During the final week of August 1835, a long article appeared in serial form on the front page of the New York Sun. It bore the headline:

The article began by triumphantly listing a series of stunning astronomical breakthroughs that the famous British astronomer, Sir John Herschel, had apparently made “by means of a telescope of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle.” Herschel, the article declared, had established a “new theory of cometary phenomena”; he had discovered planets in other solar systems; and he had “solved or corrected nearly every leading problem of mathematical astronomy.” Then, almost as if it were an afterthought, the article revealed Herschel’s final, stunning achievement: He had discovered life on the moon!

The article was an elaborate hoax. Herschel had not really observed life on the moon, nor had he accomplished any of the other astronomical breakthroughs credited to him in the article. In fact, Herschel was not even aware until much later that such discoveries had been attributed to him. However, the announcement caused enormous excitement throughout America, and the New York Sun managed to sell thousands of copies of the article before the public realized it had been hoaxed.

The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 is widely acknowledged to be one of the most sensational media hoaxes of all time.

The Lunar Narrative

The New York Sun first mentioned Herschel’s lunar discoveries on Friday, August 21, 1835. A small notice, ostensibly copied from the Edinburgh Courant, appeared on the second page of the paper. It read, “We have just learnt from an eminent publisher in this city [Edinburgh] that Sir John Herschel, at the Cape of Good Hope, has made some astronomical discoveries of the most wonderful description, by means of an immense telescope of an entirely new principle.”

This initial announcement elicited no comments from rival papers. It merely served as a forerunner to the more elaborate series of articles that followed four days later, published as a series of six extracts purportedly reprinted from the supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science.

The entire lunar narrative was approximately 17,000 words in length. It consisted primarily of a long, rambling, and fanciful telescopic tour across the surface of the moon. It did not have a plot or directional storyline, as such. Instead, it maintained the reader’s attention from one day to the next by unveiling one miraculous discovery after another, constantly promising that revelations even more stupendous than those already made would soon be disclosed. It relied heavily on the premise that it was a true narrative for its sensational effect.

Day One: Herschel’s Telescope

The Sun printed the first extract on Tuesday, August 25. The text of the extract occupied three-quarters of the front page. The paper’s editor, Benjamin Day, wrote a short note on the second page explaining to his readers what he was presenting them with:

We this morning commence the publication of a series of extracts from the new Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science, which have been very politely furnished us by a medical gentleman immediately from Scotland, in consequence of a paragraph which appeared on Friday last from the Edinburgh Courant. The portion which we publish to day is introductory to celestial discoveries of higher and more universal interest than any, in any science yet known to the human race…

This first extract only briefly mentioned that Herschel had discovered anything on the moon. Instead, it was principally devoted to establishing the premise upon which the entire hoax depended: that Herschel had created an immense new telescope so powerful that it could be used to view astronomical objects with great clarity at previously unheard-of magnifications — or as the text said, it could be used to study “even the entomology of the moon, in case she contained insects upon her surface.”

Such a telescope would, of course, have to be massive, and according to the text, it was. It measured 24 feet in diameter (by contrast, the modern telescope at the Mt. Palomar observatory measures only 17 feet in diameter). However, its true power lay in the fact that it contained a special, second lens, the “hydro-oxygen microscope”, that further magnified, illuminated, and projected the telescopic image onto a canvas screen. It was this second lens that gave the instrument its power. It did so by solving the problem of distant objects losing their light and becoming dimmer when magnified — a problem that had long plagued astronomers. By adding illumination to the telescopic image, the ‘hydro oxygen microscope’ supposedly allowed the magnification of even the most distant objects with absolute clarity.

Finally, the first extract introduced the supposed author of the narrative, a man identified as Dr. Andrew Grant, a former pupil of Sir William Herschel (Sir John Herschel’s famous father, discoverer of the planet Uranus) and now the travelling companion and amanuensis of the younger Herschel. Dr. Grant, it was claimed, had written a popular account of Herschel’s discoveries for the Edinburgh Journal of Science to complement a more scholarly account that Herschel himself had transmitted to the Royal Society.

Day Two: Plant and Animal Life

The lunar tour began in earnest in the second extract. The narrative described the moment when, on January 10, 1835, Herschel was said to have first trained his telescope upon the moon. What appeared before his eyes was “a beautifully distinct, and even vivid representation of basaltic rock… their articulations similar to those of the basaltic formation at Staffa.” Shifting the view a little bit, Herschel then perceived that the rock was “profusely covered with a dark red flower.”

Having thus established that the moon contained plant life, the central question remaining was whether the moon also supported animal life. That day’s narrative soon answered that question when it reported that the scientists had seen herds of brown quadrupeds similar to bison, a goat “of a bluish lead color,” and “a strange amphibious creature, of a spherical form, which rolled with great velocity across the pebbly beach.”

Day Three: The Biped Beaver

The third extract began with a description of more geological formations (oval-shaped mountains and extinct volcanoes). Dr. Grant offered a list of the variety of lunar flora and fauna seen by the astronomers up to that point: 38 species of trees, twice this number of plants, 9 species of mammalia, 5 of ovipara.

However, the highlight of this extract was the discovery of the biped beaver. This was the first sign of intelligent, though primitive, life on the moon. These extraordinary beavers, who walked on two feet and bore their young in their arms, lived in huts “constructed better and higher than those of many tribes of human savages.” Signs of smoke above the huts of the beavers indicated that these advanced animals had mastered the use of fire.

Day Four: The Vespertilio-Homo

The fourth extract proved to be the highpoint of the entire narrative. The scientists discovered human-like creatures living inside a ring of red hills they dubbed the “Ruby Colosseum.” Unlike earth-bound humans, these creatures were “covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs.” The faces of these creatures, Dr. Grant remarked, being “of a yellowish flesh color, was a slight improvement upon that of the large orang outang.”

Further observation of these curious creatures, whom Herschel dubbed the “Vespertilio-homo, or man-bat,” followed. The astronomers watched them engage in what appeared to be animated conversations and “hence inferred that they were rational creatures.” The very proper Dr. Grant also noted that “some of their amusements would but ill comport with our terrestrial notions of decorum.” Apparently the Vespertilio-homo were mating with each other out in the open.

Anticipating that some readers would find the existence of such creatures too incredible to believe, Dr. Grant assured skeptics that a forthcoming volume would provide certificates from “several Episcopal, Wesleyan, and other ministers, who, in the month of March last, were permitted, under stipulation of temporary secrecy, to visit the observatory, and become eye-witnesses of the wonders which they were requested to attest.”

Day Five: The Sapphire Temple

The author of the lunar narrative (whoever he really was) now faced a challenge. Having revealed the existence of intelligent lunar life, how could he produce even greater wonders to maintain the interest of readers? His solution in the fifth extract was to present readers with a mystery: An apparently abandoned temple, built of polished sapphire. The roof of this temple was constructed out of a yellow metal and fashioned to look like a mass of flames rising upwards and licking at a large sphere of clouded copper, “as if hieroglyphically consuming it.”

The astronomers pondered what was meant by this globe surrounded by flames. Did the makers of the globe “by this record any past calamity of their world, or predict any future one of ours?” Unable to answer this question, the astronomers decided to refrain from “indulging in speculative theories, however seductive to the imagination.”

Day Six: Higher Orders of Vespertilio-Homo

The lunar narrative concluded on Monday, August 31. In the final extract the astronomers discovered a superior order of Vespertilio-homo living in close proximity to the mysterious sapphire temple. These new creatures “were of a larger stature than the former specimens, less dark in color, and in every respect an improved variety of the race.”

While observing these creatures, who spent their time collecting fruit, flying, bathing, and conversing, the astronomers realized that there reigned a “universal state of amity among all classes of lunar creatures.” They could not remember having observed any “carnivorous or ferocious species.” (Apparently they had forgotten watching birds catching fish earlier in the narrative.)

With this thought in mind, Herschel and his companions temporarily ended their observations. However, when they returned to the telescope the next day they discovered they had accidentally left its lens in a position where it had caught the sun’s rays and burned down a wall of the observatory. A week later, after having completed the repairs, the moon was no longer visible.

This might have been the end of the narrative. However, Dr. Grant noted that he did get a chance to briefly observe the moon again the following month, and during this later observation discovered a still superior species of the Vespertilio-homo who “were of infinitely greater beauty, and appeared in our eyes scarcely less lovely than the general representations of angels by the more imaginative schools of painters.” Having said this much, Dr. Grant then declined to say any more, explaining to his readers that they would find a more detailed account of the highest order of Vespertilio-homo in the upcoming publication of “Dr. Herschel’s authenticated natural history of this planet.” With this, the narrative ended.

The Possibility of Lunar Life

To modern readers the narrative of Herschel’s lunar discoveries reads like science fiction. It is difficult to imagine anyone believing such a farfetched tale. To appreciate why people in 1835 might have believed it, one must consider the intellectual context which served as its backdrop, particularly the early nineteenth-century debate about the possibility of lunar life. At the time, there was widespread disagreement in the scientific community on this subject. This created enough doubt to make The Sun’s lunar narrative seem somewhat credible.

The primary evidence to support the view that life did NOT exist on the moon was the sharpness with which the moon occulted stars. Such sharp occultation indicated that the moon lacked an atmosphere, and therefore lacked air to sustain life. As the German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel put it in an 1834 lecture, “The moon has no air; thus also no water, because without the pressure of air, water at least in the liquid state would evaporate; thus also no fire, for without air nothing can burn.”

However, the apparent lack of a lunar atmosphere had not convinced all astronomers that the moon did not support life. Many astronomers placed more emphasis upon direct telescopic observations of the surface of the moon, and they had been diligently scanning the surface of the moon to find any signs of life. They believed they had met with some success.

For instance, in 1824 Franz von Paula Gruithuisen, professor of Astronomy at Munich University, had published a paper titled “Discovery of Many Distinct Traces of Lunar Inhabitants, Especially of One of Their Colossal Buildings.” In this paper, he noted the existence not only of different shades of color on the lunar surface, which he correlated with climate and vegetation zones, but also lines and geometrical shapes, which he felt indicated the existence of roads, walls, fortifications, and cities.

Other prominent German astronomers during the 1820s and 30s shared Gruithuisen’s belief in the existence of lunar life. Carl Friedrich Gauss, director of the Göttingen Observatory, Johann Joseph von Littrow, director of the Vienna Observatory, and Wilhelm Olbers, a Bremen astronomer, all seriously discussed ways of communicating with the inhabitants of the moon, such as the construction of gigantic geometrical symbols on the surface of the Earth that would be visible from the moon. These discussions were described in the October 1826 issue of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. (Crediting the lunar narrative to the Edinburgh Journal of Science, a publication that did not exist in 1835, was almost certainly an allusion to the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal‘s support of the lunar-life hypothesis.)

For many astronomers, telescopic evidence was secondary to the arguments offered by Natural Theology, a belief system that taught that the study of nature provided not only direct evidence of the existence of God, but also insight into his divine plan. This philosophy was famously articulated in works such as William Paley’s 1801 Natural Theology and the Bridgewater Treatises of the 1830s, and it served as the dominant framework for the study of nature during the first half of the nineteenth century.

The divine plan that seemed evident to many scientists, as they dug deeper into the secrets of Nature, was that God intended, through his creation, to promote life. This conclusion was strengthened as men of science found that the more they searched, the more they found life crammed into every obscure corner of the globe. Observations with microscopes, for instance, revealed small, life-filled worlds contained inside drops of water. Natural theologians concluded that God was clearly bountiful and plentitudinous in his Creation. He had evidently created a universe full of life. This made it seem illogical to them that the Creator would have surrounded the Earth with a universe full of dead planets. After all, if God’s purpose was to support life, what role could lifeless planets possibly serve in this plan? It was this logic that convinced many men of science that the moon must indeed be inhabited, despite its sharp occultation of stars.

The astronomical implications of natural theology reached a wide audience through the writings of Thomas Dick. Dick, also known as the ‘Christian Philosopher’ after the title of his first book, was a Scottish astronomer whose works were suffused with the concepts of natural theology. Like an early, Christian version of Carl Sagan, he campaigned tirelessly as both a writer and a lecturer to popularize astronomy and the concept of a “plurality of worlds.” Among his more notable achievements was the production of an estimate of the population of the entire solar system. According to his calculations, the solar system contained 21,891,974,404,480 inhabitants. In fact, the moon alone, by his count, contained 4,200,000,000 inhabitants. His writings were enormously popular in the United States, with his fans including intellectual luminaries such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. The writings of Dick provided the immediate intellectual backdrop against which many people in America judged the claims put forth in the moon hoax. In fact, it has often been suggested that the moon hoax should properly be read as a satire of Dick’s work.

It is worth noting that even Sir John Herschel himself, the star of the moon hoax and one of the great scientific celebrities of the 1830s, had not ruled out the possibility of lunar life. In his Treatise on Astronomy, which was republished in America in 1834, one year before the moon hoax, he reviewed the arguments for and against the possibility of lunar life, but took no side in the debate. After concluding his review, he simply remarked that, “Telescopes… must yet be greatly improved, before we could expect to see signs of inhabitants, as manifested by edifices or by changes on the surface of the soil.” This sentence could very well have served as the immediate inspiration for the moon hoax.

The Plausibility of Herschel’s Telescope

A secondary claim made in the text of the moon hoax, but a claim that was no less crucial for people in 1835 when trying to determine the narrative’s veracity, was that Sir John Herschel had invented and constructed an immense telescope of an entirely new design, and that the extraordinary power of this telescope allowed him a clear view of the lunar inhabitants. Even if readers had conceded the possibility of lunar life, they still might have questioned whether such a telescope was technologically feasible given the state of optical technology in 1835. They might also have wondered whether even a telescope with a 24-foot diameter lens was powerful enough to view lunar objects with the clarity recorded in Herschel’s narrative.

Michael Floy, a New York businessman, expressed these concerns in his diary when the moon hoax first appeared in print:

The author of these wonders says that an enormous lens of 30 feet diameter was constructed. He thought that would be a big enough lie in all conscience, but he should have said a lens of 100 feet diameter, as it is shown by writers on optics that such a diameter would be required to ascertain if any inhabitants in the Moon. Why not make a good lie at once? But it is utterly impossible to construct a lens of half that diameter, and therefore we may despair of ever ascertaining whether the moon be inhabited.

Floy was absolutely correct. It was well beyond the limits of optical technology in the 1830s to have constructed a telescope of the kind described in the moon hoax. However, only a handful of people in the world at that time were sufficiently versed in optics to have known this with certainty. Many might have sensed that it was beyond the limits of current technology, but they could not have been certain.

Contributing to the belief that such a telescope might have been possible, was the growing popular conviction that no technological leap was beyond the limits of human ingenuity. The first decades of the nineteenth century had already produced numerous technological wonders such as steamboats, canals, railroads, the cotton gin, and improved printing presses. Soon to appear were the telegraph and the daguerrotype. It was an age when people were prepared to believe that any invention, no matter how remarkable, was possible.

Authorship of the Hoax

Ultimately whether or not people believed the claim that life had been found on the moon depended on whom they thought had written the article. As long as they thought that Sir John Herschel himself was the source of the lunar discoveries, they were unwilling to dismiss the discoveries as a hoax. After all, Herschel was a man of enormous cultural prestige, even in America. His word was trusted. It was commented more than once that the idea of Herschel lying seemed even more ridiculous than the lunar discoveries themselves.

It was only a matter of time before the public realized that Herschel was not the source of the discoveries, but a number of conditions conspired to help conceal this fact from the public and to prolong the inevitable moment before the Sun was exposed as the true author.

First there was the language and content of the narrative. It was composed in an ornate, intellectual style that included numerous scientific allusions obscure to the lay reader. The American sense of intellectual inferiority was such that many readers concluded that no American possessed the knowledge to have written the article. It must have been written by a European scientist, and this (mistaken) conclusion lended credibility to the hoax.

Second, there was the practical matter of the slow speed of communication between Europe and America. New Yorkers could not simply pick up the phone to ask someone in Europe whether the Edinburgh Journal of Science really had published such an article. They had to wait weeks for the mail boats to cross the Atlantic, leaving the Sun ample time to sow confusion. The Sun readily took advantage of this window of opportunity. As public suspicion grew concerning the authenticity of the discoveries, the Sun adopted a stance of innocence, claiming that it had merely published what it had received from Europe and that therefore, if there was a hoax, it was a European hoax. Two weeks after the hoax it righteously declared:

“Certain correspondents have been urging us to come out and confess the whole to be a hoax; but this we can by no means do, until we have the testimony of the English or Scotch papers to corroborate such a declaration.” (NY Sun, Sep. 16, 1835)

Finally, the Sun benefitted from a lucky accident of timing. Or perhaps, it deliberately took advantage of this accident to publish the article when it did.

At the beginning of August a fire had destroyed the printing offices of the Sun’s main rival, James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald. This meant that while the Herald was finding a new place of business, it could not respond in print to anything the Sun might claim. Its surest critic had been silenced.

The Herald only resumed publication on August 31, the day that the Sun was printing the final extract from the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Immediately the Herald denounced the hoax, running a long column titled “The Astronomical Hoax Explained.”

In this column Bennett noted that “the town has been agape two or three days at the very ingenious astronomical hoax,” and then revealed (or made an accusation) that the true author of the lunar discoveries was not Dr. Andrew Grant, but rather Richard Adams Locke, a Cambridge-educated, English reporter who worked for the Sun.

Bennett claimed he had sat next to Locke during a court trial earlier that summer, at which time he had struck up a conversation with the man. Bennett said that Locke “told me he was engaged on some scientific studies. He mentioned optics, and I think astronomy, as the particular branches.” Bennett offered this remembered conversation as his proof that Locke had to be the author of the moon hoax. Bennett also shared a supposed scandal from Locke’s past, revealing that the man had originally considered dedicating his life to the Church, “but in consequence of some youthful love affair, getting a chambermaid in some awkward plight, abandoned religion for astronomy.”

Locke replied to Bennett in the next issue of the Sun, insisting that he did not make the lunar discoveries and that Bennett had taken liberties with his biography. Bennett correctly pointed out that he never claimed that Locke had made the discoveries, “We only said he did the writing part.” Bennett then added, “He need not be ashamed of it, neither need he squint so awfully at us about the chamber-maid. We can return the look with seven per cent interest. We still persist in our belief.”

Despite Locke’s denial, the belief that he was the author of the lunar narrative has persisted, although it remains possible someone else wrote it. Two men in particular have been occasionally put forward as possible authors of the hoax: Jean-Nicolas Nicollet, a French astronomer who was travelling through America at the time (though he was in Mississippi, not New York, when the moon hoax appeared), and Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine. However, there is no real evidence to suggest that anyone but Locke was the author of the hoax, and he remains the most likely candidate.