessman, whose factory on the outskirts of Walsall manufactured buttons. He only ever missed one lecture, and that was also in Walsall. He had been due to speak at 8.00pm, 30 Oct 1895, but at 5.00pm Mr W Henry Robinson, the Institute Secretary (himself a member of the RAS) received a telegram, which read. “Our train has just returned to Cambridge#. Line washed away#. Impossible to reach Walsall tonight#. Very sorry for inconvenience. Ball” The chairman told a disappointed audience that “the stars in their courses had fought against the astronomer”. Ball was to have stayed that evening with the local vicar, who at less than an hour’s notice, agreed to step in and lecture to 1100 people on English church architecture. During my research I came across the programs of the Walsall Literary Institute from the 1880s till 1906. Ball lectured here on 9 occasions, and was the Institute’s President in 1898. He also had the honour of being the first person to lecture in Walsall’s new town hall. We have heard of the problems with “the gas” in connection with the lanterns, and of course he relied on slides and apparatus of various sorts to enliven the proceedings. In those days many lecturers cursed the lanternist, who would frequently mix up the slides or show them before the lecturer was ready. Ball was more philosophical; saying that you could not expect from the lanternist who was paid only a few pennies for an evening’s work, what you would expect from the lecturer, who if he was someone of Ball’s stature commanded high fees and expenses. Writing to Mr W Rambaut on 2nd March 1899 he said “Unless I warn him beforehand, the man at the lantern will probably make the moon go round the earth as if he was grinding coffee for a wager!” He would often instruct his lanternist as follows …. “There are eight ways of putting a slide into a lantern ….. seven of which are wrong!” One of his lectures, “A Universe in Motion” involved the use of a number of elaborate mechanical slides, and for this he would often enlist the services of a Mr James W Garbutt, whose skill at the lantern Ball very much appreciated. Garbutt was a slide manufacturer from Leeds and was the official lanternist for the Gilchrist Lectures. Lanterns were not his only problem. There were the hecklers, especially the “flat-earth men”. John Hampden was one of them, who once claimed that Ball relied on the baseless conjectures of heathen astrologers to support his views. On another occasion he said he would attend Ball’s next lecture stating “I consider such monstrous lies perfectly scandalous. I will expose you, never fear!” On another occasion, a writer inquired “Must not a lecture on Invisible stars be about as entertaining as a concert of inaudible music? Signed “An Unbeliever” PS----I shall be there” Ball’s maxim in such cases was a line from Tennyson… “The noblest answer unto such, is perfect stillness when they brawl” Apart from the Gilchrist lectures, which were organised for him, most of his platform engagements required a vast amount of correspondence, so much so that by 1900 he had 30 to 40 volumes on his shelves devoted entirely to lectures. Into each volume he would paste letters of invitation and acceptance, his requirements as to lantern, blackboard etc, hospitality letters and poster announcements, Bradshaws railway timetable, lecture ticket, press cuttings and thank you letters. His family would sometimes poke fun at his “method”, but he would retort that successful people made fortunes “by minding their own business”. For many years his papers were kept in order by his daughter Minnie. His lectures were not confined to astronomy; Ball was first and foremost a mathematician and he would give lectures to students on his Theory of Screws. These were not lectures for the masses; Ball was more than satisfied if he had as many as three students turn up to hear him speak. Now some of you may be wondering what this screw business was all about..........I confess I know very little, but I have read and I quote: Ball’s Treatise on the Theory of Screws is the definitive reference on screw theory. It gives a very complete geometrical treatment of the problems of small movements in rigid dynamics. His son once asked him to explain the theory to him. The Lowndean Professor replied “If I were to begin speaking now, and continued to expound for about six months without interruption, you might have some faint glimmering of what it means!” Ball worked on and refined this theory for more than 40 years. His Treatise on Screws is still referred to today. Despite his love for the subject, he once raised a toast to maths at an after dinner speech saying:........... “Here’s to Pure Mathematics. ........May she never be of any use to any one”. In 1884 he made his first transatlantic trip, … to Canada....... with the British Association on the SS Oregon to lecture in Montreal. Whilst he was there he visited the Niagara Falls, and was much in awe of the spectacle before him. He was particularly impressed by the circular rainbows and the mighty roar of the water. This was the first of several visits across the Atlantic; his next one in 1887 was at the request of Percival Lowell, to lecture at his Institute in Boston. The local paper reviewed his six lectures. The paper reported that “he has not quite the oratorical ability of Prof. Langley, and suffers from a slight impediment to his speech, but he has a smooth clear voice, with a use of it, at times, quite clergimanic”. He must have had remarkable stamina to keep up this seemingly endless round of lecture tours. Remember his only modes of transport were the railways and horse drawn carriages, and ocean liners of course. He almost missed his first lecture in Boston because the Atlantic crossing took an extra day. He arrived with just an hour to spare. An indication of his busy schedule can be seen from his Diary dated November 1893........ 13 Lecture at London Institution 14 Audit Dinner at Kings 15 Lecture at Manchester 16 Young people’s dinner party at home 17 Dine with Benchers at Lincoln’s Inn 18 Dine with Public Orator, Cambridge 19 Sunday …. Quiet at home 20 Lecture at Bow 21 Dine with Mr Dale 22 Lecture at Birkbeck Institute 23 Dine at Caius College 24 Lecture at Anerley 25 Dinner party of 16 at home 26 Sunday …. Quiet at home 27 Lecture at Tunbridge Wells 28 Lecture in London 29 Concert here (to which I must go) 30 Dine at Royal Society Annual Feast Dec 1 Lecture at Wimbledon 2 Concert here ( I am not going) 3 Sunday … Quiet at home 4 Dinner party of 16 here 5 Actually nothing whatever! 6 Founders’ dinner at Kings 7 Lecture at Barnsley 8 Lecture at Wimbledon 9 Dine with Mrs Lewis 10 Sunday …. Quiet at home It was his trip to the States in 1901 that was to be his most successful; with 45 lectures in 11 weeks. He travelled out on the White Star liner SS Cymric in October and in a hectic first round completed 24 lectures in 29 days. He travelled throughout the mid-west and the eastern states, visiting Chicago, Boston, where he was again a house guest of Lowell, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Washington, and of course New York. He met many important people, and was constantly being invited out to dinner. Among those he chose to mention from the astronomical community were Professors Hale, Barnard and Burnham at Yerkes Observatory, Simon Newcomb and of course Percival Lowell, and one night at the theatre, he was introduced to Mark Twain. He wrote many letters back home, and in one of them he comments on a momentous event that also involved crossing the Atlantic. He wrote “From what he told me last June, it did not in the least surprise me” What was he talking about? Marconi’s success in transmitting radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland. It was on one of his earlier trips that he mentions his regret at contributing to the demise of the buffalo in North America. His many hours of nocturnal observations at Birr and Dunsink taught him the necessity of wrapping up warm; so he purchased a buffalo coat, complete with cap and gaiters, which no doubt made him the envy of his colleagues. Sometimes he was favoured with a captive audience, notably on his sea voyages. He lectured to the passengers and crew on one of his transatlantic trips and in 1895 aboard the SS Norse King, his audience was bound for Norway to view the Total eclipse. No doubt his enthusiasm about the forthcoming event turned to disappointment when the 106 seconds of totality were spoilt by cloud cover. Always ready with a quick reply, when ridiculed about lecturing on an eclipse he had never seen, he would say “It is no worse than Nansen lecturing about the North Pole when he had never been there”. Two years later whilst on holiday in Devon he wrote to his son ….. Dearest Bill If you want free tickets for your friends to hear a lecture of mine, now is their chance. Let them hurry up and commit bigamy, or arson, or any really good felony short of actual murder and they will have a free ticket, indeed a compulsory ticket forthwith. I shall have both clergymen and lawyers in my audience. On Friday I lecture to the convicts at His Majesty’s Prison on Dartmoor ! Now you couldn’t get a more captive audience than that. When his repertory was complete he was indifferent as to which lecture he gave to any particular audience. He once said “I can congeal you with the “Ice Age” or burst you up with the thunders of Krakatoa. I can tell you whoppers about “Time and Tide” or petrify you with a burst of eloquence about “Invisible Stars”. I usually put the greatest rot into a lecture about “Other Worlds”. Not surprisingly he was sometimes called upon to speak on other matters. In 1907, Andrew Carnegie was organizing an International Peace Congress in the States prior to a similar event in The Hague. He invited Ball, along with other high profile celebrities from the US and abroad including Elgar, Earl Grey and William Stead. The Congress took place in New York and Pittsburg between 14 & 17 April. It was suggested to Carnegie that perhaps some of them had never thought much about this particular matter of international peace. “Never mind,” Carnegie answered, “we will invite them to speak, and then they will have to think about it.” “We’ll make them put themselves on record.” Ball didn’t mind that, but in his first lecture he put on record that America was the centre of all things astronomical, heaping praise on its observatories, its astronomers, and their recent discoveries. In his “Peace” lecture Ball spoke of man’s natural war and he asked his audience to think of their ancestors. Did they suppose that they were all men of peace who lived virtuous lives and at last closed their eyes in their beds amid the affectionate sobs of their nearest and dearest? Shall I tell you about your ancestors, he said; out of every 1000, 999 of them, through battle and murder, treachery and assassination, , died not in their beds, or even with their boots on, but sudden and cruel deaths? What has been the result? The survival of the fittest, and the creation of rational man. But the modern wars of civilized man are completely different. We pick out all our strongest men and expose them to all the risks of conflict whilst the weaker man is protected. Thus the race is not improved. War must cease, otherwise the human race will deteriorate. His lectures generally covered only scientific topics, but he would often be asked what his religious views were, particularly with regard to the Creation. It seems that Ball believed only what could be proven by science. Occasionally he would be drawn on the subject and one day was asked if he thought the New Jerusalem was perhaps on the far side of the moon. Oh no he said, (I think tongue in cheek)... it is much more likely to be on the far side of Mars. He often quoted his “Theory of Grandmothers”. At his lectures he would ask the audience to think of their ancestors, in particular their grandmothers. You will find that you had 2 plus 4 great grandmothers, 8 great great grandmothers and so on, back into the mists of time. When you finally arrive at the Garden of Eden, you have x great great great grandmothers. Eve was one of them, where were the others !! What the reaction of his audience was, is not recorded. On a more serious note, although he was a regular churchgoer throughout his life, in unpublished correspondence with Sir Oliver Lodge, the physicist and first principal of Birmingham University, also a BMI president in 1904, he confesses a lack of religious faith, which he even concealed from his wife. Apparently he just could not reconcile the vastness of the universe, evolution and his own scientific and mathematical theories of creation with a spiritual God and Christian teaching. This troubled him deeply and even his son chose not to reveal it in his biography. Here then was probably Britain’s most popular astronomer, for 35 years from 1874 to 1909, Sir Robert Stawell Ball virtually personified Astronomy to the English speaking world. His role as one, who communicated Astronomy to the public in an optimistic and positive way, making it appear a valid pursuit, was important for scientists in other disciplines as well, at a time when the issue of endowed research was becoming important. On occasion though, he was held in contempt by some of the Establishment, who would carry on about his “utterances” to the press; and some of his written work was criticised in terms such as “this is not what is expected of the Lowndean Professor”. It is not known how many lectures he gave in total, but it is recorded that between 1874 and 1884 he gave 700, and he lectured almost continuously for the next 20 years. It is estimated that, not counting the many thousands of students and fellow scientists who heard him speak, at his public meetings alone, he lectured to well over one million people. But Ball’s real reputation will not rest on his achievements as a populariser of science, great as they were, or even as an astronomer, in which capacity he lacked the advantages of professional training. It must be based on his work as a mathematician, which was his most absorbing interest, and to which he devoted much of his leisure. His mathematical accomplishments were acknowledged by E T Whittaker, who ranked Ball as one of the two or three greatest mathematicians of his generation. Ball entered the second decade of the 20th Century in failing health. He was however still able to play golf at Royston Heath until 1912. In the same year he made his final trip with the Irish lights Board around his beloved Irish coast. During the final 12 months of his life he was for the most part confined to his house here in the Observatory grounds. He died on 25 November 1913,..... aged 73........ and is buried in St Giles cemetery, just a few hundred yards from here. .......near to his predecessor, John Couch Adams. Long may he be remembered. END This is a transcript of a lecture given to the Society for the History of Astronomy at Cambridge Institute of Astronomy on Saturday 22nd May 2004 by Roger Jones (Council Member SHA) |
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| This is a transcript of a lecture given to the Society for the History of Astronomy on 22nd May 2004 at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge by SHA member Roger Jones |