William Gascoigne
In the year 1612 William Gascoigne was born at Thorpe on the Hill,
Middleton near Leeds, born just three years after the first use of an
astronomical telescope Gascoigne would go on to make major
contributions to the construction of accessories to use with
telescopes, he would also forge links with some of the most important
astronomers of the time, yet have a tragically short life.
He
came from a family of local gentry, the Gascoigne coat of arms being
the severed head of a golden conger eel. Very little is known of his
early years, it is not even certain where he had his formal
education. Whereas other people spent their leisure time hawking and
hunting William Gascoigne was fascinated by the natural world and the
world of instruments and machines.
We
do know that by 1638 he was already a very experienced and seasoned
astronomer. One point that seems bizarre with regards to his future
life is that he received no training in mathematics. During
Gascoigne’s lifetime the science of optics and the construction of
telescopes were still in its infancy and was still a very secret
subject which meant it was difficult for him to obtain books on the
subject. However obtain books he did and he then became self-taught
in the field of mathematics and optics, in fact what he was doing
would be imitated by the world renowned Yorkshire telescope maker
Thomas Cooke nearly two hundred years in the future.
By
sheer dint of effort and research Gascoigne managed to have
constructed a telescope and he even produced the lenses to go with
it. The likelihood is that he almost certainly made several
telescopes but we just don’t know how many. We know that he
definitely had a telescope in 1640 because he was observing the Sun;
Gascoigne was using the projection method to observe the Sun safely.
Gascoigne
had made friends with two other astronomers William Crabtree
1610-1644 who lived in Manchester, and through Crabtree with Jeremiah
Horrocks 1618-1641 who was born near Liverpool but later lived at
Much Hoole near Preston, these three astronomers were the first
people to start to get a grasp of just how big the solar system was.
In 1639 Jeremiah Horrocks predicted that there would be a Transit of
Venus, a transit occurs when a planet closer to the Sun than the
Earth can be see passing in front of the Sun, this applies to only
two planets, Mercury and Venus. While transits of Mercury are quite
common those of Venus are extremely rare. Astronomers would use
transits of Venus to try to work out how far away the Sun was. The
Transit of Venus in 1639 was observed by just two people Horrocks and
Crabtree. These three would become a formidable group of North
Country astronomers but sadly only for a short period in time. They
would all die young and at the time of the English Civil War.
However
back to Gascoigne who had one of those lucky breaks in life. A spider
had gotten into his telescope and spun a web. We can only assume at
first that Gascoigne was pretty annoyed with this pesky spider
messing around in his telescope but then he saw that the spider had
done him a good turn, the web was very straight and very clear and he
instantly realised that this could be used to perform a sight to make
sure that you knew exactly where you were looking. He made the first
cross hair wire albeit with spider webs.
This spider web technology would in fact be used right up until the
Second World War in optical equipment. Gascoigne would quickly
appreciate those spiders webs would become an indispensable aid to
astronomers. Here was a natural resource that was not only very
strong and very straight and being a Yorkshireman quickly realised
that they also don’t cost anything.
Gascoigne
also suggested that if it was very dark so the web could not be seen
a lantern could be placed to allow its light to sufficiently
illuminate the web. This illuminating technology would remain the
same for the next two centuries.
We
have no idea how many telescope sights that Gascoigne would make
however in 1640 when William Crabtree visited him he was impressed
with the numbers of them produced. Jeremiah Horrocks when hearing of
these inventions was full of praise and admiration for Gascoigne.
But
Gascoigne did not stop there he now had the means to accurately find
an object in the sky, but could he measure how far apart or how was
and object in the sky. Taking his spider web technology he mounted
two spider webs which were mounted in the field of view and moved
towards or away from each other by means of a screw. A scale would
show how far apart the webs were. This was the filar micrometer a
direct development of the telescope sight. He would become the first
astronomer to use a micrometer to measure the angles and positions in
the sky. Using his micrometer, Gascoigne made numerous measurements
of solar and lunar diameters, plus positions of the stars including
the Pleiades or Seven sisters.
Today
of course we have equipment that can measure an angle to a precession
that Gascoigne could never have imagined. If however we want to trace
the time line of today’s measuring equipment right back to the
first micrometer, we end up with William Gascoigne at Middleton near
Leeds.
The
trio would all died in the early 1640s, Jeremiah Horrock in January
1641 from an unknown reason, he never got to try the new micrometer,
William Crabtree died in 1644 during the Civil War
but
it is unknown if he was killed fighting. We do know that William
Gascoigne died at the Battle of Marston Moor on July 2nd
fighting on the royalist side for the King.
Much
of his work then appeared to be lost or forgotten the micrometer does
not seem to appear again until the 1660s about twenty years after the
death of Gascoigne. However by chance some of his papers which
survived the Civil War and the Great Fire of London came into the
possession of Christopher and Richard Townley of Townley Hall in
Burnley Lancashire.
They
presented the papers to John Flamsteed the first astronomer royal
that quickly realised just how important the work done by Horrock,
Crabtree and Gascoigne was. Without the work of someone from the red
rose county we would not have found out about the wonderful
contribution to astronomy of this white rose person.
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