Thursday February 8, 1894

Meeting of International Catalogue Com^ee at R.S. Laying of Brooke’s electric main completed. Wrote to Adm^y about M^r Finley’s candidature for Chief Assis^t.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

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Rebekah Higgitt says.....

This was the very first meeting of the International Catalogue Committee, a committee of the Royal Society that was formed to discuss the preparation of an international catalogue of scientific literature.

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The Mr Finley mentioned here may in fact be a J. Findlay, mentioned in the catalogue of the RGO archives here, as having applied for the position of Chief Assistant. Christie was, at this time, hoping to persuade the Admiralty to let him appoint a second Chief Assistant at Greenwich, as part of his staff reform scheme. A second Chief Assistant for the ROG only arrived in 1896, in the form of Philip Herbert Cowell (1870–1949), who - as was typical of 19th-century Chief Assistants at Greenwich - was a recent graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Wednesday February 7, 1894

Saw M^r Awdry at Admiralty about new scheme for appointments at R.O.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

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Rebekah Higgitt says.....

Christie's ideas about creating a larger and more permanent workforce were proving contentious, since they would be expensive. It required a lot of discussion with the Observatory's paymasters at the Admiralty and Treasury. Part of the problem was that in the 1870s the choice of staff began to be made by Civil Service Examination, which attracted candidates that were not necessarily well-suited to the practical nature of work at the ROG. Looking back at this period, Henry Park Hollis recalled the "internal opposition in addition to the normal opposition to increase of staff and expenditure from the controlling officers of the Admiralty and Treasury" and that, as a result, "Much of [Christie's] time was spent on official interviews and correspondence on these matters" (Hollis's obituary of Christie, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1922).

Winter weather 1894 and 2009

Rebekah Higgitt says.....
Don't worry - Christie will be back tomorrow! In the meantime, since London has recently experienced its largest snowfall in 18 years and some fairly low temperatures, I have had a quick look at the report from the Observatory's Magnetic and Meteorological Department for 1894. 5 January 1894, when Turner reported snow and low temperatures in his Journal, was the coldest day in the year from May 1893-May 1894 and temperatures plunged to 12.8° Fahrenheit (-10.67° Celsius) with the maximum that day only reaching 19° (-7.2° Celsius). This temperature was apparently “lower than any previously recorded since 1841, with two exceptions". I can only imagine how modern London's transport system would react!

This image was published in 1881 and shows some of the meteorological equipment used at the Observatory, including the self-registering equipment that was brought in by Christie's predecessor and former boss, George Airy. Some further information about this aspect of the Observatory's work can be found here.

Lots of pictures of the Royal Observatory in the snow this week can be found on Flickr, including this set.

Sunspots in February 1894

Rebekah Higgitt says.....
Having mentioned Maunder's interest in sunspots in yesterday's post, I checked The Astronomer Royal's Report to the Board of Visitors for 1894. This records that for sunspots, "the characteristic of the year [May 1893-May 1894] has ... been rather the great number of groups visible at the same time than the extent of any one of them". It was noted that "the groups of 1893 November and 1894 February were very large". Magnetic Observations were carried out by a different department, but they noted that, while this year in general saw much less magnetic activity than the year before, "there was a large increase occurring 1894 February, at the time of the great sun spot."

Maunder on the history and work of the ROG

Rebekah Higgitt says.....
A great place to get an idea of how the Royal Observatory in Greenwich operated in the late 19th century is E. Walter Maunder's Royal Observatory, Greenwich: a Glance at its History and Work published by the Religious Tract Society in 1900. It's the source for several of the images that I've used already in the blog. The full text can be found online in several formats at the Internet Archive.

Maunder (1851-1928) was the Observatory's Photographic and Spectroscopic Assistant. He was appointed in 1873 when this was a new post and a new department for the Observatory. He's probably best known for his statistical analysis of the sunspot photographs for which he was responsible. Using old records, including those of John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, he highlighted the dearth of sunspot activity in the period between 1645 and 1715. This phenomenon was later named the Maunder minimum. Maunder also worked on spectroscopy, including making observations with Christie (who was Chief Assistant before becoming Astronomer Royal in 1881) to measure the radial velocity of stars.

In addition, Maunder was an active member of the Royal Astronomical Society and a founder of the British Astronomical Association - he also wrote many books and articles aimed at a popular audience. His second wife, Annie Scott Dill Russell (1868–1947), was also an astronomer who he met when she worked at the ROG between 1891 and 1895. This was the only brief period during which women worked at the Observatory in the 19th century (see notes for further details). She retired when they married in 1895, he retired in 1913, although both came back to work during the First World War.

Saturday February 3, 1894

Rebekah Higgitt says.....
There is a brief gap in both the Astronomer Royal's and Chief Assistant's Journals at this point, suggesting that events at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich were of a routine nature. However, the list of equatorial observations among the archives in Cambridge do record that on 3 February 1894 Right Ascension and North Polar Distance observations were taken of the Crab Nebula.

The 1894 Report of the Astronomer Royal to the Board of Visitors gives a bit more information. The observations were made with the Sheepshanks Equatorial (named after its donor, Richard Sheepshanks) and the observations were made "for determination of personality in cometary observations". In other words, they wanted to test the differences in observations when made by different observers, or their Personal Equations. December 1893 had seen observations of Comet Brooks, March-April 1894 was to see Comet Denning, in May-July 1894 Comet Gale was visible, and Encke's Comet arrived at the end of the year.

This image, from the NASA website, is not, of course, quite what the Greenwich observers would have seen through the Sheepshanks Equatorial!

Friday February 2, 1894

Attended meeting of Council R.A.S. Went to Sandwich in evening returning Monday evening.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

Rebekah Higgitt says....

After a meeting of the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society, Christie was off for the weekend. I don't know what he was doing in Sandwich (Kent), unless he enjoyed golf. Sandwich is the home of the Royal St George's Golf Club. Opened in 1887, in 1894 this was the first course to host the British Golf Open Championship outside Scotland - and apparently they will be hosting it again in 2011.

Thursday February 1, 1894

Attended meeting of Jubilee Almshouses Trustees at 10.30

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

Rebekah Higgitt says.....
Christie's archives at Cambridge suggest that he was involved with a range of charitable work. This seems to have come with the job, as he replaced the previous Astronomer Royal, George Airy, as a Trustee of the Jubilee Almshouses in 1891. The Jubliee Almshouses were built in Greenwich in 1809 (the name celebrates George III's jubilee) and the Jubilee Trust Almshouses still exist.