Caroline Herschel's ‘Small’ Sweeper

Hoskin Michael , (ed.), Caroline Herschel's autobiographies (Cambridge, 2003), 71.

Herschel RASMS . C.1/1.1, sheet pasted in the front.

Hoskin Michael , The Herschel partnership (Cambridge, 2003), 62–63.

Caroline to John , 8 August 1826, British Library Egerton 3761.

Hausmann Friedrich Ulrich has been confused with the more famous Friedrich Johann Hausmann Ludwig (1782–1859), who however lived in Göttingen. Friedrich Ulrich was a resident of Hanover in later life, but he may possibly have met Caroline when he was in England as a war refugee in the early years of the century. I thank Arndt Latusseck for this information.

Herschel John Mrs , Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (London, 1876), 305.

Bullard Margaret , “My small Newtonian sweeper—where is it now?”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xlii (1988), 139–48; her discovery shows that Hoskin Michael and Warner Brian (“Caroline Herschel's comet sweepers”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xii (1981), 27–34) misidentified the instruments sketched in Figure 1 of the present article. Curiously, Mrs Bullard makes the bizarre claim that the sweeper was Herschellian in construction.

Herschel John took the 5ft to the Cape of Good Hope, and in due course brought it home (packing lists for the voyages are now in the University of Texas at Austin, information courtesy of Brian Warner), but its present whereabouts are unknown.