EARLY YEARS

Born in Dublin on the 1^st July 1840 he was one of 7 children, with 2 brothers and 4 sisters; Valentine, Charles, Kate, Mary, Amelia and Annie. Valentine was a noted biologist and spent many years in India.   Charles studied medicine and was later Regious professor of surgery at Dublin University.

His first memories include being thrust from an upstairs window. at the age of 6 or 7 to watch the funeral of  Daniel O’Connell, the so called Liberator, who fought for the Irish cause. 

This was also the time of the Potato Famine, and he recalls potatoes being replaced by suet dumplings, which must have been something of a luxury compared with the fare of much of the Irish population at the time; when between 1846 and 1851 the number of people who died from starvation exceeded one million. Another million were forced to emigrate to escape the hunger.

Home also became something of a menagerie.  His father, in his position as Secretary of Dublin Zoo, often took immediate charge of any new animals before onward transport to the Zoo.  He recalls the arrival of a sloth which, in an attempt to mimic conditions in its native Brazilian forest, was hung over the back of a dining chair in front of a roaring fire. Years later, the chair, which still bore the creature’s teeth and claw marks, made a very interesting after dinner story. He also remembers a Galapagos tortoise, so large that it could be sat on and ridden round the kitchen.

He was for a time a pupil at Dr. Burke’s school in North Great George St., but at aged 11 his father took him to England to a boarding school in Turvin, a small village near Chester, run by the Rev Dr John Brindley. He soon settled down and had not been there very long when he went with the school to see the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, where his main recollection was seeing the Duke of Wellington on horseback.

Though he claims to have hated school, he got excellent reports, especially for maths.  At age 12 he was 15^th out of 87, even though most of the pupils were several years older.  By the time he left six years later, he was top in maths

Remember Remember 5^th November, Robert had very painful remembrances of November 1854.  Experimenting secretly at school with some home-made fireworks, a powder flask exploded, severely burning his hand, which he almost lost, and the scars of which stayed with him for life. He was out of action for a number of weeks.

It wasn’t long before Brindley had re-opened the school,   this time in nearby Chester, in Northgate, but under considerable financial duress. he then moved to Leamington Spa, where Robert stayed for a few months before being summoned home in March 1857.  His father had died suddenly from a ruptured aorta Robert Ball was just 16 years old.

The Balls had lived in relative comfort in Dublin, but now Mrs Ball had the children to take care of and no income.   She was eventually granted a civil list pension of £100 by Queen Victoria   on account of her husband’s good works, but this was not before a decision had to be made about Robert’s future. 

He wanted to go to Trinity College in Dublin, and eventually his mother, who had to find the fees, was persuaded to let him go. The condition was that he studied hard   He entered Trinity on 13^th October 1857,   he did work hard, and gained honours all the way through to graduation.  Among his many accomplishments at Trinity were several Gold medal awards, a scholarship in 1860 and Fellowship prizeman honours in 1863, 64 and 65.

It was at Trinity that he first studied dynamical mathematics, which was to lead to his treatise “The Theory of Screws” a subject he pursued throughout his life and which early on brought him considerable fame among the mathematicians of the day. 

In 1859 he read the newly published Origin of Species and immediately became a convert to Darwinism. Ten years previously Robert’s father had been in frequent correspondence with Darwin on Irish flora and fauna.

He was also influenced by Ormsby Mitchel’s Orbs of Heaven which first taught him about the size of the universe and the difference between stars and planets. 

Later he read Brinkley’s Astronomy, Newton’s Principea   and Laplace’s Mechanique Celeste.

At about this time he gave his first lecture.  It was a small affair and took place following a dinner party in the drawing room of 5 Merrion Place, Dublin.   It was not a serious talk, more an impromptu discourse based on some humorous drawings which had been prepared by the ladies in advance of the dinner party.  5 Merrion Place, by the way, was the residence of one William Stokes, greatest of Ireland’s great physicians, of stethoscope fame who regularly entertained influential Dubliners at dinner parties. It was once described as the resort of all the wit and learning that Ireland possessed.

From his father he gained a love of botany, and he chose it as one of his degree subjects, but it was not just the Sciences that held his interest. He joined the Literary Society and attended readings by such notables as Dickens.

In 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”. Robert must have impressed his audience as a year later his fellow students elected him President of the Society.

Robert’s main preoccupation at this time was mathematics, and not surprisingly, some of its applications led to him delving into astronomical theories.

He stayed on at Trinity after graduating, but failed to get a fellowship.  Now this was a setback at first, but in 1865 he was offered a position which was to set the course of his future career.

BIRR

He was asked by the physicist, Dr Johnstone Stoney, later a lifelong friend, if he would like to tutor the 3 younger sons of William Parsons, the 3^rd Earl of Rosse, in preparation for their entrance to Trinity.  He didn’t fancy teaching the classics to young boys, but the prospect of being in residence at the home of the world’s largest telescope was enticing to say the least.

He said he would accept the position on condition that he could use the astronomical facilities at Birr in his spare time   Rosse, now an old man, and not in the best of health, had stopped observing  and was more than happy to let Ball have the run of the place. So started his career as an astronomer, albeit on a part-time basis.

The telescope at Birr, built in 1844/5 was at the forefront of observational astronomy from the late 1840’s to the early 1860’s. Rosse and his team made many new discoveries.

Ball was an early riser, teaching the boys during the morning and early afternoon, but still with plenty of free time to get acquainted with the Leviathan.  As the 72” monster telescope was called.

Whilst at Birr, Robert witnessed a remarkable astronomical event, the like of which was not to be seen again for 100 years.

The year was 1866, the month November and on the night of the 13^th/14^th there was no moon, and the sky was crystal clear.  Robert was at the eyepiece some 50 foot up; observing spiral nebula, when he heard one of his assistants shout “Look”   A meteor had passed overhead, then another.  Of course Ball was well aware that these were Leonids, but also knew that they might not come to much, even though the 33 year return was by this time well known.  Soon however there were more and Ball concluded his nebula observations   

Hurrying to the top of the telescope’s supporting wall, some 60 feet up in the air, he watched in amazement as the shower came thick and fast. Lord Rosse was summoned and watched the spectacle for more than 2 hours.  Soon Leo was above the horizon and the shower could be seen emanating from that precise spot in the sky.

One of the things that struck Ball at the time, was that you could not demonstrate in a more practical way, the doctrine of parallel lines.  The explanation is that all these objects were moving in parallel lines, and that the vanishing point was in Leo.

The stars that appeared to be coming straight towards them came actually from the vanishing point.   Whenever Ball was asked how to observe meteors, he would say matter of factly, “Why, with your hands in your pockets of course .Instruments are no use whatsoever”.

Ball made much of this spectacle, and included it in many of his lectures during the next 40 years   

So what did Ball achieve at Birr? Well in addition to discovering several more spiral nebula, he also corrected and collated much of the information amassed by Rosse and previous incumbents during the preceding 15 years  It was his mathematical skill and his use of the micrometer during many hours at the eyepiece of the Leviathan that produced these results. This prevented further duplication of work, but it did not always please his team of assistants who were often kept up till dawn. 

He also built his own 6” reflector in Rosse’s workshops, and when he was not involved with his tutoring, enjoyed fishing for pike in the great lake, and even felling trees on the estate.  Although overshadowed by the 72”, there was the second scope at Birr, the 36” reflector, which Ball used frequently as it did not require the team of five assistants necessary to move the Leviathan into position.

Whilst at Birr, he had made several visits with Rosse to London where he met many of the country’s leading scientists including Sir Charles Wheatstone, Warren de la Rue, Charles Babbage and Sir William Huggins, who at the time was publishing the results of his work with the spectroscope, in particular the gaseous nature of nebulae.

Ball had been at Birr for nearly two years when he heard that the newly created Royal College of Science in Dublin had a vacancy for a professor of Applied Mathematics and Mechanism.   He applied and with Rosse’s blessing and no doubt influence, left Birr to pursue his academic career. Rosse had not been well for a long time and died not long after Ball left, early in 1867  

Robert never forgot his 2 years at Birr, and remained in contact with Rosse’s sons for the rest of his life.  Rosse’s most famous son was Charles Parsons, inventor of the steam turbine,  which at the turn of the century powered many Royal navy ships  and the great liners Mauritania, Lusitania and of course Titanic. In later life he bought into the Grubb optical business which then became the telescope makers, Grubb Parsons.

There was one recollection of his time at Birr that was to jog his memory every time he saw it in an observatory It was Rosse’s magnificent drawing of the Orion Nebula  which took him years to complete, and which was engraved by James Basire;   copies were sent to observatories world-wide.

During Ball’s time as Professor at Dublin’s science college he came across a book by the Reverend Robert Willis, 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. It also prompted Ball’s first venture into book publishing; Macmillan agreed to publish a book based on his experiments, called naturally “Experimental Mechanics”.

This was a time when Ball was coming to the notice of eminent scientists in Ireland and elsewhere   He was already a member of the Royal Irish Academy  .and following in the footsteps of his father a committee member of the Royal Zoological Society, In 1873 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.  Dublin society welcomed him and he had many influential friends.

But it was not until 1874 that fame really came his way. He applied for and was appointed Andrews professor of Astronomy at Trinity, and with it the Directorship of Dunsink Observatory, just 4 miles outside Dublin  

Not only that, but the title Astronomer Royal for Ireland was conferred on him.  He was 34 years old and his career in Astronomy now seemed secure.

The Dunsink position gave him a fair sized residence only yards from the Observatory, plus 14 acres of farmland. He had married back in 1868 and now had a young family to support.  His wife, Frances was the daughter of Dr William Steele, registrar of the Royal Dublin society and an old friend of Robert Ball Snr.

Ball’s tenure at Dunsink lasted for 18 years until 1892 and much of his observing time was devoted to the study of stellar parallax. It has been said that he was not successful in these observations,  as in 15 years he was never able to measure any stellar parallax whatsoever, in all the 368 stars he studied.   He was though a meticulous observer   and he just proved with the instruments available to him at the time that there were no measurable parallaxes to be found in the stars he observed. Of course he might have had more success if he had known that he was looking at the wrong type of stars. He was looking at red giants instead of red dwarfs. But there were others at work at the same time who did find evidence of parallaxes. Edward Barnard for example.  

When he was not observing, and at various times throughout each year, he would embark on lecture tours, perfecting the art of taking science out to the general public, as well as to academic audiences.

During the period 1874 -1884 he gave over 700 public lectures   and was in great demand, both in Ireland and on the British mainland   He had also written many scientific papers and had embarked on his first book on astronomy, The Story of the Heavens which was published in 1885.

   He became very well known and respected,  and for his services to science and education was knighted in 1886  in Dublin Castle by Lord Caernarvon, who was at the time Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

On Sundays he would rise early and would walk from Dunsink across Phoenix Park to take breakfast with the members of Dublin Zoological society in the picturesque grounds of Dublin Zoo . In later years he could be seen cycling through the park on a “Facile”.

In 1876 the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro ll paid a visit to Dublin, and as was his custom, would often arrive at locations entirely unannounced, but expected people to move heaven and earth to grant him his wishes.  

It was midnight on a Saturday evening and he asked the Mayor of Dublin to arrange a visit on the next day to the eminent scientist who was making the telescope for the Vienna Observatory   He said he thought his name was mub or bub. The mayor and his minions didn’t have a clue,

but then someone remembered that Ireland had an Astronomer Royal. The next morning, at an early hour, Ball was surprised to see the mayor’s coach coming at full speed up the hill to the observatory. The mayor’s secretary asked if he knew who the scientist was.  Of course Ball knew that it was Howard Grubb, but said it was doubtful that he could get him to open his factory, and have his craftsmen on duty at such short notice.

  It was Sunday. The secretary would not take no for an answer and messages were sent to Grubb to be ready. The Emperor had a hectic schedule planned, but at the appointed hour Grubb and Ball were there to meet him, 

Ball, it turned out was on the steering committee for the telescope, and so was able to engage in a fruitful conversation with the Emperor   Grubb was pleased to be able to show the Emperor the 27” object glass for the Vienna equatorial.

The transit of Venus 8 years later was the cause of some amusement at Dunsink.   Ball, in preparation for the event, had ascertained that the transit would occur at about 3 in the afternoon,  when the sun was low in the December sky.    Between the observatory and the scheduled position of the Sun was a tree in a neighbour’s field. Ball asked his neighbour. a Mr Rathborne if he thought it was right that the tree should be allowed to stand between his telescope and the transit.  

The neighbour being a layman asked if the transit could be arranged to happen in some other place.  When Ball explained that this was not humanly possible, his neighbour obliged and the offending tree was chopped down forthwith.

   Unfortunately Ball had only a fleeting glimpse of the transit.  It had been snowing all day and only for the briefest of moments was there a break in the clouds when he was able to see Venus in mid transit.

    Nevertheless it was something he always remembered   and he commented later that it was a phenomenon which would not be witnessed again by any human eye until the flowers are blooming in the June of  AD 2004.

Well that is what is recorded and he knew the dates were correct, but one wonders if he was not just repeating someone else’s words,   as I have read a report by William Harkness of the US Naval Observatory which included this forecast: (S & T)

“There will be no other transit of Venus till the twenty-first century of our era has dawned upon earth, and the June flowers are blooming in 2004.”  I may be wrong, the phrase “flowers are blooming” could be pure co-incidence.

It was not long after that when he started to have trouble with his right eye.  Despite all the best attentions of doctors and opticians, the problem worsened and he eventually lost all his sight in that eye.  This effectively put paid to any more serious observing, so he concentrated on his writing and his lectures.  

Much later in 1897, and on the advice of a doctor friend he had the eye removed and replaced with a glass one.

In 1884 he made his first transatlantic trip to Canada with the British Association on the SS Oregon to lecture in Montreal.  In the audience was John Couch Adams, of whom we shall hear more later.   Adams was British delegate to the International Prime Meridian Conference at Washington, but he also attended the meetings of the British Association at Montreal and of the American Association at Philadelphia.

Whilst Ball 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. At the request of Percival Lowell  he also lectured at his Institute in Boston.

No doubt he would have heard the famous rhyme:

So this is good old Boston

The home of the bean and the cod

Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots

And the Cabots talk only to God

A reference to the mega-rich blue-blooded families of Cabot and Lowell.  He gave six lectures and I have been fortunate to get copies of the reviews. 

Let me turn now to his UK lectures……

His  first public lecture to a paying audience was in 1874  at the Midland  Institute in Birmingham,    a venue he returned to on many occasions.  The lecture was a 2-parter - The Transit of Venus and A Night at Lord Rosse’s Telescope. 

The Institute had been given charge of a collection of apparatus designed and made by Willis.  As I mentioned previously the expert who knew how to use the apparatus was Ball. They persuaded him to come over to Birmingham and stay for a week . to teach others how to use it He agreed provided he could give two lectures on Astronomy.  Years later Ball was invited to give the inaugural lecture at the new hall in 1881 and was elected President of the Midland Institute in 1891. 

This was the start of regular visits to the Midlands and he lectured in Wolverhampton, West Bromwich and Walsall as well as Birmingham.  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.

  His first lecture in the town did not go smoothly.  Whilst Ball was describing the glories of the Midnight sky, the lanternist must have had serious trouble with his equipment. The local paper reported. 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.

He only ever missed one lecture, and that was in Walsall;.

He had been due to speak at 8.00pm, 30 Oct 95, but at 5.00pm Mr 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 with the local vicar, who at less than an hour’s notice, agreed to lecture to 1100 people on English church architecture. Ball returned to the town several more times and had the honour of being the first person to lecture in the new town hall.

At many of his lectures 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, or as described earlier, have problems with the gas   

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 2^nd 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 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. Here are some of the slides used by Ball.

 .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 keep  and had no intention of travelling half way across the country unless he was well paid.   

He organised things very well, and would use his network of friends and associates to ensure that, after an evening’s lecture, he could dine and get accommodation, not at a hotel, but at the home of some noted dignitary, where he could be assured of good food and company.

Ball was an expert, he never used notes, and was able to captivate his audience with his subject matter. 

On one occasion, a lecture to workers in Goole had been arranged.   As was his custom, Ball arrived at the venue 20 minutes prior to the lecture. He found the hall surrounded by a large crowd.  When he tried to get in, he was told that the hall was already full (1000people) and no more were being admitted.  Eventually he got to a side door, where some people were still being let in   

The doorman asked him for his penny, to which Ball replied   “But I’m the lecturer”. The doorman laughed and said “I’ve heard that one before, now move along!”   He was finally allowed in and lectured to the capacity crowd on “Other Worlds than ours”.

He was sometimes accused by persons in the front row of his audience that he spoke too loudly.    He would say that he did so and I quote in case there was a deaf old man in the back row.  He had paid his penny and he was entitled to hear what he had to say.

And then there were hecklers, especially the “flat-earth men”. John Hampden was one of them, who once wrote and claimed Ball relied on the baseless conjectures of heathen astrologers. 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!”  Ball’s maxim in such cases was a line from Tennyson …

“The noblest answer unto such, is perfect stillness when they brawl”                                                                                                                   

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”

Whilst at Dunsink, he was able to carry out much of his work into stellar parallaxes on his own; as the equipment in the Observatory could be managed single-handedly.  It was fortunate that he took heed of an instruction given to him by Ralph Copeland regarding the opening of the dome.  It involved an endless rope pulley mechanism over a large metal pin.   He was advised not to stand directly under the mechanism in case it fell   He thought it highly unlikely that it ever would, but for 18 years dutifully stood to one side when pulling on the rope.  It always worked without mishap, until almost the very last day he was there, when, whilst pulling on the rope, the pulley/spindle and various other pieces came crashing to the floor.   Had he been standing underneath,  Ball’s career and life would have come to a speedy end.

Fortunately the story continues, but we now leave Ireland for pastures new.  Cambridge was one of the main centres for astronomical research at the time, and the leading figure there was John Couch Adams.

He had been in residence there since the late 30’s, graduating with distinction in 1843, predicting the position of Neptune in 1845(correction—jointly predicting) and becoming Lowndean professor in 1858. This was a position he held until his death in 1892.

Back at Dunsink, Robert Ball was now 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.”

Ball settled into Cambridge very well, and enjoyed all the trappings of the senior position he had obtained, including his own house in the grounds of the observatory. His title was Lowndean Professor of Astronomy.  He was appointed Director of Cambridge Observatory, and given an Honorary MA. 

In a letter to his sister he remarked:

“Tomorrow night we expect to sleep in our new home.  A beautiful one it is in many respects. Indeed as every day passes, I am more and more thankful for the change we have made.   You can have no idea how charming is the prospect of life here.   It seems to me that there are scores of hospitable houses open, and genial and pleasant welcomes everywhere.  The people not too rich.  Then we are to have a telephone.  Vehicles of any kind at the door in a quarter of an hour, shopping and all the rest done by telephone!  

It is connected with the Post Office, so that telegrams can be sent all over the country and the world from our own hall.   There is pleasant society in King’s College.   Indeed, I feel quite at home everywhere now.  Small incidents of the change loom into importance.  When I arrived, the two things I appreciated most were two pipes,   not for tobacco, not pipes of port, but just a gas pipe and a water pipe, conveying the gas and the liquid of which we were so destitute at Dunsink!”

At Dunsink it was water from the Well, and no gas at all.

Some time ago I had the pleasure of a tour around the observatory in the company of Stuart Williams and the council members of the Society for the History of astronomy.  Here is one of Stuart’s photos, the great man looking down, vetting anyone who might venture into his private quarters.

Surprisingly little is written about his work at Cambridge,  although one of his first tasks was to seek funding for a new telescope and dome, fortunately money from a trust was available, courtesy of a legacy from Miss Anne Sheepshanks, after whom the telescope was named . It was a polar conde by Howard Grubb and had a 12.5p-v lens. The main instrument when he arrived was the Northumberland Equatorial, an 11.5” achromatic doublet with a focal length of 19.5ft. Here is Ball at the Meridian circle, just for the photographer of course.

It would seem that he was kept busy during the term tutoring and fulfilling his duties at the observatory,   although not doing any observations himself.  His lecture tours continued apace as did his writing.  Among his many students would have been E T Whittaker later Astronomer Royal for Ireland, and his own successor at Cambridge, Arthur Eddington, famous for his work on Relativity. 

Of course, his books were now well known and many ran to several editions and reprints.  An indication of his busy schedule can be seen from his Diary dated November 1893. 

Nov 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

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             Founder’s Dinner at Kings

7             Lecture at Barnsley

8             Lecture at Wimbledon

9             Dine with Mrs Lewis

10         Sunday …. Quiet at home

From 1882 until his death, Ball held a post quite unrelated to Astronomy.  This was as Scientific Advisor to the Irish Lights Board.  It was his duty to advise and recommend improvements to the lighthouses and warning systems in Irish coastal waters    He enjoyed this work very much, particularly the annual 3 week round-trip in the cruiser Princess Alexandra.  It was his main holiday, but involved a good deal of work as well. 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. Ball’s favourite lighthouse was Fastnet, which he described as the most beautiful light in the world.  Ball was an accomplished photographer and this year sees the publication of many of Ball’s own collection of photos, now housed in the photographic section of the National Library of Ireland. The book is called “For the Safety of All”

.

Robert Ball’s final cruise was in 1912 just a year before his death.

What did Robert Ball do in his spare time?  What spare time you might wonder.  He admits he was no great sportsman, but whilst at Trinity he did enjoy cricket, claiming that he could hit the ball further than anyone else, evidenced by the fact that he was the only scholar ever to have to pay for a broken window in a street outside the grounds.

He also played golf, a pursuit he followed for many years, joining the Royston Golf Club whilst at Cambridge, claiming that it was the only outdoor sport that a one-eyed man could play.  Asked if he found golf boring, he replied “When I tire of golf I work at screws, and when I tire of screws I play golf”.

This “Theory of Screws” was to occupy much of his time throughout his life, and often whilst on holiday, when his family were out walking, he would find a quiet room and ponder over this complex area of mathematics. His liking of golf and maths can be seen in a letter he wrote to his friend Brindley thanking him for a birthday card in 1902.

He wrote “I am 62 . I took 130 to go round Royston when I was 54, I can do a round now in 104”.   

By the time I am 90 I will have lowered the course record.  He played his last game there on 15 January 1912.

Now some of you may be wondering what this screw business was all about 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. In recent years the theory of screws has emerged as a novel mathematical resource for addressing complex engineering problems, with important applications to robotics, multibody dynamics, mechanical design, computational kinematics, and hybrid automatic control.

Should any of you wish to delve into the subject, which I doubt, unless you’re seriously into Pure Mathematics, check out the Cornell University website, where you can download the complete text of his Theory of Screws.

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”

He was also a devoted family man and despite his busy lecturing schedule, he spent a good deal of his time at home with his wife and children, especially after his move to Cambridge, with its long holidays.  He made several trips to the Continent, and visited Italy as part of a Grand Tour, where he was enthralled by a visit to Pompeii and a climb up Vesuvius, during a period when it was particularly active.

In 1890 and 1895 he took trips to Norway,

On the 1890 trip he was accompanied by his mother, then well into her seventies.  The trip was organised by the Vesey Club of Sutton Coldfield, to study the Scandinavian geology.  Robert was the Vesey Club’s president in 1890 and gave his Presidential address in Sutton Coldfield Town Hall on 7^th November that year.

The latter trip was to observe the total eclipse. On the outward voyage onboard the SS Norse King he lectured to the 164 passengers, among them were many notable astronomers, Andrew Common, Norman Lockyer, E W Maunder, Isaac Roberts.    Unfortunately on the morning of the eclipse, the sky was largely overcast and although the sun was visible for the early part, clouds obscured the 106 seconds of totality.

Every week at Cambridge he would hold a dinner party and invite up to 16 students, many of them sons of old friends and acquaintances. He would also scour the college registers to ensure that the offspring of eminent people of the day had a seat at his table.

Today it’s called networking   - it’s not what you know, but who you know.

During his career, Ball was involved in a number of controversial issues. The main ones were:

The origin of Meteorites

The origin of the Solar System

The Existence of Vulcan

The Martian Canals

Meteorites, he believed were of earthly volcanic origin, ejected into orbit and later to fall again when their orbits converged   

His theory was that in bygone eras, volcanoes were much higher, the atmosphere lower and therefore the exit velocity of an object escaping from the earth’s gravity needed to be much less than it would be now.

He believed that the entire Solar System was formed out of a spinning primordial fiery mist, similar to the Andromeda nebula.     Of course at that time; objections to this hypothesis included the question of the outer moons of Neptune and Uranus   which had retrograde motion.  The various nebula theories were almost as numerous as astronomers.

In one of his many contributions to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Ball states:

“There is no difficulty in conceiving how a nebula, quite independently of any internal motion of its parts, shall also have had as a whole a movement of rotation. In fact a little consideration of the theory of probabilities will show it to be infinitely probable that such an object should really have some movement of rotation, no matter by what causes the nebula may have originated. As this vast mass cooled it must by the laws of heat have contracted towards the centre, and as it contracted it must, according to the law of dynamics, rotate more rapidly.”

He also reckoned that the sun’s heat was caused by gravitational contraction, a topic he explored in his book “The Story of the Sun”.  Other scientists disagreed, but Ball, in his public lectures rarely mentioned alternative arguments to the ones he put to his audience.  He described the sun’s energy to his audience like this: a globe of coal as big as our earth, if set ablaze at the same moment, would not give out as much heat as the Sun gives out in a thousandth part of a second.

With regard to there being other bodies orbiting the sun closer than Mercury, he believed that this was perfectly possible, and often quoted J C Watson, who claimed to have seen such a planet during the 1878 eclipse.   He included a chapter entitled The Planet of Romance in the first edition of The Story of the Heavens.  Even years later when doubts were cast on Watson’s observations, Ball insisted that a scientist of Watson’s repute must have seen something unusual to make such a profound statement.

The Martian canals were also a topic discussed in his lectures, often at the request of his audience, who wanted to know if there was life there.   He was largely influenced by Lowell following the publication of his book on the red planet, and also his visit to the States to lecture at Lowell’s request.  In 1893 the Royal Academy of Sciences were convinced by Ball that communication with Mars was a physical impossibility,

The Observatory in 1893 noted “Another utterance of Sir Robert Ball has been going the rounds of the newspapers, to the effect that a flag the size of Ireland, if waved, could be seen from Mars with a good telescope.  We have heard a good deal about Mars in recent years, and also about Ireland. This is the first time we have seen the subjects combined.  In the same year he published a paper in Goldthwaite’s Geographical Magazine stating that despite there being evidence of the retention of oxygen and water on Mars, the dissimilarities between Mars and Earth make it improbable that intelligent life now exists on our neighbour planet.    When Marconi’s devices were first being seen as possible communication systems,   he said “no electrical signalling to Mars appears to me to be possible, for the simple reason that the apparatus would have to be sixteen million times more efficient   as that which would suffice to do for wireless telegraphy, for more than even its most ardent champions have yet, as far as I know,   ventured to claim for it”.

Despite all the advances he had seen during his lifetime, whenever anything new came along he would always believe that this was the ultimate, using his great mathematical skills to foresee the results. Yet at times he was far seeing. As far back as 1885 in his first book “Story of The Heavens”,  he says “it does not seem probable that a man could live for one hour on any other body - except Earth.  But, could we obtain a close view of some of the celestial bodies,  we should probably find that they too, teem with life, but with life especially adapted to their environment.  Life in forms strange and weird, stranger even than Dante described or Dore drew.

Ball’s acquisition of status brought him membership of several associations and clubs, including the Athenaeum,  hobnobbing with the likes of George Bernard Shaw, meeting Royalty and heads of government, and being invited to the grandest dinner parties and events on the London social calendar.

A dinner party at Lincoln’s Inn in 1893 included the Prince of Wales, the Prince of Siam, Gladstone and Balfour as well as many other dignitaries.

Of course he still had his Irish connections and was an honorary member of the Common Room at Trinity.    

On several occasions Robert and his brother Charles, the eminent surgeon, were invited to the Greenore estate of Lord Rothmore, and this was written I believe by Mr Justice Ross, on one of these visits: 

To return to his lecture tours, in 1901 he made his most successful trip to the States, giving 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, Richmond, Baltimore, Minneapolis,   Washington, and New York.  Of course he met many important people, and was constantly being invited to dinner. Among those he chose to mention from the astronomical community were Professors Hale, Barnard and Burnham at Yerkes Observatory, Simon Newcomb and Percival Lowell, and one night at the theatre, he was introduced to Mark twain.

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. He must have been the envy of his colleagues.

He was frequently asked if he would honour some of the many amateur astronomical societies that were formed in the latter part of the 19^th century, by becoming chairman or president.  He invariably declined, in Manchester for example, where he was asked to be chairman of the Northwest board of the BAA. I can find only one society where he was an associate member. That was Liverpool, where he joined such notables as Grubb, Schaperelli, Piazzi Smyth, Otto Struve, and the aforementioned Emporer Dom Pedro ll of Brazil.

He must have had remarkable stamina to keep up this seemingly endless round of 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. 

He gave many lectures at venues arranged by the Gilchrist Trust, an educational organisation which took him all over the country, particularly the North of England, especially Yorkshire and Lancashire, where he estimated he had lectured in 200 towns and villages. He once wrote after lecturing to a capacity crowd of 500 in Chipping Norton that he had managed to get 1/8 of the town’s population out to listen to him. Quite an achievement!  All his lectures were sell-outs, but his audiences loved some better than others, a particular favourite was Krakatoa, The Mighty Volcano.  You will remember that it was in 1883 that this volcano caused such devastation, so the event was still fresh in people’s minds during the late 1880’s and 90’s.

In 1907 whilst on holiday in Devon he had cause to write this short note to his son following a request he had received from a local chaplain: 

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!

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, “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 his audience’s reaction to this 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 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.

Robert Ball was not one to publicly court controversy.  He always gave a clear and convincing story to his audience, who went away, assured that what he had told them was in agreement with current scientific thought and practice.   In private however and with his fellow scientists, he knew there was much conflict and he would take sides with one party or another, but never allow his public to hear the opposing view.  Remember they couldn’t go home and hear something different on the radio or TV.

In later life, he delved into politics and at one time was even considering life as an MP.  He was a Unionist, and he had very strong views about Home Rule, which he strongly opposed.

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 to speak, along with other high profile celebrities including Elgar, Earl Grey and William Stead.  The Congress took place in New York between 14 & 17 April. It was suggested to him that perhaps some of them had never thought much on this particular matter of international peace.

“Never mind,” Carnegie answered, “we will make them speak, and then they will have to think about it.”

And then he added, with a twinkle in his eye, “We’ll make them put themselves on record.”

He did make some of them put themselves on record on this subject for the first time, with very good results.

Of the 13 popular books that Ball wrote, two were still in print in the 1940s.

Here is a list of them :-

Astronomy  1877

Elements of Astronomy  1880

The Story of the Heavens  1886

Time and Tide  1889

Starland  1889

Cause of an Ice Age  1892

In the High Heavens  1893

The Story of  the Sun  1893

Great Astronomers  1895

The Earth’s Beginnings  1901

A Premier of Astronomy  1904

A Popular Guide to the Heavens 1905

In Starry Realms  1906

Ball enjoyed good health for most of his life, but did occasionally suffer from lumbago, and his son records that he wrote Story of the Heavens lying on the floor, as this was the only position he found comfortable.

But it is to his son that I must turn for much of what you have heard tonight.  William Valentine Ball was charged by his father to transcribe his notes, diaries and correspondence into a biography of sorts, which he did and published in 1915 as: “Reminiscences and Letters of Robert S Ball”   It is an entertaining book written as Ball had requested “with a kind twist”.

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.  He was, if you like, the Patrick Moore of his day.   

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.  Let us not forget his mathematical accomplishments, which were acknowledged by E T Whittaker, who ranked Ball as one of the greatest mathematicians of his generation.

Ball died on 25 November 1913, aged 73 and is buried in St Giles cemetery, Cambridge, near to his predecessor, John Couch Adams.

Sir Robert would like this

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