United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, United States
The youngest in his class, Bache graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with highest achievement on July 1, 1825.
Career
Gallery of Alexander Bache
Alexander Dallas Bache (1806-1867), LL.D. (hon.) 1837, with surveying instrument, stereoptic view. Year - ca. 1860.
Gallery of Alexander Bache
Wood engraving, portrait of Alexander Dallas Bache, an American physicist, scientist, and surveyor who erected coastal fortifications and conducted a detailed survey to map the mideastern United States coastline, in profile, 1886. From the New York Public Library. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).
Gallery of Alexander Bache
Alexander Dallas Bache
Achievements
Membership
Royal Society
1860 - 1867
Royal Society, London, SW1 United Kingdom
Bache was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society on 24 May 1860.
Wood engraving, portrait of Alexander Dallas Bache, an American physicist, scientist, and surveyor who erected coastal fortifications and conducted a detailed survey to map the mideastern United States coastline, in profile, 1886. From the New York Public Library. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).
Bache was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society on 24 May 1860.
Connections
Friend: Joseph Henry
Joseph Henry (December 17, 1797 – May 13, 1878) was an American scientist who served as the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He was the secretary for the National Institute for the Promotion of Science, a precursor of the Smithsonian Institution.
Discussion of the Magnetic and Meteorological Observations, Vol. 1: Made at the Girard College Observatory, Philadelphia, in 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843
(Excerpt from Discussion of the Magnetic and Meteorologica...)
Excerpt from Discussion of the Magnetic and Meteorological Observations, Vol. 1: Made at the Girard College Observatory, Philadelphia, in 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843, 1844, and 1845; Investigation of the Eleven Year Period in the Amplitude of the Solar Diurnal Variation and of the Disturbances of the Magnetic Declination It is proposed in the present paper to investigate the law of the eleven year period, or as it is more frequently called, the decennial period, there being yet an uncertainty as to its precise length. It is supposed to have some direct or_ indirect connection with the solar spot period, which, according to late investigations by Prof. R. Wolf,2 is said to exhibit corresponding disturbances. The discussion is a contribution towards the determination of the epoch of the occurrence of a minimum (as to number and magnitude) in certain phases of the magnetic variations and disturbances, corresponding to a minimum in the solar spot period. The method of reduction is substantially the same as that adopted by General Sabine, and explained in his discussion of the Toronto and Hobarton3 observations. This longitude depends on that of Cambridge observatory, for which 411 44 has been adopted.
Anniversary Address Before the American Institute, of the City of New-York, at the Tabernacle, October 28th, 1856, During the Twenty-Eighth Annual Fair
Alexander Dallas Bache was an American physicist, scientist, and surveyor. He is noted for being the one who erected coastal fortifications and conducted a detailed survey to map the mideastern United States coastline.
Background
Alexander Dallas Bache was born on July 19, 1806 in Philadelphia. He was the son of Richard Bache, Jr. , and Sophia Burrell Dallas Bache. He came from a prominent family as he was the nephew of Vice-President George M. Dallas and Naval Hero Alexander J. Dallas. He was the grandson of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Dallas and was the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin.
Education
The youngest in his class, he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with highest achievement on July 1, 1825.
After graduating from West Point at the head of his class in 1825, Bache was served for two years in the Corps of Engineers before accepting a professorship of natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, a position he held until his resignation in 1836 to organize Girard College. Upon returning from a two-year sojourn in Europe (1836–1838), where he studied primary and secondary education, Bache wrote a report on his findings for Girard College that exerted considerable influence on the development of education in the United States, by proposing adoption, in American high schools, of features from the German Gymnasium and the French lycée (1839). He put his views into practice by organizing Central High School of Philadelphia. In 1842 Bache returned to the University of Pennsylvania, but left for Washington at the end of 1843 to succeed F.R. Hassler as head of the Coast Survey, a position he held for the rest of his life.
In Philadelphia, Bache’s scientific career followed many of the conventional paths for that period. He dabbled in chemical analysis and experimented on the effects of color on the radiation and absorption of heat. Like many of his contemporaries, he tried his hand at electromagnetism and astronomy, but with no particular success, his dispute with Denison Olmsted on meteoric showers being a notably poor showing. He was, however, outstanding in assuming leading roles in the affairs of both the American Philosophical Society and the Franklin Institute.
At the latter he directed a significant investigation of the explosion of steam boilers for the federal government (Journal of the Franklin Institute, 17 , 1836). Not only was this notable for experimental virtuosity; it was also one of the first deliberate uses of science by the government for the solution of a practical problem. It also established a pattern for Bache’s subsequent career and a precedent for the later development of federal policy toward science and technology.
Increasingly during the Philadelphia period, Bache became involved in studies of the physics of the earth, particularly terrestrial magnetism and meteorology, After returning from Europe, where he had made observations of declination and inclination for comparison with American readings, he attempted to establish an American system that would fit into Sir Edward Sabine’s world network of magnetic observatories. All that resulted, however, was an observatory at Girard College, the first of its kind in the United States. Perhaps the most interesting work in this vein was Bache’s unsuccessful attempt with Humphrey Lloyd to determine longitude by simultaneous magnetic observations (Proceedings, Royal Irish Academy, I, 1839)
When Bache assumed direction of the Coast Survey, it was a small, insecurely established body with high scientific standards. In less than two decades it became entrenched, the largest employer of physical scientists in the United States, and active in many scientific fields. First-order triangulation was expanded along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts. Under Bache’s direction, Sears Walker and W.C. Bond developed the use of telegraphy in the determination of longitude. Bache and the Survey supported astronomical research, including study of the solar eclipses of 26 May 1854 and 18 July 1860. Survey vessels amassed the most extensive series of observations of the Gulf Stream up to that time. Continuing and broadening Hassler’s tidal observations, Bache became embroiled in a dispute with Whewell in 1851, when the Survey’s findings deviated from the latter’s theory. Using deflections on tide staffs on the Pacific Coast, Bache studied waves from an earthquake in Japan (American Journal of Science, 21 , 1855), work that foreshadowed the Survey’s later work in seismology. Bache also succeeded Hassler as head of the Office of Weights and Measures, the predecessor of the National Bureau of Standards. During all this time, while he was successfully administering a large research program, Bache was able to spend several months in the field with a survey party and to continue doing his own investigations.
He gathered a small, changing group of followers around him, the Lazzaroni, or scientific beggars. Bache clearly had their admiration, but what they specifically wanted is hazy in many respects. The group included nonscientists; some of the scientists, such as Dana and Henry, alter split with Bache. The Lazzaroni wanted to form a true professional scientific community to reform higher education so that more young people would be interested in science, and to find administrative means of increasing governmental support of science. It was Bache’s misfortune that his warm admirers in Cambridge-including Louis Agassiz, B.A. Gould, and Benjamin Peirce-lacked his diplomatic talents, thus embroiling the Lazzaroni “program” in irrelevant personal squabbles.
The culmination of Bache’s influence and of the outlook he represented came during the Civil War. Because of his knowledge of the coasts, in 1861 he served with the informal Commission on Conference planning the naval campaign against the Confederacy. As vice-president of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, Bache became involved in a notable medical and welfare program. A member of the Permanent Commission in 1863–1864, Bache advised the navy on technical matters. Linked to the Permanent Commission was the formation of the National Academy of Sciences in 1863, with Bache as its first president. The Academy was teh concrete culmination of the attitudes he enunciated in his 1851 presidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Bache was incapacited by a stroke early in the summer of 1864. After Bache’s death, Henry kept the Academy alive largely because his friend had left his estate to it. The Bache Fund was a small but important source of support for research in the United States before 1900. The Michelson-Morley experiment, for example, was conducted with its aid.
Bache was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 15 March 1858, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society on 24 May 1860.
Royal Society
,
United Kingdom
1860 - 1867
Connections
He married Nancy Clark Fowler on September 30, 1838, at Newport, Rhode Island. She was born in Newport and died on January 13, 1870 in Philadelphia. She assisted in the publication of much of his work. They were the parents of one son, Henry Wood Bache (1839–November 7, 1878, at Bristol on Long Island, New York).