FRANCIS BAILY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 57, Issue 29, 13 November 1936, Page 8

FRANCIS BAILY.

MAN WHO WEIGHED THE EARTH. An interesting letter appeared in “The Times,” London, recently on the celebrated astronomer, Francis Baily (1774 to 1844), the man who weighed the earth. “Best known perhaps to tho general public as ‘The Man who Weighed the Earth’—or, to be more technically accurate, . the man who measured the earth’s density—Francis Baily is probably nearly as well known, to them in connection with the remarkable solar phenomena, having the appearance of beads of light, observed by him from Jedburgh, in Scotland, on the occasion of the annular (or anular) eclipse of ICO years ago, May 15, 1836,” states the letter. These phenomena—which were witnessed again by him from Pavia, in Italy, on the occasion of the total eclipsg of July 8, 1842 —have ever since gone by the name of “Baily’s Beads”; and they were seen again and recognised by countless observers of the more recent eclipse of 1927.

In these days, when centenaries are observed on every hand, the centenary of “Baily’s Beads” may well seem worthy of equal record; and hence the present letter. That which is so remarkable to relate concerning Francis Baily is that, starting life With the obvious ambition of becoming an explorer, he then gave some 24 years (1801-25) to tho Stock Exchange, and then, having there made a considerable fortune, threw business entirely on one side at the comparatively early age of 51, in order that he might devote the rest of his life to the (pursuit of that science—the science of astronomy—which from October, H9B, onward had ever been the subject of his own especial and consuming interest. And astronomy, for its own part, has never hesitated to express the intensity of its gratitude to him for all that he did on astronomy’s behalf.

Upon his death, in 1844, an offer was made by the authorities to inter the remains of this remarkable man in Westminster Abbey, but the offer was declined, his friends preferring that he should rest beside bis parents in Thatcham Church, some two miles from Newbury. It was a wonderful tribute to bis memory that—dying, as in tact he did, in London —no fewer than 98 carriages, including that of the Imperial Family of Russia, followed the hearse to the final interment at Thatcham. Francis Baily never married.