280
hoped would become a great astronomical station in Italy, equipped with one of the
largest telescopes in the world, but which never saw the light of day – or of night.
2
17.2 The Original Proposal
In July 1879, members of the Reggio Emilia “Enza Section” of the Italian Alpine
Club, returning from a trip to Sicily, stopped in Rome to meet Pietro Tacchini
(1838–1905), who had just succeeded Father Angelo Secchi (1818–1878) as the
director of the Observatory of the Collegio Romano and director of the Central
Bureau of Meteorology as of March of the same year (Beltrano and Iafrate; Calzolari
and Marsella, Chaps. 9 and 16 in this volume). Tacchini, who was born in Modena
and thus almost countryman of Secchi, spoke with one of the members, the lawyer
Carlo Caraffa (1851–1890), about the recent death of Secchi and suggested that:
(…) it would be important that Italy and especially Reggio honor the dear departed with a
monument concerning the nature of his studies, and because Italy lacked a great equatorial
[telescope] (…) nothing seemed more appropriate than this to perpetuate his memory.
(Relazione (1
a
) 1897: 8 et seq.)
3
This conversation is clearly where our story begins.
The idea was enthusiastically welcomed
4
and in December of the same year, on
the occasion of a trip to Reggio to inspect the local meteorological observatory,
Tacchini met with some citizens in order to define the project better. In a letter to
Caraffa of February 1880, its essential structure is already outlined. A sketch in this
letter illustrates a building with a large dome to house the telescope, as a sort of
mausoleum (Fig. 17.1).
5
Essentially, Tacchini proposed that:
• the Municipality and the Province were to allocate in their budgets the expenditure
for the purchase of a 60/70-cm diameter objective lens, whose cost was about 60,000
lire, to be constructed in about 2 years;
• a large (10-m diameter) dome was to be built to house it;
• the Government was to employ an astronomer, an assistant, and a caretaker, with an
annual expenditure of about 15,500 lire. (Relazione (1
a
) 1897: 9–10)
It is important to remember that the largest refractors in Italy at that time were two
24-cm diameter Merz telescopes, installed by Secchi at the Collegio Romano and
by Tacchini in Palermo in 1854 and 1865, respectively, followed by the 22-cm Merz
installed at Brera Observatory in 1875.
2 The only reconstructions of this story that, as far as we know, have ever been published are Finzi
1971 and Lugli 2001: 203–210.
3 Where other documents are not explicitly mentioned, a large part of our reconstruction, up to
1897, is from this Relazione, which is the first of the four printed Reports of the Committee.
4 Twelve letters by P. Tacchini to C. Caraffa in BPRe between January 15, 1880, and June 16, 1881,
illustrate the project and the initiatives in Reggio Emilia (ASRe-MS).
5 P. Tacchini to C. Caraffa, Rome, Feb 6, 1880 (ASRe-MS).
F. Bònoli and A. Mandrino
hoped would become a great astronomical station in Italy, equipped with one of the
largest telescopes in the world, but which never saw the light of day – or of night.
2
17.2 The Original Proposal
In July 1879, members of the Reggio Emilia “Enza Section” of the Italian Alpine
Club, returning from a trip to Sicily, stopped in Rome to meet Pietro Tacchini
(1838–1905), who had just succeeded Father Angelo Secchi (1818–1878) as the
director of the Observatory of the Collegio Romano and director of the Central
Bureau of Meteorology as of March of the same year (Beltrano and Iafrate; Calzolari
and Marsella, Chaps. 9 and 16 in this volume). Tacchini, who was born in Modena
and thus almost countryman of Secchi, spoke with one of the members, the lawyer
Carlo Caraffa (1851–1890), about the recent death of Secchi and suggested that:
(…) it would be important that Italy and especially Reggio honor the dear departed with a
monument concerning the nature of his studies, and because Italy lacked a great equatorial
[telescope] (…) nothing seemed more appropriate than this to perpetuate his memory.
(Relazione (1
a
) 1897: 8 et seq.)
3
This conversation is clearly where our story begins.
The idea was enthusiastically welcomed
4
and in December of the same year, on
the occasion of a trip to Reggio to inspect the local meteorological observatory,
Tacchini met with some citizens in order to define the project better. In a letter to
Caraffa of February 1880, its essential structure is already outlined. A sketch in this
letter illustrates a building with a large dome to house the telescope, as a sort of
mausoleum (Fig. 17.1).
5
Essentially, Tacchini proposed that:
• the Municipality and the Province were to allocate in their budgets the expenditure
for the purchase of a 60/70-cm diameter objective lens, whose cost was about 60,000
lire, to be constructed in about 2 years;
• a large (10-m diameter) dome was to be built to house it;
• the Government was to employ an astronomer, an assistant, and a caretaker, with an
annual expenditure of about 15,500 lire. (Relazione (1
a
) 1897: 9–10)
It is important to remember that the largest refractors in Italy at that time were two
24-cm diameter Merz telescopes, installed by Secchi at the Collegio Romano and
by Tacchini in Palermo in 1854 and 1865, respectively, followed by the 22-cm Merz
installed at Brera Observatory in 1875.
2 The only reconstructions of this story that, as far as we know, have ever been published are Finzi
1971 and Lugli 2001: 203–210.
3 Where other documents are not explicitly mentioned, a large part of our reconstruction, up to
1897, is from this Relazione, which is the first of the four printed Reports of the Committee.
4 Twelve letters by P. Tacchini to C. Caraffa in BPRe between January 15, 1880, and June 16, 1881,
illustrate the project and the initiatives in Reggio Emilia (ASRe-MS).
5 P. Tacchini to C. Caraffa, Rome, Feb 6, 1880 (ASRe-MS).
F. Bònoli and A. Mandrino