An Important Statement from Dr. Kampf, Astronomer by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 14, 1873

An Important Statement from Dr. Kampf, Astronomer.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

WHILE traveling the other day, I had the pleasure to fall in company with a party of the United States Exploring Expedition. Among these was Dr. F. Kampf, astronomer. He has traveled and taken observations over Europe and Asia, is now making observations in America in the employ of our government, and is soon to be sent to Japan by the same authority.

Improving the opportunity, I had a long talk with him concerning the probability of any time, one day, more or less, having been lost in our reckoning for the last twenty-five hundred years. He laughed at the idea, and said it was impossible from the well-known fact that, astronomical calculations of eclipses exactly coincided with the dates of recorded eclipses for at least twenty-five hundred years past. He gave as an example an eclipse recorded on the day of the great battle at Salamis, B. C. 480, and others. Reckoning the eclipses back to this one shows that our record of time since that date is correct.

So with regard to reckoning days and nights at the north pole when it is dark and the sun cannot be seen for weeks together. He said that the time of day or night could be told as easily and as correctly by the position of the stars as by the sun if it were shining. By my request, he wrote me the following letter covering both of these points:—

“Ogden, Utah, Sept. 24, 1873.

“Eld. D. M. Canright: Back computations of eclipses of the sun give the year right. Since Ptolemæus there cannot be one day lost, because his equinoctiums and those composed now back to that time agree. A change or loss of one minute would be found out in this way.

“By observations of the stars the time can be found out at any time, day or night. Knowing the time at which any star ought to be in the meridian, we find the difference between noon and the observing time, or the local time. Stars being visible in the daytime and at night, on all places of the earth, it is possible to determine the time without seeing the sun.

“Signed, Dr. F. Kampf, “Astronomer of the U. S. corps of Engineers.”

Though we all knew these facts before, yet I was glad to obtain a direct statement of them from so high authority. I give them in the REVIEW, that others may use them if they have occasion. D. M. CANRIGHT.