HowseD., Greenwich time and the discovery of longitude (Oxford, 1980), 138–51.
2.
A great many works deal to varying degrees with the Royal Observatory, and I make no claims to covering all of those works that treat even the limited number the themes I address in this paper.
3.
AllanChapman, “Sir George Airy (1801–1892) and the concept of international standards in science, timekeeping and navigation”, Vistas in astronomy, xxviii (1985), 321–8, p. 321. Despite his great importance for nineteenth-century science and technology, there is no published biography of Airy. Chapman, however, is currently at work on such a volume.
4.
CannonS. F., Science and culture: The early Victorian period (New York, 1978), 38.
ForbesEric G., Greenwich Observatory, i: Origins and early history (1675–1835) (London, 1975), 176.
8.
AiryG. B., “Report on the progress of astronomy during the present century”, Report on the First and Second Meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (London, 1833), 125–89.
9.
Quoted in AiryG. B., Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy, ed. by WilfridAiry (Cambridge, 1896), 128.
10.
KingH. C., “Instrumentation of the nineteenth centuries and early twentieth centuries”, Vistas in astronomy, xx (1976), 157–63, p. 159.
11.
Quoted in Forbes, op. cit. (ref. 7), 19.
12.
Airy, op. cit. (ref. 9), 124.
13.
BennettJ. A., “Airy and horology”, Annals of science, xxvii (1980), 269–85, p. 270.
Pond of course had begun the time-ball service at Greenwich in 1833.
17.
Airy, op. cit. (ref. 9), 227–8.
18.
AiryG. B., entry on “Greenwich Observatory”, The penny cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, xi (London, 1838), 440–2, p. 442. Airy undertook to write this entry, and another on gravitation, after being urged by Sheepshanks that his (Airy's) and the Cambridge Observatory's interests could be advanced by Lord Brougham, then Lord Chancellor. Brougham, Sheepshanks knew, took a great interest in the Penny cyclopaedia: Airy, op. cit. (ref. 9), 97 and 101.
19.
On Ramage's telescope see KingH. C., The history of the telescope (London, 1959), 199–201. Airy's fears remind one of Wordsworth's lines, quoted at the beginning of King's classic work: “What crowd is this? what have we here! we must not pass it by; A Telescope upon its frame, and pointed to the sky”.
20.
Meadows, op. cit. (ref. 6), 34.
21.
Airy, op. cit. (ref. 9), 232.
22.
Meadows, op. cit. (ref. 6), 42. A superb account of the instruments employed at Greenwich is contained in DerekHowse, Greenwich Observatory, iii: The buildings and instruments (London, 1975).
23.
On the relationship between the generation and protection of knowledge and the problem of the political order, see StevenShapinSimonSchaffer, Leviathan and the air pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life (Princeton, 1985).
24.
Elsewhere I have argued that his actions surrounding the discovery of Neptune have to be interpreted in a similar light: SmithRobert W., “The Cambridge network in action: The discovery of Neptune”, Isis, lxxx (1989), 395–422.
SimonSchaffer, “Astronomers mark time: Discipline and the personal equation”, Science in context, ii (1988), 115–45, p. 132, DreyerJ. L. E.TurnerH. H. (eds), History of the Royal Astronomical Society 1820–1920 (Oxford, 1923), 173–8 and 207–11, and MeadowsA. J., Science and controversy: A biography of Sir Norman Lockyer (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), chap. 4.
29.
DreyerTurner, op. cit. (ref. 28), 209.
30.
AiryG. B., English mechanic, xxxii (1881), 586, cited in Meadows, op. cit. (ref. 27), 319.
31.
The relationship between the state and science in nineteenth-century Britain was characterised by a mix of laissez-faire and state intervention, but the very limited financial support offered generally went to projects that promised practical applications. See, for example, PeterAlter, The reluctant patron: Science and the state in Britain 1850–1920 (Leamington Spa, 1987) and MacLeodR. M., “Resources of science in Victorian England: The Endowment of Science Movement, 1868–1900”, in MathiasP. (ed.), Science and society, 1600–1900 (Cambridge, 1972), 111–66.
32.
MeadowsA. J., “The Airy era”, Vistas in astronomy, xx (1976), 197–201, p. 200.
33.
MaunderWalter E., The Royal Observatory Greenwich: A glance at its history and work (London, 1900), 116. In his recent reexamination of Airy's role in the discovery of Neptune, Chapman makes essentially the same point as Maunder but sets his argument in a much more convincing historical context: AllanChapman, “Public research and private duty: George Biddell Airy and the search for Neptune”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xix (1988), 121–39.
34.
Airy, op. cit. (ref. 9), 76. See also IvoryJ., “Some remarks on a memoir by M. Poisson”, Philosophical magazine, n.s., i (1827), 324–331, especially pp. 328–9, and AiryG. B., “On some passages in Mr Ivory's remarks on a memoir by PoissonM. relating to the attraction of spheroids”, Philosophical magazine, n.s., 1 (1827), 442–8.
35.
Airy's son noted that in “the various polemical discussions on scientific matters in which Airy was engaged, Sheepshanks was an invaluable ally”: Airy, op. cit. (ref. 9), 121. For another example of Airy and Sheepshanks in action together, see HoskinM. A., “Astronomers at war: South v. Sheepshanks”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xx (1989), 175–212.
36.
For a fuller account of this episode see SmithRobert W., “The Hartnup balance”, Antiquarian horology, March 1983, 39–45. Pond, we should remember, had been forced to resign as Astronomer Royal, and perhaps Airy's actions reflect not only his dislike of criticism but a concern to avoid the same fate as Pond.
37.
See Hoskin, op. cit. (ref. 35).
38.
Airy, op. cit. (ref. 9), 179.
39.
AiryG. B., 21 July 1846, to The Athenaeum, printed in the issue of 25 July 1846 under the heading “Greenwich Observatory”, 760–2, p. 761.
40.
Schaffer, op. cit. (ref. 28), 133.
41.
SimonNewcomb, Reminiscences of an astronomer (Boston and New York, 1903), 288.
42.
Ibid., 287.
43.
Airy, op. cit. (ref. 9), 37, 110, and 148.
44.
There is a very large body of literature on the topic of deskilling. See, for example, RogerPenn, Class, power, and technology: Skilled workers in Britain and America (New York, 1990) and the works cited therein.
Ibid., 323. Many writers point to Airy's great engineering expertise. Meadows, for example, suggests that Airy should be regarded as an engineer manqué: Meadows, op. cit. (ref. 6), 6.
52.
Chapman, op. cit. (ref. 3), 326.
53.
A striking contrast to Airy's Greenwich is provided by Dunsink Observatory under William Rowan Hamilton. Hamilton was a brilliant theoretical scientist, but he did not begin to have Airy's expertise or interest in the orderly running of an observatory. Nor did Hamilton have the resources — human, physical, or financial — to attempt to do so, at least on anything approaching the scale of Greenwich. Hamilton, moreover, did not possess the political skills that might have been translated into additional resources. Compared to the stream of astronomical results issuing from Greenwich, Dunsink's output was at best a trickle. On Dunsink see WaymanP. A., Dunsink Observatory, 1785–1985: A bicentinnial history (Dublin, 1987).
54.
Schaffer, op. cit. (ref. 28), 115.
55.
Ibid., 129. For an analysis of how this drive to eliminate errors was key in Bessel's measurement of annual stellar parallax, see WilliamsM. E. W., “Attempts to measure annual stellar parallax: Hooke to Bessel” (Ph.D dissertation, University of London, 1981).
56.
Schaffer, op. cit. (ref. 28), 119.
57.
Ibid., 122.
58.
AndrewUre, The philosophy of manufactures: Or, An exposition of the scientific, moral, and commercial economy of the factory system of Great Britain (London, 1835), 20.
59.
See, for example, the quotation at ref. 18 above.
60.
Ure, op. cit. (ref. 58), 13.
61.
Maunder, op. cit. (ref. 33), 15.
62.
Ibid., 137. These remarks were noted and commented upon by Schaffer. See Schaffer, op. cit. (ref. 28), 120.
