JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Edmund Ledger (1841-1914, 38-year Member Royal Astronomical Society, professor of astronomy at Gresham College, 1875-1914) asks an excellent question in his short article, “The Canals of Mars”, in the Scientific American Supplement of 1903 (#1434 June 27, 1903, p 22983-4). He quickly reviews some current thinking on Schiaparelli’s canali and their reception as “canals”, made by Martians, and in his doubt asks the question: “Are they really there?”1
The canals had been questioned before of course, including by Ledger himself. Earlier in 1895 Ledger described one impossibility of the Seechi-named and employed-by- Schiaparelli canali as canals just in their sheer size: that in order for astronomers to observe the canals that they had to be at least 20 miles wide in addition to being thousands of miles long…a feat too great for anything to accomplish, something far beyond comprehension. (The Suez canal, completed not long before this, would have been nothing compared to the Martian works, being just about five times as long as the canali were thought to be wide. Also thinking no doubt would have been tempered in a bad way—like a poorly tempered anvil and its unpleasing response to being struck by a hammer—by the French failures in the decades that they squandered trying to build the 50-mile-long Panama Canal.)