[4][5] The origin of the Henry Draper Catalogue dates back to the earliest photographic studies of stellar spectra.

In 1885, Edward Pickering began to supervise photographic spectroscopy at Harvard College Observatory, using the objective prism method.

[9] Antonia Maury and Pickering published a more detailed study of the spectra of bright stars in the northern hemisphere in 1897.

[13] In 1890, the Harvard College Observatory constructed an observation station in Arequipa, Peru in order to study the sky in the Southern Hemisphere, and a study of bright stars in the southern hemisphere was published by Annie Jump Cannon and Pickering in 1901.

[16] Between 1910 and 1915, new discoveries increased interest in stellar classification, and work on the Henry Draper Catalogue itself started in 1911.

It contains rough positions, magnitudes, spectral classifications, and, where possible, cross-references to the Durchmusterung catalogs for 225,300 stars.

[20] Cannon found spectral classifications for 46,850 fainter stars in selected regions of the sky in the Henry Draper Extension, published in six parts between 1925 and 1936.

These charts also contained some classifications by Margaret Walton Mayall, who supervised the work after Cannon's death.