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CCCLXXVIII: TO NEVIL MASKELYNE, ASTRONOMER ROYAL - Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. V Letters and Misc. Writings 1768-1772 [1904]

Edition used:

The Works of Benjamin Franklin, including the Private as well as the Official and Scientific Correspondence, together with the Unmutilated and Correct Version of the Autobiography, compiled and edited by John Bigelow (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904). The Federal Edition in 12 volumes. Vol. V (Letters and Misc. Writings 1768-1772).

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CCCLXXVIII

TO NEVIL MASKELYNE, ASTRONOMER ROYAL

read at the royal society, january 10, 1771

  • Craven Street,

12 February, 1770.

Dear Sir:—

I have just received a letter from Mr. Winthrop, dated December 7th, containing the following account, viz.:

“On Thursday, the 9th of November, I had an opportunity of observing a transit of Mercury. I had carefully adjusted my clock to the apparent time, by correspondent altitudes of the sun, taken with the quadrant for several days before, and with the same reflecting telescope as I used for the transit of Venus.1 I first perceived the little planet making an impression on the sun’s limb at 2h 52′ 41″; and he appeared wholly within at 53′ 58″ apparent time. The sun set before the planet reached the middle of his course; and for a considerable time before sunset it was so cloudy that the planet could not be discerned. So that I made no observations of consequence, except that of the beginning, at which time the sun was perfectly clear. This transit completes three periods of forty-six years, since the first observation of Gassendi at Paris, in 1631.”

I am, Sir, with great esteem,
Your most obedient servant,

B. Franklin.

[1 ]See Philosophical Transactions, Vol. LIX., p. 352.