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The Dedication of Meridian Park at the site of the Calais Observatory. Part 1 of 2 The story behind the park goes back some 9 years. Or actually you could say it goes back 152 years to when the Calais Observatory was established by the Coast Survey in 1857. My own awareness is much more recent. I became aware of Calais Observatory simply as a station in the Eastern Oblique Arc, and in fact, a station whose station mark was destroyed in the 1930s. I visited it anyway in 2007, but didn't understand what I was looking at. There was, however a new disk there set by the NGS in 2005, marking the site as #1 on the NGS Heritage Trail. See Calais Observatory Commemorative Station. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Geodetic Survey (NGS), is the successor agency of the Coast Survey set up by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807. I learned from that web page that Calais was the last link in establishing accurate longitude in North America via telegraph. Measurements were made in discreet pieces, , first from Harvard College Observatory to Thomas Hill Observatory in Bangor, Maine in 1851, from Thomas Hill Observatory to Calais Observatory in 1857, and in 1866, with the success of the Transatlantic Telegraph Cable, observations were made from Greenwich Observatory (0-degrees longitude or the Prime Meridian), to Foilhommerum, Valentia Island, Ireland; from Ireland to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, and in the closing days of 1866 the final ‘connection’ was made between Newfoundland and Calais Maine, essentially making the Calais Observatory the ‘golden spike’ of longitude where mathematical longitude determinations between the old and new world met. 1895 saw the last NGS activity at Calais for 110 years (the Coast Survey performed direct observations between Calais and Harvard Observatories) and for many years only the stone supports for the various instruments remained; the building which housed and protected the instruments, hastily built in 1857, was long gone. Then sometime in the early 1930s, about 75 years after the observatory had been built, it is thought that some mischievous kids from the nearby Calais Academy, managed to topple the heavy granite Transit Stone over and send it rolling down the hill. Its significance had long been lost to anyone in the area. But the stone had held the transit used to measure longitude, and with the stone gone, the station was lost, and it was so reported in a 1935 log on the station's data sheet. Another 65 years or so passed when the Maine Maine Department of Transportation (MaineDOT) was surveying for a project along Main Street in Calais. Harold Nelson, who was Project Coordinator for the survey began researching the geodetic control stations in order to tie the survey into State Plane Coordinates. He found one station of curious interest, CALAIS OBSERVATORY 1866. Harold inquired from colleagues at the NGS, exactly what was that, and was told it was a longitude station and that it played an important historic role in establishing accurate longitude in North America. Harold then spent many hours in the University of Maine’s Fogler Library and went back to visit the Calais site in 1998 and discovered a stone at the bottom of the hill that looked like it might be the Transit Stone. He also noticed an interesting spot at the top that had been carved and leveled in the exposed bedrock, next to the mysterious stone pillar that remained at the top. [This entry was edited by Papa-Bear-NYC on Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 8:55:19 AM.]
Photos:
 QF0763 Calais Observatory
Astronomical Transit (at the Smithsonian) of the type used at Calais in the 1850s and 1860s. Note the crank which fit in the groove of the transit stone
QF0763 Calais Observatory
1998 photo showing the site with the carved pad in the bedrock next to the stone pillar. This was what the site looked like since the early 1930s. Photo: Harold Nelson.
QF0763 Calais Observatory
1998 photo showing a granite block at the base of the hill, which was suspected to be the missing transit stone. Photo: Harold Nelson.
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The Dedication of Meridian Park at the site of the Calais Observatory Part 2 of 2 Things moved along till 2005 when the NGS set the heritage disk and the Calais Historical Society was marshalling local support and volunteer efforts to clean up and rehabilitate the site as a park. At this time, the NGS crew took almost 2 hours of GPS readings on the "pad" next to the stone pillar, while the heritage disk was being set nearby, and the local highway department was enlisted to move the stone back up the hill and see if it fit into the pad. Observers say it fit into the pad like a hand in a glove. Harold had by now done research on similar stations, some of which still survive: the Transit Stone held the Astronomical Transit used in longitude determinations, and the pillar held the astronomical clock that was used to transmit a steady series on "ticks" over the telegraph to the station at the other end of the line. Sometime later, the results of the GPS measurement came back. The software used by the NGS, called OPUS, sent back this cryptic note at the bottom of the output from the GPS measurement: NEAREST NGS PUBLISHED CONTROL POINT
QF0763 CALAIS OBSERVATORY N451105.185 W0671650.588 0.0
This position and these vector components were computed without any knowledge by the National Geodetic Survey regarding the equipment
or field operating procedures used.
8002 The Opus solution for your submitted RINEX file appears to be
8002 quite close to an NGS published control point. This suggests that
8002 you may have set your GPS receiver up over an NGS control point.
8002 Furthermore, our files indicate that this control point has not
8002 been recovered in the last five years.
8002 If you did indeed recover an NGS control point, we would
8002 appreciate receiving this information through our web based
8002 Mark Recovery Form at
8002 (visit link) The GPS position taken on the carved pad compared with the latitude and longitude of the CALAIS OBSERVATORY 1866 station showed that the distance between the two points was but .1278 m or just over 5 inches. Considering the GPS was set up in an approximate location estimated by eye to be the center of the pad, and no research was done to discover how the transit was set or positioned on the stone, nor how closely the flagpole on the roof above was positioned, this result is nothing short of astounding. Further research may allow a more accurate determination, but at this point it's clear that the original position of the Transit Stone has been reestablished and the layout of the site is much as it was in 1857, over 150 years ago. I received an email about 2 months ago that the site behind the Calais Academy was to be established as a city park. I was there on August 4th at a seminar giving the background on the station and was immensely impressed by the local group of history buffs, who together with the local elected officials and agencies, and a donor who donated a significant property at the site to the city, made this project happen. And all this cost the City of Calais exactly $0.00 (that's zero dollars and zero cents)! I'm amazed and humbled. Special Recognition: Richard Auletta, who has worked tirelessly on preservation and understanding of the Calais Observatory
Gayle Moholland and the Highway Department of the City of Calais for moving the Transit Stone from the foot of the hill and returning it to the original position.
Jim Porter, City Manager of Calais, who was the first contact Harold Nelson made on a hot July 3, 1998, and has been a supporter of this project from the beginning. Jim provided Harold with a ladder to get to the top of the ‘clock stone’ to see if there were any markings on it.
Mike Johnson and Leonard Scott, property owners of significant portions of the site who each donated land to the city for the park.
[This entry was edited by Papa-Bear-NYC on Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 5:39:52 AM.]
Photos:
QF0763 Calais Observatory
2005 photo showing the GPS set over the pad, while work is going on behind on the heritage disk. Photo: Harold Nelson
QF0763 Calais Observatory
2005 photo showing where the stone had lain for nearly 75 years. Photo: Harold Nelson
QF0763 Calais Observatory
2005 photo showing the local highway department moving the stone into place. Photo: Gayle Moholland
QF0763 Calais Observatory
The site on Aug. 4th, 2009
QF0763 Calais Observatory
The dedication. Harold Nelson is explaining the details. Richard Auletta, president of the Historical Society is on the left and Jim Porter, city manager of Calais in behind in the back center. The transit stone makes a nice podium, don't you think?
QF0763 Calais Observatory
Excerpt from the CGS Annual Report of 1867 relating to the geodetic location of the Calais Observatory, already used for Longitude determination.
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My wife and I took a 10 day vacation to Down East Maine and to the Bay of Fundy. With the myriad of stations in that area I had to be selective in what I went to look for (after all this was a vacation, not a benchmarking trip). I decided to go after two sorts of marks: boundary markers of various sorts, and triangulation stations which where part of the survey for the Eastern Oblique Arc, done in this area in the 1850s. A surprising number of these marks have survived in this area. As noted by NorStar below, the station is lost. The new disk is not the station mark, but is a commemorative disk placed as part of NOAA's celebration of it's 200th anniversary. To repeat: the new disk is not the station mark. I knew this mark was lost, but I visited the site anyway as I was passing through since it was important both as a primary station in the Eastern Oblique Arc and as a point important in establishing accurate longitude in North America. See this link for an account of the setting of the commemorative disk by NOAA in 2005: NOAA Web Site To quote from that web site: On December 16, 1866, the Calais Observatory marked the final piece of the first successful transatlantic telegraphic longitude determination. This was a tremendous advance for the transfer of accurate time across the Atlantic Ocean. It provided for the precise determination of longitude at the Harvard Observatory in Massachusetts, relative to Britain's Greenwich Observatory ... Interestingly, when I asked at the Tourist Information Office for directions to the old Calais Observatory, the woman had never heard of it even though she had lived there all her life. After finding the station and taking my photos, I returned to tell her. She recalled a group had come about two years before and did some sort of dedication. They renamed the vacant lot "Meridian Park", but the name, and the visit has quickly disappeared from local knowledge. Now it's just "That pile of rocks behind the nursing home".
Photos:
QF0763- CALAIS OBSERVATORY, Destroyed, Calais ME
Parts of the old longitude observatory. The original station mark is lost.
QF0763- CALAIS OBSERVATORY, Destroyed. Calais ME
The Commemorative Disk set in 2005. this IS NOT THE STATION MARK, which is unfortunately lost.
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