Volume Thirteen - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - Remarkable Connections - Darwin, FitzRoy, Hawkshaw & Wedgwood . . . .

Further Remarkable Connections - Darwin and Herschel

In September 2026 Julie and I attended a history tour of our local parish church where William Herschel was appointed as the first organist at the St. John the Baptist church, Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire, during September 1766 and where he was resident for a mere 13 weeks! His appointment followed the installation of a new, spectacular three-manual pipe organ built by the Swiss organ builder John Snetzler. Later in life he became Sir William Herschel (1738–1822) and was greatly motivated by mathematics, optics, and astronomy.

During observations of the skies in March 1781, he spied a new object in the constellation of Gemini ; the planet was eventually named Uranus. This was the first planet to be discovered since antiquity and thus Herschel became famous overnight. George III appointed him Court Astronomer and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and subsequently grants were provided for the construction of new more powerful telescopes than his previous design known as the 'Great Forty-Foot telescope.'