LIGHT'-YEAR: astronomical expression for the distance through which light travels in one year: a term used for convenience of stating distances so vast as to be beyond the practical use of numbers. At the rate of 186,330 m. per second (Young's Text-book, 1889), reckoning the day at 23 h., 56 min., 4 s., and the year at 3651 days, a light-year equals 5,864,066,148,330 m. Thus, while light, coming from our sun to us in 8 minutes, 19 seconds, gives the sun, approximately, but of a light-year's distance, there is, e.g., a star catalogued as sigma Draconis which is 129 light-years distant, equal to 756 quadrillions of m.; in other words, it would require 129 of our years for light to travel to us from that star. It might have been blotted out 15 years before the revolutionary war and still be shining (1890). VILLARD, vil'ard, HENRY: writer and financier: b. Speyer, Bavaria, 1835, Apr. 11. He was educated at the univs. of Munich and Würzburg; came to the United States 1853; studied law; wrote for Chicago newspapers; visited Colo. and published The Pike's Peak Gold Regions (1860). After this he was Washington correspondent, and, later, war correspondent, of prominent papers; then European correspondent for the Tribune; and 1868-70 sec. of the Amer. Social Science Assoc. Returning to Germany, he placed Amer. stocks and bonds, and thus became a representative of German interests, especially in Oregon enterprises. He was chosen, 1875, pres. of the Or. and Cal. r.r. co. and of the Or. Steamship Co.; was a receiver of the Kan. Pacific r.r.; arranged purchase of several Or. cos., consolidating them as the Or. R.R. and Navigation Co.; acquired control and presidency of the N. Pacific r.r. under a new organization, the Or. and Transcontinental Co.; sacrificed his own wealth, and his new palace in New York, in keeping up the stock against a 'bear' attack; and went to Europe. He returned 1888 with a large holding of German bonds, and resumed presidency of the Or. and Transcontinental Co., and directorship of the N. Pacific r.r. Since then he has been abroad, returning 1890. He has given largely to the univs. of Or. and Wash., also to an industrial art school in Bavaria, and established a hospital and school for nurses at Speyer. Under his direction, a hist. of the N. Pacific r.r., by E. V. Smalley, was prepared, and published 1883. MATTE, n. măt [Fr.-from Ger. matt, dull, dim-used especially in mining]: product of the smelting of sulphuretted ores, after the roasting process. In English copper-works, the term regulus is generally adopted; in Germany, of late years, the words stein and lech. The Fr. Matte has been largely adopted by the mining world in America, especially in copper-mining districts. |