There are Observatories of all kinds from rough hovels of stone and mud, costing one hundred rupees with trap door at top and slits in direction of Meridian and Prime Vertical to hold Zenith Sector, Clock, Transit, Chronometers, Thermometers etc., up to Greenwich Observatory, Cambridge Observatory, Cape of Good Hope Observatory, etc. These are filled with most costly instruments on scale of magnificence and splendour which quite dazzle minds of those who only look at surface.George Everest, 18291The Case Is OpenedThe Bombay case arrived in London at end of 1827. This was no ordinary package from India. Its contents were not raw silk, indigo nor cotton, but pair of Londonmade astronomical instruments, 46-inch achromatic telescope and 5 -ft focal length transit instrument wrapped in oilcloth and paper. Also crammed inside were pair of mountain barometers and half dozen thermometers. The case was then brought to East India Company's baggage warehouse on edge of City. On 22 January 1828 was opened in front of select witnesses. These were as remarkable as case: Company's Hydrographer, its Librarian, its official Mathematical Instrument Maker, and local stockbroker. The hydrographer was veteran navigator James Horsburgh, who had mapped Bombay harbour and in 1822 lobbied for Bombay observatory. The librarian was Sanskrit scholar Charles Wilkins, responsible for commissioning this observatory's instruments in 1824. The instrument maker was William Gilbert, from whose Leadenhall Street shop at Navigation Warehouse, just opposite entrance to East India House, Wilkins obtained both transit instrument and telescope in 1 826. Wilkins wanted Gilbert to be present at case's opening: it would not be proper that they should be opened but in presence of their Maker. The fourth witness, canny stockbroker Francis Baily, was one of managers of new Astronomical Society of London and familiar with ways along which these instruments had travelled to and from Bombay.2The Bombay case became notorious as an episode of costly controversy about construction of an observatory and its instruments in early nineteenth-century colonial world and epoch of political and administrative reform. Its career is analysed here for evidence of how astronomers, instrumentation and utility were all assessed in these critical years, period when something like modern astronomy networks were forged. This is also, principally, story about territories in which such personnel and hardware functioned, with themes of social and geographical proximity and distance providing stuff of ferocious dispute and earnest scrutiny. In 1815 government of Bombay presidency had accepted that was a national reflexion that the chief naval port and greatest mart in British India should not possess place for making astronomical observations. In 1818 land grant was made to Bombay Literary Society to construct such an observatory but its manager, local clockmaker, soon died.3 Support came from orientalist Henry Colebrooke, Company servant and one of Baily's colleagues amongst founders of Astronomical Society. The Company hired Colebrooke's client thirty-year-old John Curnin, then resident in Spitalfields, reportedly well versed both in Astronomy and in natural philosophy. Curnin was subsequently elected Fellow of Astronomical Society with backing of Baily and actuary Benjamin Gompertz.4 Curnin reached Bombay in early 1 823. With governor Mountstuart Elphinstone's backing, he demanded new site and equipment, including transit instrument, mural circle and an achromatic telescope all to be produced by eminent makers Edward Troughton and George Dollond. 'They will be lasting testimony of liberality and disposition of Honourable Court to promote science which has already so extensively benefited mankind and has at same time shewn us in part magnificence of Creation and permitted us as were to understand some of Councils [sic] of Almighty. …