'The Stationery Man'

 'The Stationery Man'

Warren de La Rue (1815 - 1889)

Collodion

Warren de La Rue was England’s first Astrophotographer. In 1851 during the ‘Great Exhibition’ held at the Crystal Palace in London, he saw Daguerreotypes of the Moon taken by William Cranch Bond and John Adams Whipple. The sight of these images of our nearest celestial neighbour was a turning point in his life, so much so that they inspired him to devote all his energies to replicate and improve upon them.

One year later he had done just that, as Lady Margaret Huggins later wrote:

“In 1852 Mr. De La Rue, working in his little garden at Canonbury with a 13-inch reflector and availing himself of the Collodion process, succeeded in obtaining a really excellent picture of the Moon; and to him therefore belongs the credit of first employing the Collodion process in celestial photography, as well as that of obtaining the first very valuable success in lunar photography.”

In the years which followed he was to do even better, ultimately becoming the’ Greatest Astrophotographer of his age’.

It was however his work on the construction and subsequent use of the ‘Kew Photoheliograph’ – the first telescope built specifically to image the Sun - where his greatest legacy is to be found.

Shoreditch

Warren de La Rue was born on the 18^th January 1815 at St. Peters Port, Guernsey, the first child of Thomas de La Rue an ambitious printer and his wife Jane Warren; a native of the village of Bishops Nympton in Devonshire, England.

In about 1818 when Warren was barely three years old Thomas de La Rue moved with his family to England and set up home at No. 45 Crown Street, in the Shoreditch area of London. He obviously felt that better prospects awaited him amongst the teeming streets of London’s metropolis and he was right. His first business was not in printing but in the manufacture of ‘Leghorn’ straw hats.

The young Warren de La Rue grew up in Shoreditch with his younger brothers and sisters. His parents gave birth to ten children in all, of whom only six survived into adulthood. It was not long before Warren was sent abroad for his education at the Collège Sainte Barbe, Paris; his father took the view that his son would receive better tuition if it was French and not English.

Whilst Warren was at school his father’s business activities went from strength to strength. He gave up the straw hat manufacturing business; and n 1830 together with Samuel Cornish and William Rock he founded a business of playing card makers, hot pressers and enamellers. De la Rue’s was the first company to begin printing playing cards, and it received a Royal Patent to do so in 1831. The following year the company printed its first deck of cards.

Bunhill Row

In 1833, Thomas de La Rue and his partners rented premises at 110 Bunhill Row, London where they established a wholesale and fancy stationers business.

By the time of the 1841 Census Warren de La Rue was married and actively employed in his father’s business at Bunhill Row. He had married Georgiana Bowles, a native of Guernsey at the Parish church of Saint Luke’s, Old Street, London on the 17^th February 1840, and was living at nearby Artillery Row, giving his occupation as a Card Manufacturer.

From an early age Warren de La Rue showed remarkable aptitude for anything mechanical or electrical, despite having received no known training in these areas. He stayed a number of years in Paris only returning to help run his father’s business activities. When he was just 21 Warren wrote his first scientific paper dated the 15^th September 1836, entitled ‘On Voltaic Electricity and on the Effects of a Battery charged with Sulphate of Copper”, which was published in the December edition of the Philosophical Magazine for that year.

His other talent which he exhibited from an early age was the ability to draw with complete accuracy anything he saw or wanted to describe. In 1838 he was given a commission for the design and construction of a large White Lead Works. Warren de La Rue not only produced the Architectural Drawings for the project, but also managed to do so without any alterations being required in his design. An achievement that only rarely happens today even with all the computerized tools and planning techniques available to the modern architect!

His great mechanical acumen was also apparent to all when he first turned his attention to Astronomy in about 1840.

The famous amateur astronomer James Nasmyth described a meeting with Warren de La Rue which took place at Nasmyth’s home in Patricroft, Eccles, Lancashire:

"I well remember the visit I received from my dear friend Warren De la Rue in the year 1840. I was executing some work for him with respect to a new process which he had contrived for the production of white lead. I was then busy with the casting of my 13-inch speculum. He watched my proceedings with earnest interest and most careful attention. He told me many years after that it was the sight of my special process of casting a sound speculum that in a manner caused him to turn his thoughts to practical astronomy, a subject in which he has exhibited such noble devotion as well as masterly skill. Soon after his visit I had the honour of casting for him a 13-inch speculum, which he afterwards ground and polished by a method of his own."

Indeed it was James Nasmyth he fired Warren de La Rue’s interest in Astronomy. The admission of this fact is contained in a letter to him from Cranford in 1864, in which he says:

"No one has so great a claim on the fruit of my labours; for you inoculated me with the love of star-gazing, and gave me invaluable aid and advice in figuring specula."

The earliest known published account of de La Rue’s interest in the heavens was when the following brief note appeared in the December 1850 edition of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society:

“A very beautiful drawing of Saturn, by Mr. De La Rue, as seen in his 13-inch reflector will be exhibited at the January meeting. It fully confirms Mr. Bond’s discovery and Mr. Dawes’s sketch.”

The discovery referred to, was of the so called ‘Crepe Ring’ by William Cranch Bond and his son, George Phillips Bond of Harvard.

This brief note was followed up in the same issue of the MNRAS with an account of his methods for sketching Double Stars:

Note from Mr. Warren De la Rue.

" I have been in the habit, for some time past, of making drawings of the double stars on small black discs, which are cut out from paper which has been previously gummed at the back, and found them so convenient that I sent several to my friends Mr. Lassell and Mr. James Nasmyth. Those gentlemen were pleased with them; and the latter begged me to bring them before the notice of your Society, thinking that observers would be glad of the suggestion. In illustration of their use, I have sent my copy of Smyth's ' Bedford Catalogue,' which contains drawings of several double and multiple stars, as seen with my 13-inch equatorial reflector of 10-feet focal length.”

It was clear that by 1850 Warren de La Rue not only had a great passion for Astronomy, but had also become friends with some of the leading figures in British Astronomy of the time, notably James Nasmyth and William Lassell, and more importantly had favorably impressed the astronomical elite in the Royal Astronomical Society, so much so that he was elected a Fellow on the 14^th March 1851.

As yet he had shown no inclination to venture in astrophotography. This was to change with the coming of the ‘Great Exhibition’ of 1851, held at the Crystal Palace, near Hyde Park, London. At the exhibition Warren de La Rue was there as an exhibitor, demonstrating his envelope folding machine which he had invented some five years earlier. As fate would have it, a nearby exhibit was showing some photographs of the Moon which had been taken by William Cranch Bond, the Director of the Harvard College Observatory and the Daguerreotypist John Adams Whipple.

This was a turning point in Warren de La Rue’s life, as Lady Margaret Huggins later wrote in 1890:

“It was the sight of these very promising photographs which first gave the impulse to Mr. De la Rue's labours in this direction, and to the new field of research thus revealed, he at once devoted himself with an intelligent skill that soon made him the foremost pioneer of celestial photography in this country.”

Canonbury

By the time of the 1851 Census, Warren de La Rue and his family had moved to No. 7 St. Mary’s Street, Canonbury, Islington. The information given to the census enumerator who called at his house on the 31^st March 1851 is very illuminating in a number of respects.

On the personal level it shows that he was bringing up a young family – at the time it consisted of a daughter and two sons, but would eventually include two more sons. Surprisingly in the entry for occupation a great amount of information is provided, much more than is usually given. It states that Warren de la Rue was a Fellow of the Royal Society (elected in the previous years 1850), and that he was employed in the areas of Chemistry, Mechanics, Card Manufacturer, Engineer and a Wholesale Stationers business employing 410 people.

This revealing insight into his life showed that he was very much involved in his father’s considerable business activities; and that his scientific achievements in a number of disciplines were by 1851 becoming universally recognized in the highest of scientific circles.

At the ‘Great Exhibition’ a new photographic process called the Wet Collodion was introduced to the world by the photographer and sculptor Frederick Scott Archer. This new process over the next few years replaced the existing Daguerreotype and Calotype methods.

Warren de La Rue was quick to make use of Archer’s method, and enlisted the help of his friend Mr. William Henry Thornthwaite whose optical retail outlet in Newgate Street, London - ‘Horne, Thornthwaite & Wood’ supplied the Collodion mixture ready made up. By the end of 1852 he had succeeded in obtaining a number of tolerable positive collodion images of the Moon, on which he later remarked:

“In taking these early photographs, I was assisted by my friend Mr. Thornthwaite who was familiar with the employment of the new medium (collodion). At that period, I had not applied any mechanical driving motion to the telescope, so that I was constrained to contrive some other means of following the Moon's apparent motion; this was accomplished by hand; in the first instance by keeping a lunar crater always on the wire of the finder by means of the ordinary hand gear of the telescope, but afterwards by means of a sliding frame fixed in the eyepiece holder, the motion of the slide being adjustable to suit the apparent motion of our satellite; the pictorial image of the Moon could be seen through the collodion film, and could be rendered immovable in relation to the collodion plate, by causing one of the craters to remain always in apparent contact with a broad wire placed in the focus of a compound microscope, affixed at the
back of the little camera-box which held the plate."

This was the beginning of Warren de La Rue’s venture into Astrophotography, which he continued actively to practice for a number of years; always mindful of improving upon the quality of his work and the subject matter for his photographs. He was also fully aware that the lack of any mechanism to drive his telescope across the sky was greatly hampering the quality of the results obtained. It would be a number of years before he would correct this situation.

He discontinued any further attempt at Astrophotography whilst at Canonbury, and it was not until his move to his new home at Cranford in Middlesex in 1857, that he resumed his passion for imaging the heavens, as was reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) on the 11^th December of 1857:

“Mr. De La Rue soon relinquished the pursuit of lunar photography, because it required two enthusiasts; one to uncover the mouth of the telescope, and one to follow the moon's apparent motion; and it was not easy to find a friend always disposed to wait up for hours, night after night, probably without obtaining any result. He, therefore, resolved to discontinue his photographic experiments till he had applied a clock-motion to his telescope. This he has done during the present year, and he has taken the earliest opportunity of resuming his experiments.”

In the last years of living at Canonbury Warren was also required to commit more and more of his time and energies to his father’s stationery business. Around 1858 his father Thomas de La Rue was planning his retirement; with the intention of moving away from his home at No. 84 Westbourne Terrace, Marylebone, London to live the life of a country squire.

Hasells Manor

‘Hasells’ is a beautiful Georgian mansion situated just outside of the village of Sandy in Bedfordshire some 60 miles from London and between the towns of Bedford and Cambridge. It was to ‘Hasells’ that Thomas de La Rue began his retirement in the summer of 1858, leaving Warren with the day to day running of his ever expanding business empire.

To all intents and purposes Thomas de La Rue became Lord of the Manor of Hasells, although without actually owning the estate, as is recorded in the Title Deeds associated with the property. These deeds give us great insight not only on the estate itself but also on the type of life Thomas led during his time there – one of hare coursing, shooting, fishing, and other sporting activities.

Lease dated 24^th June 1858 for 21 years between (Summary of Main Points):

1) Francis Pym of the Hasells, Esq (landlord)

2) Thomas de la Rue of 84 Westbourne Terrace Middlesex, Esq (tenant)

Mansion House known as the Hasells with the offices, buildings, coachhouses, stables and the park, pleasure grounds, lawns, greenhouses, Hot house and gardens belonging (109 acres) with the use of all fixtures, furniture described in an inventory (see PM2822)

AND piece of land on south side of Park Farm Homestall with the Piggeries, Steaming House, Bullock Lodge, Cowhouses, Calfhouse, Chaff House, Root House, Hen House, 4 loose boxes, double planked barn and shelter house erected on it

AND joint use of Slaughter House

AND piece of arable land called Pound Close (11A, 3R, 32P)

AND piece of pasture land called The Saddle of Mutton Close (17A, 2R, 35P) subject to right of way for the time being of Hawkesbury Close along the bottom of the same land

AND piece of ground called Hanging Crofts (12A, OR, 27P)

AND 4 messuages called The Lodge, The Gardener's Cottage, The Shepherd's Cottage and the Butler's Cottage, now in tenure of Joseph Dean and Alexander McGregor, Richard Byewaters and Henry Salt all above Mansion and land late in occupation of Francis Pym, situated Sandy (described on plan see PM1615)

AND exclusive right and privilege of coursing, shooting, fishing, towing, and sporting in and over above lands and all the other lands of Francis Pym in Sandy and now in the occupation of his tenants over c1500 acres to full extent of right of Francis Pym as Lord of the manor of Hasells or as owner of said lands

AND right of fishing in Rivers and Streams beyond the limits of the said Manor

Right to take away fish, birds etc for own use

Right to preserve them and right to prosecute poachers

Maintenance clauses relating to House and Park no power to underlet

Covenant 2) will keep down rabbit population - power of 1) to re-enter with friends and servants to kill rabbits of 2) fails to keep this covenant

1) retains use of fireproof strong or Muniment Room in the said Mansion House and inner room adjoining; power of 1) to cross park, gardens, grnds, power of 1)'s surveyors and workmen to enter house to do landlord's repairs

1) Will pay tithe, land tax, sewers rate will insure house and fixtures, furniture etc.

Rent 690, 7s pa

Witness to 1) R Ruthven Pym, Clerk to Child and Co, 18 Leet St London prepared by Ranken, Ford and Vickerman

In the September of 1858 Warren’s mother died whilst living at Hasells Manor, but was buried in All Souls Cemetery in Kensal Green, London on the 29^th of that month. It was not long afterwards that Thomas de La Rue remarried a young lady called Marie Eckers from Freiburg in Germany, on the 3^rd September 1859 at a ceremony held in Stockholm, Sweden. At the time of their marriage he was 65 and she was no more than 24!

It was not surprising that Warren was left to look after the business.

Cranford

In 1857 Warren de La Rue moved home to Cranford in Middlesex. Cranford was a village some 12 miles to the west of central London and was reported at that time to be ‘prettiest village’ in the county – an ideal location for an Astrophotographer. Now it lies close to the northern runway of Heathrow Airport – definitely not an ideal location for an Observatory - or in fact any other form of peaceful living!

Here he set up his 13-inch Reflector in its own purpose built Observatory and installed the long needed clockwork drive. The final touch was to name his house – ‘The Observatory’ and to settle in his servants to do the hard work in looking after him and his family.

At the time of the 1861 Census – his household had six servants – a Footman, a Cook, a Nurse, two housemaids and a Kitchen Maid. Nearby also lived a coachman; who may well have been in the employment of Warren de La Rue. It is also interesting that the census records his occupation more in the form of a CV – giving his status as FRAS and Secretary, FRS, Fellow and Treasurer Chemical Society, PhD … chiefly in Astronomy and Chemistry; and strangely no mention of his father’s stationery business.

He began imaging the Moon again after completing the installation of a clockwork motor to his telescope. Shortly after settling into Cranford he also began attempts to photograph the planets.

He wrote the following regarding the photography of Jupiter and Saturn on the night of 7^th December 1857, which appeared in the MNRAS for the 11^th December 1857:

“As the night advanced I was able to take pictures of Jupiter in five seconds, in consequence of the planet attaining a greater altitude; and the position of Saturn being favourable for a comparison of its actinic power with that of Jupiter I turned the telescope alternately on each of these two planets, and found that to produce pictures of equal intensity, the sensitized plate had on the average to be exposed 5 seconds to Jupiter and 60 seconds to Saturn. Hence the chemical rays from Jupiter are twelve times more energetic than those from Saturn—an effect undoubtedly in a great measure attributable to the greater brilliancy of the former planet, but not, I believe, entirely so.”

In the same article published in December 1857 he went onto comment about the quality of the images taken and the detail they showed:

“The photographs of Jupiter and Saturn now submitted to the Society give promise that as the art advances it will prove to be of great service; at the same time it will be seen that they are very far from depicting the details which are represented in hand drawings of the planets, and indeed for such minute objects a long time will probably elapse before photography supersedes the pencil.”

At a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society held in November of 1857 the following remarks appeared in the subsequent report, relating to Warren de La Rue’s photographs:

“The paper copies before the Society were derived from a positive picture, which in the telescope was obtained in five seconds. When this was procured he was unable to obtain a good negative in less than fourteen seconds. However, his friend, Mr. Hewlett, lately put him in the way of making negative collodion very sensitive, and he obtained negative impressions in ten seconds. Since this, by paying particular attention to the state of the bath, he had been very successful in still reducing the time of exposure, and had produced pictures, not only of the lunar surface, but also of
Jupiter, in from three to seven seconds. The photographs of Jupiter show his belts remarkably well.”

Although the images of Jupiter were small around 0.5mm across, however when magnified certain detail was to be observed as reported in the MNRAS. It was however to be another thirty years before the first truly successful planetary images were obtained by the Henry Brothers of the Meudon Observatory, Paris.

It was during his residence in Cranford that Warren de La Rue’s greatest work was done, and that for which he most famous – the Kew Photoheliograph and Solar Astrophotography.

Kew Photoheliograph

The origin of the Kew Photoheliograph as it became later known, lies in a letter written by Sir John Herschel to Colonel Edward Sabine, Secretary of the Royal Society, dated the 24^th April 1854, in which he said:

" I consider it an object of very considerable importance to secure at some observatory, and indeed at more than one, in different localities, daily photographic representations of the sun, with a view to keep up a consecutive and perfectly faithful record of the history of the spots. So far as regards the general delineation of the whole disk, and the marking out on it, in reference to the parallel to the equinoctial passing through its centre, the places, sizes, and forms of the spots, there would need, I should imagine, no very powerful telescope,—quite the contrary; but it should be equatorially mounted, and ought to have a clock motion in the parallel…”

It was the start of Warren de La Rue’s interest in Solar Astrophotography.

As a result of Herschel’s plea, the Royal Society of London allocated a grant to the committee of the Kew Observatory to that end. Warren de La Rue took up the challenge and produced the design for his 'photoheliograph'.

Andrew Ross of London, the famous optical instrument maker was given the commission for its construction.

The Photoheliograph De La Rue and Ross created was the first of its kind – a photographic telescope or Astrograph specifically designed and constructed to take images of the Sun.

In essence it consisted of a small refracting telescope enclosed in a wooden case at the end of which was fitted a photographic plate holder. The completed design was described by De La Rue in the following words:

“The object-glass of the photoheliograph, it will be remembered, is of 3 4/10th inches clear aperture and 50 inches focal length, but the whole aperture is never used; it is always diminished more or less; and generally to about 2 inches, by a stop placed in front of the object-glass. The focal image of the sun at the mean distance is 0.466 inch. The focal image is not, however, received directly on the sensitive plate, as in the case of taking lunar and planetary photographs, but is enlarged before it reaches it by means of a secondary combination of lenses (an ordinary Huyghenian eyepiece), which
increases the picture to about 4 inches in diameter, thus magnifying the image about eight times linear, and diminishing the intensity of the light 64 times.”

The instrument had to overcome a number of design issues, and in particular those relating to reducing the exposure times in order to 'dim' the brightness of the Sun which produced over exposed plates.

The photoheliograph was completed in 1857, and transferred to the Kew Observatory, where it took its first picture of the Sun in March 1858:

“Photoheliograph erected in the dome of the Observatory was fully described in the last Annual Report; it has been repeatedly at work since the beginning of last March, and excellent photographic pictures of the solar spots and faculae were obtained. Certain alterations have been made by Mr. Welsh in order to regulate the time of exposure of the collodion plate to the sun's action; with these alterations the instrument gives very good results, but certain improvements in the arrangements of the secondary magnifying lens are under consideration, with the view of avoiding the depiction on the collodion negative of the inequalities in the glasses which compose it.”

It took a further two years to fully solve the many operational difficulties only hinted at in the above Report from the Kew Observatory. This work was done at De La Rue's Observatory in Cranford.

The types of problem encountered have been fully described by De La Rue in his paper on Celestial Photography published in the British Association’s Report for 1859. In it he describes for example how the extreme sensitive nature of the Collodion process was a hindrance in obtaining the sufficiently short exposure time needed to produce an acceptable image that was not ‘burnt out’:

“The late much-lamented Director of the Observatory, Mr. Walsh, suggested the plan which was ultimately adopted with success; instead of placing the sliding apparatus close to the collodion plate, he proposed that it should be made on a smaller scale and fixed as near the plane of the primary focus as possible. Mr. Beckley has skilfully carried out this suggestion; so that the apparatus answers its intended object most perfectly, and the production of
a solar picture is now at least as easy as that of a lunar picture…

Although the time of exposure is so short as to be scarcely appreciable, yet it is necessary to regulate its duration ; and it is therefore controlled by adjusting, 1st, the strength of the vulcanized cartouche spring; 2nd, the width of the aperture. In practice, the opening is usually varied between 1/10th and 1/20th of the diameter of the sun's focal image.”

It is interesting to note the method by which the ‘shutter’ was actually released. This was described by de La Rue in his Bakerian Lecture of 1860 on the photographic results obtained at the Total Solar Eclipse of July that year:

“Previous to taking the picture, the sliding plate is drawn up just so high that the imperforated part of it completely shuts off the sun's image; it is held in this position by means of a small thread attached to it at one end and looped at the other, the loop being passed over a hook on the top of the tube; and the slide is pulled downwards, in opposition to the thread, by means of a spring of vulcanized caoutchouc attached to the inferior side of the tube. When the picture is about to be taken, the retaining thread is set on fire, and the rectangular aperture, as soon as the sliding plate becomes released, flashes across the axis of the secondary object-glass—thus allowing the different parts of the sun's image to pass through it in succession, and to depict themselves one after another, after enlargement, on the collodion-plate.”

The instrument was fitted with a clockwork drive mechanism, but as De La Rue points out:

“No driving Machinery needed, except at a period of Total Eclipse.—It will be seen from the foregoing description that the clock-work driving apparatus, described at page xxxv. of the reports for 1857, can be of no service, because the photograph is taken in so small a fraction of time that no appreciable distortion of the sun's image would result in the interval by allowing the telescope to remain at rest. So rapid is the delineation of the sun’s image, that fragments of the limb, optically detached by the ‘boil’ of our atmosphere, are frequently depicted on the collodion, completely separated
from the remainder of the sun's disc; more frequently still from the same cause the contour of the sun presents an undulating line.

Although the clock-work driver is unnecessary for the daily work of the photoheliograph, it may prove of great value on the rare occasions of a total solar eclipse. It is to be hoped that it will enable the contemplated expedition to Spain, in July of next year, to obtain a photographic record of the feeble light of the Corona and the lied Flames; but it is by no means certain that their light will be sufficiently intense for that object. Even a failure, however, will prove of some value, for it will show that the image of these phenomena, when enfeebled by an enlargement of eight times linear, possesses too little actinic power to imprint their outline on a collodion plate in a given number of seconds; and thus data will be furnished for a future period.”

It was not until after the instrument's return from Spain to photograph the above referred to Total Eclipse of 1860 that it was permanently installed at Kew in 1861 – free from any defects or deficiencies.

Eclipse

Towards the end of January 1860 Warren de La Rue began preparing for an expedition to the village of Rivabellosa in Spain; with the intention of using the Kew Photoheliograph to photograph a Total eclipse of the Sun which was to take place there on the 18^th of July that year.

It was trip fraught with both technical and logistical difficulties. If successful it would only be the second time anybody had ever obtained a photograph of a Total Eclipse of the Sun. The first photograph had been obtained in 1851 by Dr. August Ludwig Busch with the assistance of Mr. Berkowski, a Daguerreotypist from Konigsberg, but in this case no expedition was required as the ‘Totality’ took place on their ‘doorstep’.  Furthermore Rivabellosa was at that time a difficult place to reach especially with a baggage train of heavy equipment, as it necessitated travel through a narrow mountain pass.

However what concerned De La Rue more was the ability of the Kew Photoheliograph to take a successful image of Totality:

“I was aware that the largest telescope I could possibly take with me would only give an image of a very moderate size, and that any of the before-named defects in the collodion might fall over and obliterate, or so confuse the impression of any prominence in one photograph, as to render its identification with its impression in a subsequent photograph a matter of impossibility. These considerations led me to think that it would be very desirable to employ the Kew photo-heliograph, because in this instrument the primary focal image of the sun is enlarged from about half an inch in diameter to nearly 4 inches, which is a scale amply sufficient to counterbalance the disadvantages of the collodion process; but, on the other hand, the light is thus attenuated sixty-four times, besides being absorbed to some extent in passing through the two lenses composing the secondary magnifier, an ordinary Huyghenian eyepiece; and this question consequently presented itself, Would it be possible with such an enfeebled image to get even a single impression during the whole duration of the totality ? This was an extremely doubtful matter. By employing the Kew heliograph one would evidently run the risk of returning without any pictures of the totality, however many might be procured of the other phases of the eclipse.”

After conducting a number of inconclusive experiments at Kew Observatory with the Photoheliograph, De La Rue decided to risk it and go to Spain.

On the 7^th July 1860, Warren de La Rue sailed from Plymouth onboard HMS ‘Himalaya’ with his party of Astronomers, Technicians, the Kew Photoheliograph and 34 cwt of supplies bound for the port of Bilbao. Two days later they arrived in Bilbao where they rested overnight before departing on the evening of the 10^th July for Rivabellosa which lay some 70 miles away. The next day they arrived at Rivabellosa tired, and waited somewhat anxiously for the arrival of their equipment which had gone on ahead of them.

The equipment arrived intact on the evening of the 11^th July. By the time evening came on the following day the equipment, the portable observatory and its darkroom had been erected; and in operation:

“Originally, merely a temporary tent in which to develop the photographs was procured; but when it was known that H.M.S. 'Himalaya' would be placed at the disposal of the Astronomer Royal. I put this aside, and caused a complete photographic observatory to be constructed, part to contain the heliograph with a removable roof, and part divided off and fitted up as a photographic room, with a cistern, to be filled from the outside, a sink, and with tables and shelves to hold the apparatus and photographs. This observatory took to pieces, and every part was marked when in its place, so that no time need be lost in putting it together again in its destined position. Besides the ordinary roof, there was another covering, consisting of strong canvas, supported at the distance of about three feet from the walls and roof of the developing-room. The object of this was to prevent the overheating of the photographic room, a circumstance most detrimental to photography. This canvas was kept wetted with water, in order that the evaporation might lower the temperature of the stratum of air between it and the observatory, and it fulfilled the object perfectly. The canvas, when the observatory was not in use, was drawn over the room containing the heliograph, and protected the instrument from rain.”

The expedition was a great success, and upwards of forty photographs taken during the Eclipse and two obtained during totality. Warren de La Rue’s fears that no visible image would be obtained at the moment of totality proved to be unfounded. His images revealed the Sun in all its glory complete with its Corona and Prominences.

It was the finest achievement of his illustrious career.

Gold Medal

In 1862, Warren De La Rue was awarded the Astronomical Establishment’s highest honour when he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, for his work on Celestial Photography ^[36].

In the address given before the presentation of the medal the society’s President Dr. John Lee gave a detailed account of not only Warren de La Rue’s contributions to Astrophotography, but also of the development of the subject prior to 1862.

The following extracts will serve to indicate the high esteem and pride that was held at the time for Warren de La Rue and his achievements:

“You know that for many years Mr. De La Rue has devoted the energies of his mind, a large expenditure, and such leisure as he could abstract from the complicated cares of an extensive and well-known commercial concern, to the earnest cultivation and systematic pursuit of practical astronomy, and that he has been one of the most frequent contributors to our evening meetings, upon a variety of subjects — all requiring much knowledge, skill, and labour in their treatment.

 Discoveries in the regions of science so crowd upon us in our own times, that valuable inventions and striking results soon fade from the memory, and are lost in the brilliancy of those which rapidly succeed them.

I must therefore request your indulgence whilst I lay before you what it is that Mr. De La Rue has done to entitle him to receive, and which justifies the council in awarding him the highest honour that it is in the power of the Royal Astronomical Society to bestow.

Mr. De La Rue has not only conducted the usual observations which are made at most private observatories, but he has directed the resources of a rare mechanical genius to improvements in the most approved methods of polishing the specula of reflecting telescopes, and perfecting the mechanical arrangements by which operations of such refined nicety are performed.

…

 Lastly, by a rare and happy combination of chemical with mechanical skill, the time necessary for the exposure of the collodion film was materially shortened. The final result is this, — that images of the Moon have been repeatedly taken in the focus of the mirror, admitting of very considerable amplification, and exhibiting details on the Moon's surface sufficiently clear to admit of delineation under a microscope provided with a camera lucida, and thereby furnishing materials for a more accurate selenography than has heretofore existed.

…

I must now turn to a department in celestial photography, where Mr. De La Rue stands almost alone. I speak of Heliography. In April, 1854 Sir John Herschel, in a letter to Colonel Sabine, recommended that daily photographic records of the sun should be obtained at some observatory. Accordingly the Royal Society placed at the disposal of the Kew committee a sum of money to promote that object, and Air. De La Rue was requested to administer the grant.

…

Mr. De La Rue, during the progress of the same eclipse, took many large and exquisitely defined pictures, and secured two during the totality. I have no need to enter into details, as he has already described at several meetings of this Society, the numerical results that follow from the discussion, and the comparisons of the photographs which he took on that occasion. A paper, giving the result of his labours during the expedition to Rivabellosa, has been presented to the Royal Society, and is to be considered in March of this year.

…

More recently still, photographic pictures of the Sun have been obtained by Mr. De La Rue, not only exhibiting its well-known mottled appearance, but showing traces of Mr. Nasmyth's “willow leaves,” and by the aid of stereoscopic pictures rendering it certain that the faculæ are elevations in the Sun's photosphere.

…

If, then, we take collective note of all Mr. De La Rue's long and varied labors since the 14th March, 1851, when he became one of our members — such as the perfecting of the figures of mirrors, the graphic observations of the planets, the incomparable photographs of the moon, the invention of the photoheliograph, the observations on the solar eclipse, the invention of the new method of obtaining numerical data, the application of the stereoscope to the examination of the surface of the moon, and afterwards to that of the sun — sure am I that the society at large will unanimously approve of the award of their medal made by the council.

It may, however, be said by some ingenious critic that photography is only an art which bears but indirectly on the promotion of astronomy, and that the reward of its successful manipulation is rather the province of those societies to confer which cultivate the art of photography, or the science of chemistry. But I cannot admit the justice of this view. What should we now say of the early fellows of the Royal Society, if they had relegated Newton, when he invented the telescope that bears his name, to the Company of Spectacle Makers for his need of praise? What should we now think, had the barren honours which grace scientific discovery been denied to such mechanical inventors as Hadley, or Dollond, or Sir William Herschel, or Lord Rosse, or Lassell?  With them the name of De La Rue, I feel, will hold no inferior place.”

The President, then delivering the medal to Mr. De La Rue, addressed him in the following terms:

“Mr. DE LA RUE: In compliance with a resolution of the council, I have the pleasing duty of placing in your hands the highest tribute to merit which they have in their power to bestow. The instruments made or improved by you, the important uses to which you have applied them, and the liberality with which you have communicated the results of your discoveries to the public, all indicate, in the opinion of the council, a mind highly cultivated, whose energy has been directed, during many years, to the attainment of scientific perfection.

But your unceasing efforts and delicate manipulation in reducing the new and wonderful art of photography to astronomical purposes, and in rendering chemistry a handmaid to astronomy, supply the more immediate motive of their approbation.

May Divine Providence continue to bestow upon you health and intelligence, and every social blessing, enabling you still further lo illustrate the glory of the Creator, and to promote the rational enjoyment of our fellow-creatures.”

No more need be said.

Sunset

In about 1873 Warren de La Rue donated his telescope to the new Observatory that was soon to be completed at the University of Oxford, and moved from Cranford to London. From that date he gave up all astronomical research and also never took another photograph of the heavens. Why he did this remains something of a mystery and no satisfactory explanation has been found.

It is known that he began to conduct experiments on electricity with Dr. Hugo Muller, and even went so far as to build  a Physics laboratory near to his home, but this cannot be all that there was to it. Perhaps in the future some further insight on his motives for giving up something he had devoted over 30 years of life to may come to light.

By the time of the 1881 Census, we find him living at No. 73 Portland Place, near to London’s Regent’s Park with his wife Georgiana, two of his sons Ernest and Herbert, and ten servants – a Cook, a Lady’s Maid, a Scullery Maid, 3 Housemaids, a Butler and two Footmen. He gave his occupation as being retired from his stationery and printing business – no elaborate details were given as to his qualifications or research interests; a stark contrast to the remarks provided in the census of ten years earlier.

Warren de La Rue’s last exposure to his great passion for Celestial Photography came in 1887, when he took great interest in the ‘Carte du Ciel’ - a project proposed by Admiral Amadee Mouchez, the then director of the Meudon Observatory in Paris for charting the heavens by means of photography. Following the International Congress held to discuss the proposal at Paris in the April of that year; Warren de La Rue ‘on becoming acquainted with the results of the conference, he, in the most generous and liberal spirit, placed a considerable sum of money at the disposal of the Oxford University Observatory, to provide a suitable photographic telescope, so as to enable its distinguished director to take a full share in this important undertaking’.

It was an act of great generosity which in its own small way began the long and difficult task of completing a full photographic survey of the sky – something which the ‘Carte du Ciel’ in the end failed to do.

Warren de La Rue died on the 19^th April 1889 at No. 73 Portland Place, London following a short attack of Pneumonia.  He had been in poor health for sometime.

No better tribute can be given to him than the words written at the end of the Obituary Notice which appeared in the MNRAS for 1890:

“By these characteristics of a generous nature, as well as by his masterly power, he won for himself the respect, the honour, and the devotion of all who knew him, and made his name illustrious among men.”

His time on Earth was at an end, but the heavens awaited others to follow in the sure knowledge that they could stand on shoulders as great as those of Warren de La Rue, PhD, FRAS, FRS, retired wholesale stationery manufacturer.

Illustrations

Thomas de La Rue & Co.: 110 Bunhill Row, London

Hasells Manor, Sandy, Bedfordshire, built c1720

Thomas de La Rue (1793 - 1866)

Warren de La Rue's 13-inch Reflecting Telescope

Moon at Last Quarter, c1862, Warren de La Rue

Warren de La Rue's 'Observatory' on a Map of 1874

Kew Photoheliograph, c1857

 

 Kew Photoheliograph at Rivabellosa, Spain in July 1860

Warren de La Rue's Photograph of theTotal Eclipse of the Sun in 1860