Polar Explorer George Rockwell Putnam

Over at the National Archives where I work there was a series of talks and movies on Polar Expeditions in February that include a number of cool activities, including a feature on Admiral Peary who [might have] reached the North Pole in 1909. My great grandfather George Rockwell Putnam did not go on the 1909 trip, but he did join Peary on earlier trips to Greenland and the Artic. He describes them in some detail in his memoirs, Sentinel of the coasts; the log of a lighthouse engineer, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1937. But I've been interested in looking at the coverage of the events as they happened. Before I write about that I do want to note that Admiral Peary house is about three blocks from where I live now and has a nice sign on it. I suspect it was not a coincidence that my great grandfather bought a house not far away from Peary. Both of them were active in the National Geographic Society.

So here's the story as reported at the time, in 1896, Peary had organized to make another exploration of Greenland. According to the New-York Tribune, his main goal in May of 1896 was to retrieve a huge meteorite he had found the previous year and bring it back to New York. The meteorite was -- eventually -- retrieved and is on display at the New York Museum of Natural History (there's even a video about the Meteorite it is really kind of important, though Peary did take it away from the Inuit people who both used the hard surfaces and had stories about its origins). Here it is in the Museum:

Probably because these trips were getting expensive and some people wondered if Peary took too many risks, he asked two other scientists to form groups to research other ideas and to share expenses. The group Putnam joined was known as the Benton Group or Boston Party depending on the reports (for some of this background see an article from 1897 in Technology Quarterly) Putnam was then working for the US Coast and Geodetic Society and was most interested in confirming that gravity varied at the poles than at the equator. This issue was important because it related to whether the earth is solid or not which was a subject of great debate at the time. More specifically, it was key to navigation. Since these variations in gravity affected a compass and its "true north." Navigational devices today have to account for this in all sorts of ways but as they depend less on magnets and more on GPS satellites, it may become less important. When Putnam was doing this work, precise settings required the use of a pendulum and precise marking of the stars. Here's the pendulum set up


He could only set up on land. Greenland was controlled by the Danes and he repeatedly praises them in his account of the process. He had to be on a solid surface and have good weather. It did not always happen. The trip took place from July 6 through October. As soon as he could, the pendulums had to be sent back to Washington to make sure they still were accurate. I'm not much of a mathematician so I can't explain all the calculation he preformed to understand the variations he saw. But he was apparently quite satisfied. Peary's hope to get the meteorite was however foiled and he was quite glum when they returned in September 1896. The next year he got the big one! Meanwhile my great grandfather in 1897 had his salary raised to $1,800 and was off to study the Pribilof Islands.

Alaska Natives. Three native boys on St. Paul Island, pictured with one of the St. Paul reindeer.
Originally uploaded by The U.S. National Archives