Visitation Day: Saturday June 2, 1894

Visitation Day

Meeting of Board at 12 noon adjourning about 1.20 for lunch & inspection of Observatory meeting again 3.30 to 4.30.

351 Visitors including 47 ladies – too great a crowd. Former computers &c who ask for a card every year may be struck off next time. Plans of Obs^y & Grounds?? On scale of the lithographed Plan in ‘Greenwich Observations’ to be prepared & put up in prominent posⁿ with places of principal instruments &c marked. Arrangements to be made if possible to admit Visitors in batches only to Ball Lobby, Chronometer Room, Great Equatorial (staircase) & other places where there is likely to be a block. The Altaz. & Sheepshanks might be locked up, only visitors who specially ask to see these instr^s being taken up there. More milk wanted for the chocolate, owing to increase in number of Visitors. Copies of Report to B of V. not received till 1.15. 50 advance copies should be supplied in future for use of B of V. at meeting at noon. Sir Ughtred K. Shuttleworth (Sec^y of Adm^y) went round Observatory.

Dinner at Criterion at 6.30. Only 26 present.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

Visitation day: 300 visitors including 50 or 60 ladies. There was rather a crush on the staircase leading to the Great Equatorial. The Chronometer room was crowded most of the afternoon. At times the 28 Inch Dome, the Longitude Pavilion, & the new South Wing were crowded. Very few visited the Lassell Dome or the Sheepshanks Equatorial. 30 or 40 went up to the Altazimuth. It will be well to consider whether the doors of the Chronometer room and Great Equatorial had not better be shut when about a dozen people are in the room. The computer in charge of the Water Clock might see to this.

Frank Dyson, Chief Assistant

Thursday May 10, 1894

M^r Hughes from Director of Stores Depart^t made out his list of Office furniture required for new building South Wing. M^r Simms Jun^r commenced mounting Simms & Cooke Equatorials & Water Telescope in South Wing Basement. Mr McGilicuddy[?] from Doching[?] & Son called about a mistake in no of copies of Astr. Results 1891, the 180 separate copies not having been struck off. I complained to him of the slow rate of printing. Settled [illegible] details of mounting of Spectroscope on 28 inch telescope. Went to meeting of R.S. (Papers on Eclipse of 1893 April 16) & to dinner of R.S. Club.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

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RH says..... E.Walter Maunder had this to say about the Water Telescope:

"An ingenious telescope was set up by Sir George Airy in order to ascertain if the speed of light were different when passing through water than when passing through air. Or, in other words, if the aberration of light would give the same value as at present if we observed through water. The water telescope, as it was called, is kept on the ground floor of the central octagon of the new observatory. The observations obtained with it were hardly quite satisfactory, but gave on the whole a negative result."

The Royal Society Club was a dining club, for the inner circles of the Royal Society. See Archibald Geikie's 1917 Annals of the Royal Society Club; the record of a London dining-club in the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries for background.

Wednesday March 25, 1894 [sic.]

Began with M^r Thackeray to look into the errors in position of Ecliptic given in the volumes of Greenwich Ob^ns

Frank Dyson, Chief Assistant

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RH says..... I think the date on this entry should actually read Wednesday March 28, since the 25th was actually a Sunday. It certainly seems unlikely that Dyson and Thackeray would have chosen to begin the tedious work of correcting old observations and calculations on Easter Sunday. However, since all was no doubt quiet on the 25th I have posted this one today.

Regular work at Greenwich Observatory

RH says.....
When there is little or nothing recorded in the Astronomer Royal's or Chief Assistant's journals we can assume that the regular work of the Observatory went on as usual. The annual publication of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich - Greenwich Observations - demonstrates how large a task regular observing and calculating work was, especially at a time that they felt themselves under-staffed. Christie boasted that despite expanding work in what were new fields for Greenwich - especially astro-photography, spectroscopy, double-star observation and increasing equatorial observations - they also managed to increase the number of regular transit observations.

Between May 1893 and May 1894 the average number of transits observed each day was 31 or, if Sunday was discounted, 36. However, conditions meant that this load was spread unequally and Christie noted that the "very favourable conditions" during February 1894 meant that on three consecutive days 458 transits and 460 zenith distances were observed. This was hard and repetitious manual labour for the observers, especially if we remember all the additional observations that had to be made in order to calculate the various errors that had to be factored into the equally labourious calculations that each set of data prompted.