'Greenwich near London': the Royal Observatory and its London networks in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Rebekah Higgitt

doi:10.1017/s0007087419000244

Abstract

Built in Greenwich in 1675-1676, the Royal Observatory was situated outside the capital but was deeply enmeshed within its knowledge networks and communities of practice. Scholars have tended to focus on the links cultivated by the Astronomers Royal within scholarly communities in England and Europe but the observatory was also deeply reliant on and engaged with London's institutions and practical mathematical community. It was a royal foundation, situated within one government board, taking a leading role on another, and overseen by Visitors selected by the Royal Society of London. These links helped develop institutional continuity, while instrument-makers, assistants and other collaborators, who were often active in the city as mathematical authors and teachers, formed an extended community with interest in the observatory's continued existence. After outlining the often highly contingent institutional and personal connections that shaped and supported the observatory, this article considers the role of two early assistants, James Hodgson and Thomas Weston. By championing John Flamsteed's legacy and sharing observatory knowledge and practice beyond its walls, they ensured awareness of and potential users for its outputs. They and their successors helped to develop a particular, and ultimately influential, approach to astronomical and mathematical practice and teaching.

Highlights

Founded in 1675, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich is often said to have been Britain’s first government-funded scientific institution
These links helped develop institutional continuity, while instrument makers, assistants and other collaborators, who were often active in the city as mathematical authors and teachers, formed an extended community with interest in the Observatory’s continued existence
The portrait does not appear to have been used as a frontispiece but, once again, the attributes of his trade are prominent: a page of diagrams relating to astronomical problems in his System of the Mathematics, the volumes of which are on the table, an armillary sphere and cross-staff.[104]