Charles Mason (1728-1786) Jeremiah Dixon (UK 1733–1779) were both engaged in a project to measure an astronomical event of great importance - the passage of the planet Venus across the face of the Sun. Apparently they got along well for they formed a lasting partnership. Their instructions were to travel to Sumatra and chart the transit there, but after just one night at sea their ship was attacked by a French frigate. They sent a note to their sponsor the Royal Society observing that it seemed awfully dangerous on the high seas and wondering if perhaps the whole thing oughtn’t to be called off. In reply they received a swift and chilly rebuke, noting that they had already been paid, that the nation and scientific community were counting on them, and that their failure to proceed would result in the irretrievable loss of their reputations. Chastened, they sailed on, but en route word reached them that Sumatra had fallen to the French and so they had to observe the transit inconclusively from the Cape of Good Hope. Soon afterwards Mason and Dixon set off for four long and often perilous years surveying their way through 244 miles of dangerous American wilderness to settle a boundary dispute between the estates of William Penn and Lord Baltimore and their respective colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland. The result was the famous Mason and Dixon line, which later took on symbolic importance as the dividing line between the slave and free states. (Although the line was their principal task, they also contributed several astronomical surveys, including one of the century’s most accurate measurements of a degree of meridian — an achievement that brought them far more acclaim in England than the settling of a boundary dispute between spoiled aristocrats.) adapted from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson 2003
Posted on: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 05:04:32 +0000
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