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.