Charles Todd's love of astronomy and meteorology behind overseeing Adelaide-Darwin telegraph link
Charles Todd's feats as South Australia's superintendent of electric telegraph projects were all in support of his love of astronomy.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Charles Todd is renowned for the overseeing the overland telegraph line project that linked Adelaide with London in 1872. Adelaide also was linked by telegraph line to Melbourne, Sydney and Perth during Todd’s time as observer and superintendent of electric telegraph (later postmaster general) for the South Australian government from 1855.
But Todd’s feats as an electrical engineer were tied in with his love of astronomy and meteorology.
Todd had started his career as a supernumerary computer in 1841at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London, where he showed his mathematical ability and potential as an observer.
As junior assistant to Professor James Challis at the Cambridge University observatory in 1848-54, he helped in determining longitude between the Cambridge and Greenwich observatories by telegraphy.
In 1854 he returned to Greenwich as superintendent of the galvanic apparatus to transmit time signals. This involved working with the Electric Telegraph Co. and C. V. Walker, electrical engineer to the South Eastern Railway, a pioneer of submarine cables. In 1855, astronomer royal George Airy selected Todd as observer and superintendent of electric telegraph for the South Australian government.
The full development of Todd's beloved astronomy depended on spreading the Australian telegraphic network and the instruments to provide a complete observatory. By the 1880s, he had organised constant general astronomical work, time services, a standard point for geodetic surveys, and gradual improvement in the accuracy of climatic statistics.
Before that, Todd had made regular observations, notably of Venus in 1874 and 1882. His notes on the phenomena of Jupiter's satellites were published in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society that made him a fellow in 1864.
Before that, Todd had made regular observations, notably of Venus in 1874 and 1882. His notes on the phenomena of Jupiter's satellites were published in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society that made him a fellow in 1864.
He sought systematic interchange of information and pioneered the production of weather maps. When he retired, there were 510 rainfall stations in South Australia and the Northern Territory, 22 of them completely equipped for all meteorological observations.
Todd attended an International Telegraphic Conference in Berlin in 1885. Next year he was made an honorary MA of the University of Cambridge. Professor J. C. Adams, co-discoverer of the planet Neptune, was his sponsor. In 1889, he was elected a fellow of The Royal Society, London.
One of Toddy’s four daughters, Gwendoline, married future Nobel Prize winner William Bragg, Elder professor of mathematics and experimental phtsics, at the University of Adelaide.