John Mackenzie Bacon
Reverend John Mackenzie Bacon, FRAS (19 June 1846 – 26 December 1904) was an English astronomer, aeronaut, and lecturer.
Background
[edit | edit source]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 | edit source]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 | edit source]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 Vadsø in Finnmark, Norway (eclipse date 9 August 1896), which was unsuccessful due to cloudy weather.[5] The second was to Buxar in 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
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- ^ French patent 332409 (1903) at European Patent Office site
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External links
[edit | edit source]- Works by John Mackenzie Bacon at Project Gutenberg
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