The Saturday Club In 1846, the
Smithsonian Institution was founded and its Regents elected
Joseph Henry as the Institution’s first Secretary. In 1855, the
Smithsonian Castle was completed, with space for exhibitions, research laboratories, and living quarters for Henry and his family. Sometime before the outbreak of the
Civil War, Henry and several other men interested in science formed a small club called the Saturday Club. Their meetings were held the homes of its members, and were devoted to discussion of scientific questions. According to former Society President
W.J. Humphreys, these signers “represented…every branch of both the natural and the exact sciences.” The signers included:
mathematician Simon Newcomb;
astronomer Asaph Hall;
malacologist William H. Dall;
Chief Engineer of the Army Andrew A. Humphreys;
Quartermaster General of the Army Montgomery C. Meigs;
Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes; and
Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. The outline of a Constitution was adopted, and a General Committee was established, and officers were elected, including President Joseph Henry. In a published oral history, founding member William Dall explained the change: Then General Barnes, who was Surgeon-General, and was one of the members, was good enough to offer us more commodious quarters in the city. In those days, coming to the Smithsonian building, especially at night, was something of a task. The paths were not paved; if it happened to be rainy it was a very muddy walk indeed…At that time, nearly all of the members of the Society lived in the city and therefore found it desirable to have the place of meeting where they would not have to go through the Smithsonian grounds, often through a considerable amount of mud. He later told the Society of his experiments on the
photophone and spectrophone. • In 1886,
Albert F. Zahm presented a paper on
skin friction, years before any
airplane took to the sky. • And, in an era when travel was more difficult, members delivered accounts of their travels to the outer reaches of the
Western territories and around the globe. According to
geologist Clarence E. Dutton, “[a]t those meetings, the attendance was always large for a local scientific society whose routine meetings were held for the sole purpose of reading formal papers.” Ms. Benson spoke about a paper she co-authored, titled, "A comparison of the International Hydrogen Scale with the standard scale of temperature defined by the platinum resistance thermometer." More women followed, both in membership and in the president’s chair. ==References==