The three examples of comparative observations taken up in this section were all predicated on an interest in comparisons of natural phenomena in northern and southern hemispheres. In each case an initiative taken in Europe prompted greater awareness in Chile of the scientific significance of territories ultimately extending to the polar south. Such awareness did not remain only in the minds of select circles of people but it also to greater or lesser degrees translated into institutional responses to the requests coming from abroad, thereby drawing Chile more firmly into international networks and regimes for monitoring and standardization. The first example concerns astronomy, the second geography and geology, and the third concerns far-reaching standardization of efforts in meteorology and earth magnetism.
The results of the eighteenth century efforts to time and measure the Venus Transits of 1761 and 1789 lacked precision. An important attempt to rectify this shortcoming was made as early as 1824 by the German astronomer Franz Encke, a disciple of Carl Friedrich Gauss. Another disciple of Gauss, the mathe-matician Christian L. Gerling of Marburg wrote in April 1841 a letter to Lieuten-ant J.M. Gillis from the U.S. Naval Observatory, in which he maintained that new and more accurate measurements of the solar parallax or a confirmation of the existing figures established by Encke could be obtained by a series of ob-servations of Venus carried out during approximately the same period in both
21 Nordenskjöld 1913: IV, 179-184.
22 Baker 1982: 276.
the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres23. When Gillis selected Washing-ton D.C. and a spot near Santiago, Chile, for his simultaneous and opposite observations, the project for a Chilean National Astronomical Observatory was born with the strong support of Andrés Bello, Rector of the University of Chile and Adviser to the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A pupil of Christian Gerling at Marburg, Carlos Moesta, became the first Direc-tor of the ObservaDirec-tory and Chile participated actively in the International Obser-vatory Transit of Venus Conference (Paris, October 5-13, 1881) becoming also a privileged venue for both the Transit and the Polar Year Missions of 1882-188324. Mention also must be made of the Oceanographic Service, the Natural History Museum and the birth of the “Société Scientifique du Chili” whose first Chairman and Director of the Astronomical Observatory, French-born Jean-Marie Obrecht, became an influential member of the first Chilean Antarctic Commission set up in 1906 to prepare an expedition which failed to materialize due to the disastrous earthquake that took place that same year. Such se-quence of events is not casual but the initial step (“comparative astronomical observations in both hemispheres”) does not explain by itself the end product which is mostly the institutional build-up and the gradual emergence of an intellectual elite committed to scientific exploration of the polar lands adjacent to Chilean continental territory.
“The interest that has manifested itself of late in exploration in Antarctic regions was the impulse that gave rise to the Swedish expedition to the Magellan terri-tories in 1885. At a time when the eyes of the whole geographical world were turned towards that portion of the earth, it seemed only fitting that Sweden´s sons and explorers, who have had so important and extensive a share in opening up the north polar territories, should be prepared to participate in similar labours in the south, for we may confidently expect results obtained there to elucidate many of those already established for the north, placing them in their right light and showing their true value and application”25. Dr. Otto Nor-denskjöld initiates his preliminary report of the origin, plan, and general pro-gress of the Swedish expedition by these introductory words. Nordenskjöld´s attention was directed towards the geology and historical evolution of this sub-Antarctic territory, and to its fauna and flora, with special reference to forms identical with or analogous to those of the northern hemisphere, and to its interesting and almost extinct aboriginal population. “We desired further to arrive at a characterization of Tierra del Fuego as a geographical unit distin-guished from and compared with its neighbours, the Antarctic polar lands lying to the south and Patagonia and the South American continent north of it”.
The Chilean Government was seized with a request from the Swedish Govern-ment, on behalf of Nordenskjöld, for support to an expedition intended to “ex-plain some of the scientific questions, the solution of which is only possible by comparative studies both in the northern and the southern polar regions”. The request was for “the same facilities and advantages as at a previous occasion have been allowed a German expedition undertaken in this country some years
23 Ponko 1979: 94-95.
24 González Polanco 2002: 6-8.
25 Nordenskjöld 1901: 8-9.
ago under the guidance of Dr. W. Michelsen from the Natural History Museum in Hamburg free passage on Government transport ships, permission to execute drags from the ships, provisions, the necessary porters, and special support for the inner part of the Fireland /.../ luggage duty free across the frontiers between Chile and Argentina /.../ and protection from the respective Governments”26. As Nordenskjöld mentions in his preliminary report, his uncle Baron A.E. Nordenskiold had suggested to him that the Fireland Expedition could be an adequate preparation for a subsequent polar exploration and, previous to his voyage he had visited the specialists: Professor Steinmann at Freiburg, M. Rousson of Paris and Dr. Michelsen in Hamburg whose expedition had set the standards in international cooperation which Nordenskjöld would demand and obtain from the Government of Chile. The importance of the expedition to the Fireland was, in addition to the objective of comparative observations, its spillover into the Antarctic, manifested in the failed attempt to organize an Antarctic expedition from Punta Arenas in 1897, in the precedent it established for future international scientific cooperation, and the influence it had in shaping the aims and objectives of Nordenskjöld’s 1901 Antarctic Expedition.
The last example of comparative observations to be examined here has been analyzed and documented thoroughly27. It covers the coordination of meteo-rological and magnetic measurements using the same kind of instrumentation at various locations as well as establishing an agreed regime for simultaneity in the periodic intervals of time when observations would be carried out. The lea-dership of Drygalski and previously of Richthofen, under whose presidency the Berlin Geographic Congress approved a format for meteorological and mag-netic observations, and of both Richthofen and Markham, prompting Argentina to upgrade its Observatory at Año Nuevo Island, was strongly deployed during the so-called “Grand Antarctic Expedition”. The same type of cooperation led to the enhancement, upgrading or establishment of new stations in the north and south hemispheres, and prepared the way for the creation of new magnetic stations during the Second Polar Year (1932-1933) in Punta Arenas, Cape Town and Elisabethville, and enhancement of Christchurch28. At the time of the Gauss expedition, the Government of Chile was approached by the German Imperial Government, with a sample of the joint programme of magnetic and meteorological observations agreed by the Anglo-German Committee, and requested to provide such observations in the indicated format. Some assump-tion was made by the German diplomatic representative and the Chilean Foreign Minister in 1901 that the Gauss could visit Punta Arenas sometime in the spring of 1903 or 190429. This is an intriguing issue since the Gauss expedition was shortened at the end but the fact remains that the records of all meteorological observations made at the Salesian Colegio de San José at Punta Arenas were provided to the German authorities, as well as all the observations collected by the Navy’s Meteorological Office existent under its Maritime Territory Division. In the medium-term, the request of the German Imperial Government had two consequences in Chile: the Navy´s
26 Lewenhaupt 1895: 1-2.
27 Lüdecke 2003: 35-48, 2004: 247-261.
28 Helms 1971: 233.
29 Yañez 1901: 1.
logical Office was reorganized and obtained new instruments and, previous to the Second Polar Year, the Salesian Observatory at Punta Arenas was supple-mented with the means to carry out magnetic observations.