CHAPTER V - At Greenwich Observatory, 1836–1846

Summary

1836

“Through the last quarter of 1835 I had kept everything going on at the Greenwich Observatory in the same manner in which Mr Pond had carried it on. With the beginning of 1836 my new* system began. I had already prepared 30 printed skeleton forms (a system totally unknown to Mr Pond) which were now brought into use. And, having seen the utility of the Copying Press in merchants’ offices, I procured one. From this time my correspondence, public and private, is exceedingly perfect.

“At this time the dwelling house was still unconnected with the Observatory. It had no staircase to the Octagon Room. Four new rooms had been built for me on the western side of the dwelling house, but they were not yet habitable. The North-east Dome ground floor was still a passage room. The North Terrace was the official passage to the North-west Dome, where there was a miserable Equatoreal, and to the 25-foot Zenith Tube (in a square tower like a steeple, which connected the N.W. Dome with Flamsteed's house). The southern boundary of the garden ran down a hollow which divides the peninsula from the site of the present Magnetic Observatory, in such a manner that the principal part of the garden was fully exposed to the public. The Computing Room was a most pitiful little room. There was so little room for me that I transported the principal table to a room in my house, where I conducted much of my own official business. A large useless reflecting telescope (Ramage's), on the plan and nearly of the size of Sir W. Herschel's principal telescope, encumbered the centre of the Front Court.