[dread78645]

I think (RA will correct me if I'm wrong) that the lack of any visible parallax shifts wasn't something that could be dealt with until the development of photography, which made possible very detailed records of star positions.

After some Googling it seems Friedrich Bessel made the first parallax measurment two years before John Draper made the first daguerreotype image of the Moon.
Modern measurment are done with photography and spectroscopy, but it seems the pioneering work was done with sextants.

[PatrickHenry]

After some Googling it seems Friedrich Bessel made the first parallax measurment two years before John Draper made the first daguerreotype image of the Moon. Modern measurment are done with photography and spectroscopy, but it seems the pioneering work was done with sextants.

Very interesting. I was guessing, based on the timing of both developments, and of course I got it wrong. But it's amazing that it was done without photography. (It's not amazing that I made a wrong guess.)