Page - 170 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 3170 As for the avenues of this dissemination, once again we possess little con- clusive evidence. Whatever documents on the trade of the imperial printing house Trattner, which was also the publisher of the Ephemerides, still exist, we have been unable to access them. Hell’s correspondence is a testimony that he was himself highly active in the circulation of the annual: in several of his let- ters, we find the clause “herewith I am sending a copy of my latest Ephemerides […].”106 Hell was a well-organized and systematic man. We may safely assume that each of his correspondents regularly received their personal copies. Some of them, like Kästner, were not content just using the Ephemerides in their work but faithfully reported on each volume at important venues, thus con- tributing substantially to the journal’s circulation and growing reputation. In contrast to the impressive coverage of the achievements of the Ephemeri- des in the French and the German scientific public sphere, there is virtually no trace of any awareness of it in Britain. Given the character of the Nautical Al- manac, it is little surprise that it makes no reference at all to the Viennese an- nual (nor does it pay attention to any astronomical work done anywhere else than Greenwich). However, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society published texts by astronomers or accounts of their work on a regular basis, including a great many non-British figures with whom Hell maintained con- tact, but scarcely to Hell himself.107 In view of the fact that the work of Nevil Maskelyne and other English astronomers is quite extensively reported and used in the Ephemerides, and that the 1769 transit of Venus was a central con- cern for both journals, this lack of reciprocity is a puzzle and needs further at- tention.108 However, even if British lack of interest was real, Hell was successful 106 In a letter of March 18, 1761, Hell explicitly asked the editors of the Journal des Sçavans to review the Ephemerides (wus). See further Hell to Franz Weiss, January 11, 1783 (Pinzger, Hell emlékezete, 2:137); Hell to Abraham Gotthelf Kästner, March 6, 1785; Hell to Kästner, January 26, 1788 (Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek in Göttingen, here- after: nsubg. See Hungarian translation in György Gábor Csaba, ed., A csillagász Hell Miksa írásaiból [Budapest: Magyar Csillagászati Egyesület, 1997], 58). 107 The only exception we found is a passing reference to the Ephemerides of 1765 and Hell’s calculation of the longitude of Vienna by the Swedish astronomer Pehr Wilhelm Wargen- tin. “A Letter from Mr. Wargentin, F.R.S. and Secretary at the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm, to the Rev. Mr. Maskelyne, M.A. F.R.S. and Royal Astronomer at Greenwich Containing an Essay of a New Method of Determining the Longitude of Places, from Ob- servations of the Eclipses of Jupiter’s Satellites,” ptrsl (1766): 280, 284. 108 Yet, as Maskelyne’s account books for 1773–85 demonstrate, throughout 1776 and 1777 he had astronomical equipment manufactured by London instrument-makers upon orders by Count Károly Eszterházy, bishop of Eger, for the new observatory there. Hell was the chief advisor of the building of this observatory (for details, see below). Copies of Maske- lyne’s accounts (held at the archive of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, rgo 35/134) are