CLYDE WILLIAM TOMBAUGH - PRINTED CARD SIGNED IN INK - HFSID 224131

CLYDE WILLIAM TOMBAUGH
American reproduction of a Polish-language card with illustrations of three stamps honoring Nicolaus Copernicus. Signed by Clyde W. Tombaugh, who "Discovered 9th planet, Pluto, on 18 Feb 1930".
Printed card signed "Clyde W. Tombaugh/Discovered 9th planet, Pluto, on 18 Feb 1930" in blue ink. Color, 8x6. With facsimile signature of American Postmaster General "E. T. Klassen" (Elmer T. Klassen), which dates this card, but not the signature, to sometime between 1973 and 1975. This untranslated Polish-language card, which appears to have been reprinted by the United States Postal Service, features reproductions of one American 8¢ stamp and two Polish stamps of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Tombaugh (1906-1997, born in Streator, Illinois) was hired in 1929 as an assistant by the Lowell Observatory in New Mexico to continue the search for a planet beyond Neptune, which had been initiated by Percival Lowell. Tombaugh used a blink microscope to compare photographs of a small part of the night sky and detect the planet. After ten months of painstaking comparisons, on February 18, 1930 he found Pluto in the constellation Gemini. Some of his ashes are carried on the New Horizons spacecraft, which was launched on Jan. 19, 2006 and is scheduled to fly by Pluto and its moon Charon in 2015. Lightly toned and worn. Lightly worn and rounded corners. Otherwise in fine condition.