John Mackenzie Bacon
Reverend John Mackenzie Bacon, FRAS (19 June 1846 – 26 December 1904) was an English astronomer, aeronaut, and lecturer.
Background[edit]
John was the son of John Bacon, the Vicar of Woodlands St Mary in Berkshire, and grandson of John Bacon, the sculptor.[1]
Studies[edit]
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1888.[2] Bacon and John Nevil Maskelyne filed a patent for inflating balloons.[3] He died in Cold Ash in Berkshire.
Eclipses[edit]
Both John and his daughter Gertrude were members of the British Astronomical Association.[4] The BAA organised expeditions to observe total solar eclipses, which John and Gertrude went on. The first was to Vadso, Lapland (eclipse date 9 August 1896), which was unsuccessful due to cloudy weather.[5] The second was to Buxar, India (eclipse date 22 January 1898).[6] Here they succeeded in filming the eclipse, but unfortunately the film has been lost. [7] The Bacons also went on a ballon flight in November 1899 piloted by Stanley Spencer to observe the Leonid meteors. The flight took off from Newbury at 4:00am on Thursday 16 November and drifted westward with the flight ending near Neath. Very few meteors were observed however.[8] A third eclipse expedition was to Wadesborough, North Carolina (eclipse date 28 May 1900) and was also successful.[9][10]
References[edit]
- ^ Ford, David Nash (2020). West Berkshire Town and Village Histories. Wokingham: Nash Ford Publishing. pp. 2676–277. ISBN 9781905191031.
- ^ "Obituary Notice: Fellows:- Bacon, John Mackenzie". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 65: 334. 1905. Bibcode:1905MNRAS..65..334.. doi:10.1093/mnras/65.4.334.
- ^ French patent 332409 (1903) at European Patent Office site
- ^ "1905JBAA...15..128. Page 128". articles.adsabs.harvard.edu. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
- ^ "Expedition for the Observation of the Total Solar Eclipse, August 9th, 1896. Introduction". Memoirs of the British Astronomical Association. 6: 1. 1898. Bibcode:1898MmBAA...6....1.
- ^ E. Walter Maunder, F. r a s (1899). The Indian Eclipse, 1898.
- ^ Bottomore, Stephen. "John Mackenzie Bacon". Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. Retrieved 4 May 2007.
- ^ Wide World Magazine. Robarts - University of Toronto. London.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ Haines, Catharine M. C. (2001). International women in science: a biographical dictionary to 1950. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1576070905.
- ^ British Astronomical Association; Maunder, E. Walter (Edward Walter) (1901). The total solar eclipse, 1900; report of the expeditions organized by the British astronomical association to observe the total solar eclipse of 1900, May 28. University of California Libraries. London, "Knowledge" office.
External links[edit]
- Works by John Mackenzie Bacon at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about John Mackenzie Bacon at Internet Archive
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