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You're listening to an Airwave

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Media Podcast. If

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you enjoy bizarre true stories, then the

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Useless Information podcast is the podcast for you.

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For example, did you know that author Robert

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Louis Stevenson gave his birthday away? Or that

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there was a football team that played for

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six years before someone realized that the school

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never ever existed? Or that

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a dog in upstate New York was once

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placed on trial for murder? Well, to hear

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these and hundreds of additional fascinating true stories

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from the flip side history, be

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sure to check out the Useless Information podcast.

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That's the Useless Information podcast,

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podcasting worldwide since 2008 and

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available on Apple Podcast, Spotify,

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or wherever you're listening right

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now. Be sure to check it out. Hi,

0:45

I'm Neil. And I'm Lauren. And

0:47

we're the hosts of Curated by Chance, a new

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podcast. I'm an art curator who also

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teaches art history to engineers. And I'm

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a filmmaker and author who loves movies. And

0:56

every week we use three random prompts from our

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trusty algorithm Chance that will help us come up

1:00

with weekly topics to tell each other about,

1:02

whether it be an artwork, a movie, a

1:04

book, a TV show, a Broadway show, or

1:06

even a pop culture event. So listen

1:08

in every week to join us, two good friends

1:10

who aren't going to apologize for excitedly talking about

1:13

the things that we love. The

1:15

next time you get a chance, when you

1:17

find yourself in the middle of nowhere or

1:19

there's a power outage, or you just end

1:21

up somewhere out in the inky new

1:24

moon darkness, look up at the

1:26

night sky, at the moon and the stars, the planets,

1:28

if you know them, the Milky Way, if it's clear

1:30

enough, and let yourself wonder, where

1:34

are we? It's

1:36

a free fall pit in the stomach question,

1:39

isn't it? It engenders,

1:41

I think, this deep sense of

1:43

awe, a feeling where

1:45

the minuscule and the mundane meet

1:47

the grandest of grandeur, somehow without

1:50

paradox, without contradiction. So

1:52

the next time you get a chance, take advantage of

1:54

it, and appreciate that in the grand scheme

1:56

of things, you're very lucky, most

1:59

of the people. people in history, for the vast

2:01

majority of that history, weren't able

2:03

to experience that thing. Because

2:05

to them, the question would have made no sense.

2:09

Not only did most of our ancestors

2:11

conceive of Earth as the center of

2:13

the universe, they also conceived of it

2:16

as the only place in the universe.

2:18

Earth was everything. The heavens might be

2:20

pretty, and they might augur events and

2:22

people and such back home, but they

2:24

were essentially window dressing, decoration. Who

2:27

couldn't go to outer space, couldn't even imagine

2:29

going to outer space, because that wasn't a

2:31

place. And neither were the objects littered about

2:33

in it. Copernicus

2:36

cracked the door open, then Johann Kepler

2:38

and Giordano Bruno, who was among the

2:40

first to consider that places other than

2:42

our own might be out there. Galileo's

2:45

observations of the planets made it even more

2:48

difficult to hold onto geocentrism, but plenty of

2:50

people did, even after Isaac Newton seemingly put

2:52

the issue to bed with his law of

2:54

universal gravity. That was

2:56

in 1687, only a

2:58

few months before the destruction of the

3:01

Parthenon, barely a blink ago.

3:04

Even younger than the question, naturally enough, is

3:07

the answer. Back in

3:09

the second century, Ptolemy, the guy whose geocentric

3:11

model reigned for 1400 years or

3:13

so, had endeavored by a very complex

3:15

process of his own devising to measure

3:17

the distance from the center of the

3:19

universe, i.e. the Earth, to the Sun.

3:22

He ended up calculating the distance between the two

3:24

at roughly 5 million miles, and

3:26

if you're wondering if that was right, there's

3:29

no shame here, not for you at least.

3:31

We reserve our shame for the long dead,

3:33

like Ptolemy, for instance, who was off by

3:35

nearly 90 million miles. Worse

3:38

than Ptolemy, though, were the next 1500 years

3:41

of astronomers who took his word for it. Pretty

3:44

nearly nobody questioned Ptolemy's calculation until Kepler,

3:46

and even he didn't put much into

3:48

it other than saying the distance could

3:50

be further. There

3:53

are, as usual, several conceivable reasons

3:55

why Ptolemy's calculation held such long

3:57

and unwavering sway. For starters,

4:00

he was Ptolemy, one of those

4:02

guys like Galen and Pliny and

4:04

especially fucking Aristotle who were believed

4:06

almost on faith. But there

4:08

was a better reason to buy Ptolemy's

4:10

number. The process he had used to

4:12

arrive at it was correct, and anybody

4:14

who looked into it would have naturally

4:16

concluded that since the process appeared logical,

4:19

the result must be two. Unfortunately,

4:21

it wasn't Ptolemy's formula that was wrong,

4:23

it was his measurements, and that his

4:25

formula was way too sensitive to imprecision,

4:27

which is how he accidentally ended up

4:30

with a distance 5% as

4:32

long as the true one. I think,

4:34

however, that a large part of why

4:37

nobody questioned Ptolemy for so long is

4:39

that it didn't really matter. What

4:42

was the importance of knowing how far away the sun

4:44

was? That was a kind of trivial

4:46

piece of information. Once

4:48

people began to realize and accept that the sun,

4:51

not the earth, was the center of the

4:53

solar system, or maybe even the universe they

4:56

thought, things were different. Suddenly,

4:58

it was a very

5:00

important question indeed. And

5:02

lo and behold, new answers started being

5:05

formulated, within a decade of Galileo looking

5:07

through his telescope. While most

5:09

of them were better than Ptolemy's, they

5:11

were still pretty wrong, and not in

5:13

especially interesting ways. Aside from our old

5:16

pal Christian Huygens, who came up with

5:18

a method that was so wrong, in

5:20

so many ways, that he accidentally got

5:22

pretty darn close. Worse

5:25

than all the measurements, though, was that there

5:27

wasn't much way to pick between the measurements

5:30

to sort out which method was actually best.

5:33

Well, kind of. In

5:36

1663, the Scottish mathematician

5:38

and astronomer James Gregory had

5:40

described a method that seemed

5:42

like the gold standard. Bear

5:45

with me here. Every

5:48

once in a while, a planet moves

5:50

in front of the sun, from the

5:52

perspective of us earthlings. This

5:54

is called a transit. Gregory

5:57

realized that if you had multiple

6:00

people at multiple places around the

6:02

Earth watching such a transit through

6:04

telescopes and all of those people

6:06

marked exactly how long it lasted,

6:08

then you could triangulate the distance

6:10

based on the differences in the

6:12

timing at the different locations. There

6:16

were only a couple of problems with Gregory's

6:18

idea, and chief among them was that there

6:20

wasn't a planetary transit of the Sun between

6:23

the time he came up with his idea

6:26

and the time he died. This

6:28

system would have to wait until 1677 when Mercury made a

6:30

transit. Edmund

6:34

Halley had read Gregory's theory and was

6:37

keen to try it out. He

6:39

took as careful measurements as he could of

6:41

Mercury's 1677 transit. If

6:44

he combined his data with that taken by

6:46

others in different places, he hoped he

6:48

could make good on it and finally

6:51

accurately measure the solar distance. But

6:53

he was the only one.

6:57

Lots of people had watched the transit,

6:59

but nobody else had thought of marking

7:01

the timing. Halley's data by

7:03

itself was useless. He

7:07

also realized though that even if everybody

7:09

had done as he assumed they would,

7:11

they still probably couldn't have worked things

7:13

out. Mercury was simply too

7:15

small and too distant from the Earth.

7:18

Figuring the timing of its transit was therefore

7:21

too imprecise, even if all the other bums

7:23

had tried, which again they hadn't. But

7:26

that was fine. It was all fine.

7:29

Now Halley had a plan. Venus

7:32

was much larger and closer

7:35

than Mercury. And Venus

7:37

also made periodic transits of the Sun.

7:40

When Venus's next transit occurred, Halley

7:42

just had to make sure that

7:44

there were other astronomers out there

7:46

at observatories around the world marking

7:49

the time it took down to

7:51

the second. It

7:53

would be the largest scientific

7:55

expedition ever undertaken,

7:57

and he would need to convince the world to...

8:00

undertake it. Moreover, Howley

8:02

himself would not be a part

8:04

of the operation, because he

8:06

knew Venus wouldn't transit the

8:08

sun until 1761, at which point he would be

8:10

106 years old, and quite dead. That

8:18

hardly deterred him, though. In his old

8:20

age, Howley laid out the exact way

8:22

in which the generation after him could

8:25

accomplish what he could not, and did

8:27

his level best to convince them that

8:29

they should. He

8:31

died in 1742, 20

8:33

years before the transit was set to occur,

8:36

and just in time for dozens of astronomers

8:38

from countries all over Europe to take up

8:40

his challenge. It was

8:42

to be the longest, most

8:44

difficult, arduous project

8:46

in scientific history. It

8:49

would require a degree of international

8:51

cooperation, never seen before, and

8:54

a level of personal sacrifice that

8:56

few, if any, would ever repeat

8:58

again. This

9:06

is The Constant, a history of getting

9:09

things wrong. I'm Mark Chrysler. Today's

9:11

episode, Venus in Transit, part

9:14

one. Two

9:25

questions you might be asking. What's

9:27

so important about learning the distance to

9:29

the sun, and what's so

9:31

hard about determining it? Let's

9:33

take them in order. If you don't

9:35

care where we are, in an existential sense,

9:38

it's hard for my existential ass to get

9:40

in that headspace, but I'm trying, then

9:42

what other value does the distance to the sun

9:44

hold? A lot, actually.

9:47

That distance, which astronomers call

9:49

the astronomical unit, or AU,

9:51

is like the Rosetta Stone

9:53

of the cosmos. Once

9:56

we knew how far Earth was from the sun, it

9:58

would be easy to figure out of

10:00

the planets between the two, Mercury and

10:02

Venus. It would be somewhat trivial to

10:04

work out the orbits of them and

10:06

of Earth. And once you had those,

10:08

you could use Kepler's laws of planetary

10:11

motion to work out the distances and

10:13

orbits of the other farther planets. So

10:15

the whole solar system would basically unlock.

10:18

It goes further than that though. Astronomy

10:20

had by this point worked out that

10:22

the sun was a star like any

10:24

other in the sky. It was just

10:26

a lot closer than the rest. And

10:28

once we knew exactly how close, we

10:30

could start comparing and contrasting to get

10:32

an idea of how far the other

10:35

stars were. And with that, maybe where

10:37

we were not in a planetary sense,

10:39

but in a galactic sense. The

10:41

whole scale of the

10:44

universe depended on first

10:46

revealing the astronomical unit.

10:49

That is what made it important,

10:52

but what made it hard. You

10:56

need a couple of astronomers in a

10:58

couple different places to set up telescopes,

11:00

watch Venus cross in front of the

11:02

sun and note the time. What's the

11:04

big deal? I'll tell you what the big

11:06

deal is. And there are several.

11:10

For starters, the astronomers in question

11:12

under so that they couldn't just

11:14

pick any old places for the

11:16

job. The transit would only be

11:18

visible in certain locations. And as

11:20

luck would have it, barely any of

11:23

those places were easy for 18th

11:25

century European astronomers to get to.

11:27

Siberia, the Arctic Circle, the deepest

11:29

malarial jungles of Central America, the

11:31

very Southern tip of Africa, the

11:33

Indian Ocean, the South Pacific. And

11:36

it wasn't enough to just get to one

11:38

of those places and erect a telescope. You

11:40

needed to know the exact and precise longitude

11:42

and latitude of your location down to the

11:45

second. If you've listened to

11:47

our long story short series, you know how

11:49

hard that was. If you haven't, why

11:52

not? People really like that one. And it's going

11:54

to get referenced a lot of times in this

11:56

story. In fact,

11:58

we can reference it again right now. The

12:00

date of the transit was to be June 6th,

12:02

1761, but

12:05

the astronomers would have to be in place

12:07

well before that to put together their observatories

12:09

and to pinpoint their coordinates. On

12:12

the day, the clearest way to collect

12:14

the data would be to mark the

12:17

exact time Venus touched the sun, a

12:19

moment known as first contact. If everybody

12:21

synced up their clocks and did that

12:23

from various locations, they'd have all they

12:26

needed by comparing those times. But if

12:28

you've listened to the long story short,

12:30

you know that there was absolutely no

12:33

way they could do this because in

12:35

1761, there was precisely one clock in

12:39

the whole world that could keep time at sea

12:41

well enough for this task. And it was

12:44

in the middle of its first long distance

12:46

test across the Atlantic when the transit occurred.

12:49

So the expeditions would need

12:51

another more precarious method. The

12:54

second best way would be to

12:56

time the entire transit. When

12:59

it began, it would run for roughly seven hours

13:01

depending on where you were in the world. The

13:03

exact length was what they were trying to find

13:05

out. To do that, they

13:08

would need to mark the very moment

13:10

that Venus was fully in front of

13:12

the sun, second contact, and then the

13:14

last moment before it started to pass

13:16

outside of it, third contact. Ideally,

13:19

Halley had figured they needed those

13:21

times down to within two seconds.

13:24

If they missed either one, if their timing

13:26

was off, if it was cloudy, if they

13:28

fucking blinked for too long, then that was

13:30

that. One set of data

13:32

down the tubes and one wasted expedition. It

13:35

was assumed that some of them

13:38

would fail, whether alone practically assured

13:40

it. But for each missing

13:42

data point, the conclusion would become

13:44

less confident. The astronomical unit would

13:46

be a little more hazy. If

13:49

enough of them failed, the whole thing would be

13:51

a wash. There

13:54

was a spot of good news. Tranits

13:56

of Venus come in pairs. So

13:59

the astrology of Venus Astronomers would get a second

14:01

shot at it, almost exactly eight

14:03

years later, on June 3rd, 1769. The

14:08

bad news was that if they didn't

14:10

get enough data then, that was

14:12

the ballgame. Transits of

14:14

Venus come in pairs, but those pairs

14:16

are separated by long

14:18

interregnums. After

14:21

1769, the next pair wouldn't occur until

14:23

1874 and 1882. After

14:27

that, there would not be any until 2004 and

14:30

2012. So

14:34

it was really do or die. The

14:36

other spot of good news is that, unlike

14:38

Halley's observations of Mercury, this time people knew

14:40

what they had to do. In

14:42

large part because of Halley. Institutes

14:45

of Science across Europe coordinated to

14:47

build teams and plans, and coordinated

14:49

in hopes that between them all,

14:51

they'd get the coverage necessary. The

14:55

other spot of bad news, however, was

14:57

that just as all this goodwill

14:59

and planning and cooperation was swinging

15:01

into gear, Europe descended into

15:03

war on a scale it had never

15:05

seen before. The Seven Years

15:07

War broke out in 1756, and

15:10

nearly every nation in Europe was eventually

15:13

drawn into it. The fighting was

15:16

almost global, the prototype of the World Wars

15:18

of the 20th century. The

15:20

two main belligerents were also, ironically,

15:23

the two main sponsors of

15:25

the Expeditions, Britain and

15:27

France. We've

15:30

got the makings of some good drama

15:32

here, huh? The stakes, the key to

15:34

understanding the solar system and the universe,

15:36

the complications, remote locations,

15:39

difficult and precise tasks, dangerous

15:41

journeys, and enemy forces. Now

15:45

how about the characters? The players? There

15:48

are a bunch of them, and a lot will be

15:50

familiar, especially if you've been listening to this show for

15:52

a while, in which case, get

15:54

ready to reunite with some old friends

15:56

and even more old enemies. After

15:59

this. 10

16:02

seconds on the clock. How

16:25

many things can you name that are always growing?

16:29

My baby? The universe?

16:32

And entropy in a closed system? How

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grow your business. and

32:00

settled the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland,

32:02

which became known as, oh,

32:06

that Mason and Dixon. One

32:10

clouded over trip to St. Helena and

32:12

a half measurement in Cape Town. That

32:14

was it for the British contribution. The

32:16

Royal Society didn't like that France and

32:18

Sweden were sending out more expeditions than

32:20

them, but you couldn't get blood from

32:22

a stone and the society's coffers were

32:24

extremely stony. So they were thrilled when

32:26

one of those weirdo American colonials volunteered

32:28

to view the transit on Massachusetts dime.

32:36

John Winthrop thought he could make

32:38

that happen probably because of his name.

32:41

His great-great grandfather, also named John Winthrop,

32:43

had essentially fathered the colony and his

32:45

famous city upon a hill speech had

32:48

more or less defined American values

32:50

for, well, certainly

32:52

through Reagan. John

32:56

Winthrop, senior, senior, senior, was

32:58

a fundamentalist religious scold, the

33:00

purest of Puritans. John Winthrop,

33:02

junior, junior, junior was not.

33:06

In 1755, the city of Lisbon was

33:08

all but destroyed when it was struck

33:10

by a massive earthquake, a massive tsunami,

33:13

and a massive fire all in one

33:15

night, killing tens of thousands in a

33:17

disaster that had no known precedent. The

33:20

city's destruction seemed to Voltaire, a

33:22

proof that God couldn't be both

33:24

benevolent, active, and watchful, but others

33:26

tried to explain away the scale

33:28

of carnage as God's vengeance against

33:30

the impudent Catholics of Portugal. They

33:32

noted that the tribulations had arrived

33:34

on All Saints Day and that

33:36

nearly every Catholic church had been

33:38

raised to the ground. Winthrop's

33:41

grandpappy would have been happy to blame

33:43

the darn papists, but he was not.

33:46

A protege of Benjamin Franklin and mentor

33:48

to John Adams, Winthrop was the only

33:50

prominent voice in the moment who sought

33:53

to explain the Lisbon earthquake in natural

33:55

terms. His thinking on the

33:57

matter influenced the later work of Immanuel

33:59

Kant and had... sometimes earned him the

34:01

title, Father of Seismology. Winthrop

34:04

heard about Delisle's plan and saw on his

34:06

map a place he might get to in

34:08

order to see the full transit. But as

34:10

with every character in this story, there

34:13

were difficulties. By the time Winthrop

34:15

thought up his own expedition, there was

34:17

precious little time to make it. Furthermore,

34:19

he couldn't just bounce over to Newfoundland.

34:21

He'd need a ship, which Massachusetts would

34:23

have to provide him, and instruments, which

34:25

he would have to borrow from Harvard.

34:29

The details took time he barely had.

34:31

The Seven Years' War, which was making

34:33

things so hard on Mason and Dixon

34:35

and some of the other European voyages,

34:37

was also being fought between the British

34:39

colonies and French Canada, exactly where Winthrop

34:42

needed to go. So

34:44

he needed an order of protection that

34:46

would actually, like, work. The

34:48

whole bureaucratic business was only resolved about

34:51

two weeks before the transit, and Winthrop

34:53

had to hot-foot it up to Canada

34:55

basically the moment clearance came through. Travel

34:58

and setup were blessedly uneventful, and

35:00

for his trouble, John Winthrop had

35:02

the first scientific expedition ever completed

35:04

in the Americas. And

35:06

he was able to view the entire

35:09

transit from start to finish. It

35:12

wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, though.

35:15

Massachusetts was such a backwater, and

35:17

Harvard such a cow pile, that

35:20

Winthrop's equipment was hopelessly outdated. He'd

35:22

brought with him the best and

35:24

most accurate clock in North America.

35:26

Unfortunately, what that meant was that

35:28

it was a hundred years old

35:30

and the size of a refrigerator.

35:35

Winthrop was disappointed in the

35:37

imprecision of his measurements. He

35:40

was supposed to start timing the moment

35:42

that Venus was fully in front of

35:44

the sun, second contact, but at that

35:46

moment, something upset his efforts. There

35:49

was some sort of sticky,

35:51

dark shadow, like a tar patch

35:53

gumming up the edge between Venus

35:55

and the sun. It

35:57

made it impossible to pinpoint the moment.

44:00

nearsighted and a drunk. Oh well, nevertheless

44:02

he volunteered and that was about as

44:04

good as you could hope for. Like

44:11

Mason and Dixon, Pingray was protected by

44:13

a diplomatic letter which warned any hostile

44:16

parties to leave him alone. And

44:18

like Mason and Dixon, it did him a

44:21

fat lot of good. Within weeks of setting

44:23

to see, Pingray's ship was born down upon

44:25

by a massive British warship. He was saved,

44:28

not by his order of protection, but

44:30

because of a blessedly early nightfall which

44:32

the captain used to slink away under.

44:35

It was an inauspicious beginning, but after

44:38

that Pingray found himself enjoying life at

44:40

sea immensely, particularly all the drinking, as

44:42

well as placing bets with the ship's

44:44

navigator on which of them could do

44:46

better at keeping them from running into

44:48

islands in the middle of the night.

44:51

And a game where he and the sailors

44:53

would try to capture seagulls in

44:55

order to write dirty messages on them, I truly

44:57

do not know, but I'm thinking the booze had

44:59

a part. When they

45:02

passed Cape Town, they played a

45:04

new game called Whiplash. They spotted

45:06

a ship. Uh-oh, the ship was

45:08

French. Hooray! It had just been

45:10

attacked by the British. Uh-oh, but

45:12

had managed to escape. Hooray! Not

45:14

before taking serious damage though. Uh-oh,

45:16

and now they were in need

45:18

of an escort. Double

45:20

Uh-oh, and their captain

45:23

outranked Pingrays. That's the

45:25

Uh-oh ball game. In

45:27

spite of Pingray's extremely vocal protests,

45:30

his transport had just been commandeered

45:32

for a very, very,

45:35

very slow consort mission

45:37

to Mauritius. They

45:39

arrived a month before the transit and made

45:42

a quick turnaround for the short trip to

45:44

Rodrique. Nothing to worry about. Except

45:46

the ship got stuck in the doldrums,

45:49

and the short trip to Rodrique ended

45:51

up taking nearly 20 days. Pingray

45:59

had arrived on the location with barely

46:01

a moment to spare. There

46:03

was no observatory on Rodriquet. There

46:05

was barely anything on Rodriquet. The

46:09

French were only interested in Rodriquet as

46:11

a source of tortoises, which a small

46:13

number of Marines were left on the

46:15

island to collect and send to Mauritius,

46:18

where they could be used as living

46:20

food stores for ships or for medicinal

46:22

purposes at the Mauritius Hospital. What

46:25

medicinal purposes? I don't know and

46:27

I don't want to know. Why don't you

46:29

darken your soul with horrible research instead of

46:31

me for once? Pingree

46:34

and his assistants immediately started trying to

46:37

put together an observatory, but as they

46:39

unloaded and opened up his instruments, they

46:41

found that everything was gunked and caked

46:44

and ground with salt and sand. The

46:46

clock, the sextant, the telescope, everything had

46:48

to be taken apart, disassembled to its

46:51

smallest component, cleaned, washed, and rebuilt. There

46:53

was no time to erect an observatory.

46:55

If they were lucky, they'd have a

46:58

working clock in a tent in time,

47:01

which by working non-stop for the next

47:03

10 days, they did. It wasn't

47:05

much. It was the very opposite of much,

47:08

but Pingree didn't care about creature comforts as

47:10

long as he was buzzed. What

47:13

mattered was that in spite of everything, he

47:15

was ready to view the transit of Venus.

47:18

Just in time. For

47:21

it to rain. After

47:28

months of travel, the Rodrígé

47:30

mission was rained out. Pingree

47:33

stayed by his telescope the whole

47:35

time, hoping to see something, anything.

47:37

He did. The clouds broke a couple

47:39

of times and he was able to make

47:41

some jerry-rigged measurements, but they were hardly

47:44

worth everything Pingree and his assistants and the crew had

47:46

gone through. So he

47:48

lied, told them all it had worked, that

47:51

they'd gotten everything he needed. Hooray!

47:53

went the crew. They partied and drank

47:55

all night. They

47:59

planned to stay on in Rodríguez for a few

48:01

weeks to get their exact coordinates, measure

48:03

the relative gravity, collect some plants and

48:06

animals, that sort of stuff. There was

48:08

no rush. The seas were dangerous, full

48:10

of British ships. The island, conversely, was

48:12

safe and warm and paradigic. Pingre

48:18

had never been anywhere like it. The

48:24

British found the expedition three weeks after the

48:26

transit. They

48:29

burnt one of the boats and stole the other one. Pingre

48:32

was marooned for three months until another

48:34

French ship showed up and found him.

48:37

By then, his feelings had reversed. Several

48:39

other British warships had happened upon them

48:41

in the meantime, each of whom had

48:43

harassed and looted the crew. Forget

48:46

the island life. Now Pingre wanted the safety

48:48

of the ocean where at least one could

48:50

run from their enemies. But

48:52

not fast enough. As his

48:54

new conveyance was making its way by

48:57

the Straits of Gibraltar, it was spotted

48:59

by a British vessel, attacked, defeated and

49:01

captured, along with Alexander Guy Pingre. He

49:04

was taken as a prisoner to Lisbon,

49:06

where he was set free only after

49:08

the English and Portuguese had gotten through

49:10

looting whatever was left of his instruments,

49:13

tools and collections. Forget

49:15

ships. Forget islands. Alexander Pingre

49:17

decided that he and his

49:19

assistants would travel by land

49:21

now. They crossed through all

49:23

of Portugal and all of Spain

49:25

on a weary ox cart over

49:27

broken roads and across the Pyrenees

49:29

before they finally reached France. In

49:32

his journal, Pingre noted the exact length

49:34

of the journey. One year,

49:36

three months, 18 days, 19 hours and 53 minutes.

49:43

For those not keeping track, things aren't

49:46

going too well. Mescaline's trip was

49:48

a total bust. Pingre's almost as useless.

49:50

Mason and Dixon had made it halfway

49:52

and seen half the transit. Laminasov had

49:54

gotten a good look, but that was

49:56

his bitter little secret. And John Winthrop

49:58

had seen the whole- transit from

50:00

Newfoundland but wasn't sure about the accuracy

50:03

of his century-old instruments. That

50:05

left Le Gentile in India and

50:08

Chapay in Siberia. Le

50:10

Gentile, well again, let's come back

50:12

to Le Gentile, suffice it to say that

50:14

he did not get good measurements of the

50:16

transit. Everything was

50:19

down to Jean-Baptiste Chapay.

50:26

Chapay was a good deal younger than

50:28

Pingray, 32, and he had neither traveled

50:31

before nor gotten involved with a heretical

50:33

band of radical Augustinians. He'd

50:35

had a pretty uneventful life, really, joining

50:37

the Jesuits before earning a job as

50:40

assistant astronomer at the Royal Observatory in

50:42

Paris. But he craved adventure, and

50:44

he was about to get it by the bowlful. The

50:48

Academy booked passage for Chapay on a Dutch

50:50

schooner, which managed not to be attacked by

50:52

either the French or the British. It

50:55

did, however, run aground on a

50:57

sandbar. Fortunately, Chapay had missed

50:59

the boat, literally, and was instead forced

51:01

to travel over land. In

51:04

his writings, he considered this a bit

51:06

of good fortune, although that is arguable.

51:11

The journey would cover more than 4,000 miles. The

51:15

impracticality of this smacked Chapay in the

51:17

face after the first week. He'd

51:20

only made it to the Austrian border, and

51:22

in the process, most of his sensitive equipment

51:24

had broken or busted on the rocky road.

51:27

He then traveled by river, he traveled

51:30

by cart, he traveled by sled, making

51:32

slow and arduous progress all the way.

51:35

But Chapay was full of pluck and

51:37

vim, performing little experiments and taking minor

51:39

measurements at every location he passed through,

51:41

thrilled to be out in the world

51:43

even when the world showed the feeling

51:45

was less than mutual. He

51:48

reached St. Petersburg in February, with little time

51:50

to spare. He was greeted by a bunch

51:52

of bad news. First of all,

51:55

the two astronomers chosen to head up the Venus

51:57

transit were elbow deep in some petty squabble that

51:59

Chapay wisely decided to avoid. Worse,

52:03

the letter from the Royal Academy informing the

52:05

Imperial Academy that he was coming had apparently

52:07

been lost in the mail. It was too

52:10

late now, the Russian authorities said. The manpower

52:12

they had promised the Academy had been diverted.

52:15

Chappé would need a half ton or

52:17

more of extra provisions from food down

52:19

to bedding. He'd need to cross the

52:21

Ural Mountains in late winter and the

52:24

great expansive plains of Siberia where winter

52:26

was practically omnipresent. He'd need guides and

52:28

dogs and horses and coats for God's

52:30

sake. And he'd need to do it

52:32

all before the thaw when the rivers

52:35

would overrun and the ground would turn

52:37

to impassable mud. It

52:39

was impossible, they said, better to

52:41

stay in St. Petersburg with Lomonasov

52:43

and Aepinus. Ew, Chappé

52:45

didn't like that one bit. Those two were

52:48

nutcases. And anyway, he knew from the map

52:50

that he needed to be further east to

52:52

get a measurement good enough. So

52:54

he bothered the French embassy who bothered

52:56

the Russian government who bothered the Imperial

52:58

Academy. And altogether they got Chappé everything

53:00

he needed to make the trip except

53:02

for the huge quantity of luck. Chappé

53:05

would need to supply that himself. He

53:08

did too. Chappé

53:14

made good time over the Ural's. He

53:17

worked his horses hard, replacing them with fresh

53:19

ones on the rare occasion that he and

53:21

his guides stumbled upon a safe haven. He

53:23

took the front when they forded rivers breaking

53:25

up ice to carve a path. His

53:28

guides proved to be the biggest trouble. One

53:30

morning Chappé awoke to find that they had

53:32

ditched him and were hiding in a nearby

53:34

woods. Chappé, indefatigable as ever,

53:36

loaded up a gun and tracked them

53:39

down, threatening to shoot them if they

53:41

didn't get back on track. So

53:43

they did. And together they made

53:45

it to the town of Tobolsk on

53:47

April 10th, nearly two months in advance

53:50

of the transit and more critically, just

53:52

days before the Thaw. The

53:54

Thaw was early and the Thaw was extreme.

53:57

The rivers overflowed and flooded parts of

53:59

Tobolsk as well as the farmlands. This

54:01

in itself did not present a threat

54:03

to Chappé. The reaction

54:05

of the Tobolskians, however, did. They'd

54:07

never seen a thaw like it,

54:10

and it followed directly behind this

54:12

strange Frenchman with his mysterious gizmos

54:14

and a mission they didn't fully

54:16

grasp, except that it had something

54:18

to do with the sun. Did

54:23

the people of Tobolsk really think Chappé was

54:26

responsible for the heat wave? Or did they

54:28

simply figure that killing him couldn't hurt? Maybe

54:30

they just didn't like the French. Whatever the

54:33

case, a mob formed, threatened to

54:35

burn down the observatory before Chappé

54:37

could fully complete it and to

54:39

burn down Chappé too. But

54:41

his ebullient spirit and infectious optimism

54:43

protected him. He

54:46

had charmed the local bishop and territorial governor,

54:48

convincing them of the importance of his task.

54:51

He'd even erected a special telescope just for

54:53

them so that they could watch the transit

54:55

too. In turn, they dispatched

54:57

a unit of Cossacks to keep guard

55:00

over him and his observatory. After

55:02

2,000 miles, crossed by

55:05

cart and boat and sleigh and

55:07

sledge over mountains, over rivers, through

55:09

snow and ice and bureaucracy and

55:11

desertion and lynch mobs, Jean-Baptiste Chappé

55:13

had made it. He

55:15

rose with the sun on the morning of June

55:17

6th, not having slept on account

55:19

of his exuberant excitement. The

55:27

moment of the observation was now at hand.

55:29

I was seized with a universal shivering and

55:32

was obliged to collect all my thoughts in

55:34

order not to miss it. Pleasures

55:36

of the like nature may sometimes be

55:38

experienced, but at this instant, I truly

55:40

enjoyed that of my observation and was

55:42

delighted with the hopes of its being

55:44

still useful to posterity when I had

55:46

quitted this life. It

55:49

was a sentiment he would return to

55:51

less happily eight years later, but nevermind

55:53

that. Chappé had done it, recorded the

55:55

full transit to the best of his

55:57

abilities. Now the question was, Would

56:00

it be enough? With only

56:02

a couple of good measurements in the

56:04

northern hemisphere, along a thin band of

56:06

latitude and only the partial observations of

56:09

Mason and Dixon in the south, would

56:11

the data be robust enough to settle

56:13

the astronomical unit and unlock the dimensions

56:15

of the solar system? The

56:18

task fell to Thomas Hornsby, astronomer

56:20

at Oxford's Corpus Christi College, to

56:22

work out. Hornsby had

56:24

himself observed what he could of the

56:26

transit from his observatory in Sherburne Castle

56:29

in Oxfordshire. It

56:31

took five years for him to gather and

56:33

analyze the rest of the data, from Chappé

56:35

and Mason and Dixon and Winthrop and the

56:37

rest, except for that asshole Lomonasoff, of course,

56:39

but in 1766 he

56:42

published the results in the Philosophical

56:44

Transactions, the journal of the Royal

56:46

Society. In short, no,

56:49

it had not been enough. The failed

56:52

journeys and the bad weather had proven too

56:54

much. They would have to do it all

56:56

again, with more men, more expeditions,

56:58

and less than three years to

57:00

organize. 1761

57:03

was a failure, but with a little luck and

57:05

a lot of elbow grease, 1769 could be a success

57:09

and maybe things would go

57:11

easier the second time. They

57:14

did not. That's

57:19

next time on Venus in Transit Part

57:21

2. Music

57:27

for today's episode provided by Blue Dot

57:30

Sessions, Epidemic Sound, and Lee Rose Veer.

57:33

Can't wait to hear part two? Well, you have

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this has been The Constant.