Stabilizing Local Knowledge: The Installation of a Meridian Circle at the National Astronomical Observatory of Chile (1908–1913)

This essay examines the problems associated with the installation of a precision instrument at the National Astronomical Observatory of Chile, starting before its construction and following the process through its installation to its later useful life. Between 1908 and 1913, the director of the observatory, Friedrich W. Ristenpart, corresponded with the German manufacturer, A. Repsold & Söhne in Hamburg, trying to identify the critical points pertinent to the installation of the instrument in Chile. These communications reveal how the installation of the instrument required the stabilization of local knowledge (location, adjustment, calibration, and staging) that would allow the data it obtained to be universally validated. This correspondence between user and manufacturer also reveals that the phenomenon of the mobility of instruments implies much more than simply transporting something from one place to another: there is no movement without some type of coordination between the extraction of an object from a certain place and context and its insertion into a new place and set of relationships.