Читать книгу The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918 онлайн

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It has even been said that several astronomers and physicists of our country were taken in for a moment. That seems hardly probable to us. It was easy to perceive that it was a hoax written by a learned and mischievous person.

The “Nouvelle Biographie Générale” (Paris, 1862), says of Nicollet:

He is believed to be the author of the anonymous pamphlet which appeared in 1836 on the discoveries in the moon made by Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope.

Cruel, consistent Locke, never to have written down the details of the conception and birth of the best invention that ever spoofed the world! He leaves history to wonder whether it be possible that, with one word added, the French biographer was right, and that it was “a hoax written by a learned and a mischievous person.” Certain it is that Nicollet never wrote all of the moon story; certain, too, that Locke wrote much, if not all of it. The calculations of the angles of reflection might have been Nicollet’s, but the blue unicorn is the unicorn of Locke.