Monday October 22, 1894

Work on new Buildings (Altazimuth Pavilion) & Physical Obs^y (N. wing &c.) commenced.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

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RH says..... At last! Although both buildings still had a long way to go before completion - the Physical Observatory, in particular, for which funding was only secured piecemeal, wing by wing. Building works, of course, had been almost a constant throughout the history of the Observatory.

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Coincidentally, today, 22 October 2009, marks the 125th anniversary of the vote held at the international conference in Washington, D.C., that selected the Greenwich meridian as the Prime Meridian of the world. That vote, however, only led to recommendations being passed on to the 25 governments that sent delegates, only one of which (Japan) acted. In 1894, 10 years after the conference, Christie was still working on a Committee of the Science and Art Department to see how the Washington recommendations could be adopted.