Samuel Pierpont Langley (August 22, 1834 - February 27, 1906) was an American astronomer, physicist, inventor of the bolometer and pioneer of aviation. He was an assistant in the Harvard College Observatory. He became a professor of mathematics at the US
Samuel Pierpont Langley (August 22, 1834 - February 27, 1906) was an American astronomer, physicist, inventor of the bolometer and pioneer of aviation. He was an assistant in the Harvard College Observatory. He became a professor of mathematics at the US Naval Academy. He helped in the development of astronomically derived and regulated time distribution services in America through the later half of the 19th century. His work with the railroads in this area is often cited as central to the establishment of the Standard Time Zones system. In 1867, he became the director of the Allegheny Observatory and a professor of astronomy at the Western University of Pennsylvania. He devoted his time at the Observatory initially in researching the sun. He produced hundreds of drawings of solar phenomena, many of which were the first the world had seen. In 1878 he invented the bolometer, a device for measuring the power of incident electromagnetic radiation via the heating of a material with a temperature-dependent electrical resistance. As an aviation pioneer he attempted to make a working piloted heavier-than-air aircraft. His models flew, but his two attempts at piloted flight were not successful. In 1886, he received the inaugural Henry Draper Medal from the National Academy of Sciences for his contributions to solar physics. He became the third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1887 and was the founder of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. In 1888 he published a popular science book entitled The New Astronomy, with a strong emphasis on recent developments in solar physics, which gained a very broad readership and did much to popularize the rising science of astrophysics. He died in 1906 at the age of 71
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