Who was Samuel Langley?

Samuel Langley was one of the most famous scientists of his day.

Samuel Pierpont Langley was born in Boston in 1834. He attended the Boston Latin School and developed a great interest in mathematics. Despite having no more than a high school education, he worked for a short while in Chicago and St. Louis as an architectural engineer, was invited to be an assistant at the Harvard College Observatory, and taught mathematics at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. But it was when he was invited to come to Pittsburgh to serve as director of the Allegheny Observatory that his career and national fame truly began.
  • One of the first things Langley did at the Allegheny Observatory was to come up with a solution to the railroad’s need for a standard time service. In the mid-1800s, every town had its own local time that differed from that of neighboring towns. Railroad scheduling was chaotic and resulted in many train collisions. Langley used astronomical observations to derive a precise time standard, and he broadcast the correct time over the telegraph lines to railroads all over the U.S. and Canada. The success of Langley's time service helped lead to the creation of our familiar time zones in the continental U.S. (Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaska).
  • Langley also gained world fame for the study of sunspots and solar energy at the Allegheny Observatory. He was one of the first to measure the heat, in the form of infrared light, coming from the sun.
  • Langley helped found the scientific discipline of astrophysics at the Allegheny Observatory with the publication of his ground-breaking textbook, The New Astronomy, in 1883.
  • Langley was the first person to fly an unmanned powered flying machine in 1896. His airplane, which he called an aerodrome, flew for 4000 yards. Langley pioneered aviation research at the Allegheny Observatory by performing the first true scientific investigations into the physics of flight. Langley was narrowly beat out by the Wright brothers to demonstrate the first powered manned flight in 1903.
  • Because Langley became one of the world’s most respected scientists while at the Allegheny Observatory, he was asked to head the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in 1887.

Among the things named in honor of Samuel Pierpont Langley are:

  • Langley, Virginia
  • NASA Langley Space Flight Center
  • Langley Air Force Base
  • U.S.S. Langley (CV-1 and CV-22)
  • Mount Langley
  • the Langley Medal for aviation
  • the unit of solar radiation called the langley (Ly)
  • Langley Hall at the University of Pittsburgh, and
  • Langley High School in Pittsburgh.