This year marks 50 years since the United States accomplished the greatest outer space feat in history, landing men on the moon. But this endeavor of space exploration may not have happened without the efforts of our 6th President, John Quincy Adams, in the 1830’s and 40’s. Man has always been fascinated with space, since the beginning of time there has always been a primal need to understand the cosmos. Before John F. Kennedy vowed to send man to the moon, John Quincy Adams introduced the fascination of space and science to our U.S. government.

Many of the Presidential articles that we have looked at thus far have described stories from their pre-presidencies, but with JQA (as he will be known throughout the rest of this article) we will be looking at some things he did after having served in the nation’s highest office. JQA did some things after he was President, that no other President has done to this day. Being a one-term President, some of his longest lasting impacts stemmed from that work in his later years.

JQA was born in 1767 to Abigail and John Adams, our second President. JQA, following in the footsteps of this father, was involved in the political scene from a very early age. He was around all of the founding fathers as a kid and spent much of his time growing up in Paris where his father was doing diplomatic work. He went on to serve 4 ambassadorships to foreign countries, a United States Senator representing Massachusetts, and Secretary of State to James Monroe.

Long before the heated and contested election of George W. Bush and Al Gore, JQA experienced our first extremely close election. If you remember from last week, James Madison ran for office unopposed. That wasn’t so with JQA, as 4 people from the same party ran for President. No candidate won a majority of the electoral vote, as the vote was split. The House held a contingent election, which Adams won. He would also be a very strong foreign policy President with his ambassador background. He greatly expanded American trade and continued the Monroe Doctrine in Latin America and the Caribbean.

And then he lost. He was thoroughly defeated by Andrew Jackson by a margin that wouldn’t be seen until almost 80 years later in the election of Theodore Roosevelt. JQA retired from a public life, but after his son’s suicide one year later, he returned to public office. Adams was elected to the House of Representatives and is so far the only President to be elected to the House after he has already served as President. He would win 9 terms and serve in the House for 17 years, until he had a stroke on the House floor and passed away.

But these 17 years is where Adams’ impacts took hold. Adams had been fascinated with astronomy from an early age. As Secretary of State he even advocated for a national observatory to be placed at Harvard University, his alma mater. Even his very first address to Congress upon becoming President was urging them to build the first national observatory. He believed it was the government’s responsibility to and duty to promote learning. Adams called these observatories that he advocated for lighthouses of the sky”.

Adams was unsuccessful in setting up an observatory. The interests of the government and citizenship as a whole was not in astronomy or science. He never received that funding for those projects. That is until 1829, when an extremely wealthy British scientist died.

In 1829 James Smithson died, and left his entire estate to his nephew who had no heirs. He stated that if his nephew died without an heir, the money was to be used “to found in Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, and establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” In 1835 his nephew passed away, without heirs. The U.S. government now had money in today’s value around $15,000,000 in gold coins to create a scientific foundation. JQA was a House member in Congress at this time, and Congress now finally had the funding he had been seeking for a decade.

Andrew Jackson, President at the time, quickly formed a Congressional Committee to handle how the new funds would be used, and JQA was appointed to chair the committee. It took Congress ten years of debate to figure out how to appropriate the funds (see, they’ve always moved as quickly as a herd of turtles), with John Q. Adams advocating for an institution of science and learning. In 1846 Congress finally voted to create and establish the Smithsonian Institution (or “the nation’s attic”). It would include at that time an art gallery, museum, library, and laboratory.

A few years earlier, the U.S. had also finally received their first public observatory in Cincinnati, Ohio. The seconded largest telescope in the world was purchased from Germany for the observatory. In 1843 Adams was invited to lay its corner stone. He made the two-week trip to Cincinnati by train, steamboat, a canal packet boat pulled by horses, and a stagecoach. At the ceremony he would deliver a two-hour speech which was a history of astronomy. They named the hill upon which the building was constructed, “Mount Adams”. This lecture on astronomy and science would turn out to be Adams last public address.

Through Adam’s tireless efforts, and many years when Congress wanted to spend Smithson’s donation in some other way, the Smithsonian now boasts 19 museums, 9 research centers, a zoo, and over 200 institutions in 45 states. We also have 13 observatories. One of Adams last acts as President was to sign a bill for the future creation of a national observatory. Today this is known at the United States Naval Observatory. Even though Adams came into office almost 200 years ago, his efforts in furthering science and astronomy are still felt today. We can thank John Quincy Adams for our incredible Lighthouses of the Sky.