One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.

Newcomb is underscoring how contingent major scientific advances can be: pivotal “movements” may begin not with a grand theoretical program but with an unplanned, even mundane, chain of events. By pointing to the “great Washington telescope” and the later discovery of Mars’s moons, he highlights the role of instruments and institutional decisions—often shaped by chance—in opening new observational possibilities. The remark also implicitly deflates heroic narratives of linear progress, suggesting that scientific history includes serendipity, opportunism, and the unforeseen consequences of building the right tool at the right moment. In this view, accidents do not replace skill; they create the conditions in which prepared investigators can make discoveries.