The Legacy of Giovanni Schiaparelli

During a close opposition of Earth and Mars in 1877, Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, was able to observe the Mars clearly and distinctly through an 8.75-inch telescope. In this observation, he saw a network of long straight lines on the surface of Mars. He drew these markings and described them as canali, which in Italian means channels. However, the word was mistranslated into English as “canals”. The mistake led many people to speculate that these canals are actually irrigation canals built by intelligent beings on Mars. This theory was fueled by the excitement of the public over the construction of the Suez Canal, which was an engineering marvel of the era. His observations would eventually persuaded Percival Lowell to began his infamous observations and work on the planet Mars, which for decades, before the first flyby of Mars by the Mariner 4 spacecraft, has greatly influenced people’s knowledge of life on Mars.

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