George Biddell Airy Research Articles

The winter of raw computers: the history of the lunar and planetary reductions of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

In 1839 the working hours of the computers employed on the lunar and planetary reductions of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich were reduced from eleven hours to eight hours. Previous historians have explained this decrease by reference to the generally benevolent nature of the manager of the reductions, George Biddell Airy. By contrast, this article uses the letters and notes exchanged between Airy and the computers to demonstrate that the change in the working hours originated from the computers as a reaction to their poor working conditions. Through the exploration of these archival materials, the article shifts the focus of the analysis to the working experience of the computers, rather than to the administrative history of the project that inevitably tends to highlight Airy's actions. By doing so, the article shows how the computers were treated as a disposable low-skilled workforce, as opposed to aspiring astronomers with considerable mathematical talent. Through this reframing, the article takes a step towards a working history of the observatory.

‘The grand strategy of an observatory’: George Airy's vision for the division of astronomical labour among observatories during the nineteenth century

The downfall of the Parramatta Observatory during the 1840s led the British Government to reconsider the funding it provided to observatories. George Biddell Airy—the Astronomer Royal at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich—recommended the establishment of a central Colonial Board of Visitors (based in London) to oversee the management of observatories within the British Empire. The recommendation ultimately never materialized, but it showcased the support of the astronomical community and the British Government for centralizing the management of the vast network of observatories. This centralized vision continued to influence the founding of new observatories and the organization of their work. The article examines Airy's vision of a centralized organization of division of labour among observatories through his involvement in the discussions about the Colonial Board of Visitors. It also examines how he continued supporting the same vision through articles about the work of observatories, and through written advice about establishing observatories. The article demonstrates how he envisioned the grand strategy of an observatory to encompass public utility while also fitting it within the general policy of observatories in relation to the division of astronomical labour.

Trust in Glass: Negotiating the Purchase of the Object Glass for the Airy Transit Circle

The Airy Transit Circle of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich is one of the most important instruments in the history of astronomy, navigation and time distribution. However, there has been very little research done on the history of the instrument. This article examines how the purchase of the object glass for the Airy Transit Circle involved active negotiations between George Biddell Airy and three different opticians: Georg Merz, Noel Paymal Lerebours, and William Simms. The article also shows the involvement of John Herschel and Richard Sheepshanks in Airy’s decision making process. By highlighting the presence of these individuals, the article shows how Airy’s trust and distrust in different instrument makers influenced his choice of supplier for the object glass of the Airy Transit Circle.

Constructing the 'automatic' Greenwich time system: George Biddell Airy and the telegraphic distribution of time, c.1852-1880.

In the context of the telegraphic distribution of Greenwich time, while the early experiments, the roles of successive Astronomers Royal in its expansion, and its impacts on the standardization of time in Victorian Britain have all been evaluated, the attempts of George Biddell Airy and his collaborators in constructing the Royal Observatory's time signals as the authoritative source of standard time have been underexplored within the existing historical literature. This paper focuses on the wide-ranging activities of Airy, his assistant astronomers, telegraph engineers, clockmakers and others, which served to increase the reliability of the Royal Observatory's time service between the 1850s and 1870s. Airy and his collaborators aimed to mechanize and automate their telegraphic time distribution system in order to improve its accuracy and reliability. The accomplishment of such technological innovations was disseminated via public lectures, journal articles and correspondence with experts, secondary distributors of standard time and the general public. These communications were used to build public trust in the Greenwich time service. However, the unexplored archival material used in the present paper provides fresh insight into the unstable nature of the Greenwich time system, including its clear limits in terms of its scale of automation and degree of accuracy.

Mechanics and mathematicians: George Biddell Airy and the social tensions in constructing time at Parliament, 1845-1860.

In mid-Victorian Britain, reconciling elite mathematical expertise with practical mechanical experience presented both engineering and social challenges. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the construction of the Westminster Clock at Britain's Houses of Parliament. Realizing this scheme engendered the collaboration between Cambridge mathematicians George Biddell Airy and Edmund Beckett Denison, and the clockmaker Edward John Dent. Transforming theoretical mathematical drawings into physical apparatus challenged existing relations between conveyors of privileged scientific knowledge and those with practical experience of what was, and what was not, mechanically possible. My article demonstrates how, within this project, physical models and devices provided material solutions to ambiguities over authority and social disorder in Victorian Britain.

Beginnings of Astigmatism Understanding and Management in the 19th Century.

Within the last 200 years, the perception of astigmatism has evolved from that of an infrequent and peculiar defect of the eye to a distortion almost as common as spherical refractive errors. Most of the significant findings on this condition were made in the 19th century, including the first description by Thomas Young (1773-1829) and the introduction of the treatment methods used today. The purpose of this study was to investigate the milestones in the understanding and management of astigmatism that occurred up to the year 1900. This fascinating history illustrates how knowledge evolves across time, geographical areas, and interdisciplinary boundaries. The first article looking at the use of a cylindrical lens to correct astigmatism was written by George Airy (1801-1892) in 1825. The term "astigmatism" was introduced in by William Whewell (1794-1866) in 1846. Methods for subjective and objective evaluation were subsequently established, including the introduction of a cross cylinder, keratoscope, astigmatic dial, and the development of retinoscopy and ophthalmoscopy. In the last two decades of the 19th century, the first attempt to alter the refraction in astigmatic patients by changing the shape of the cornea was made. It must be noted that diverse challenges were encountered in this field on the way to the development of a treatment, including the technical manufacture of a lens, the precise measurement of the refractive error, and understanding the optical properties of the eye. The importance of the 19th century was that interdisciplinary cooperation, such as that seen in this study, between physicists and astronomers, and mathematicians and physicians, led to the development of comprehensive knowledge on astigmatism.

The origins and early years of the Magnetic and Meteorological department at Greenwich Observatory, 1834-1848

SUMMARYAs one of his first acts upon becoming Astronomer Royal in 1835, George Airy made moves to set up a new observatory at Greenwich to study the Earth’s magnetic field. This paper uses Airy’s correspondence to argue that, while members of the reform movement in British science were putting pressure on the Royal Observatory to branch out into geomagnetism and meteorology, Airy established the magnetic observatory on his own initiative, ahead of Alexander von Humboldt’s request for British participation in the worldwide magnetic charting project that later became known as the ‘Magnetic Crusade’. That the Greenwich magnetic observatory did not become operational until 1839 was due to a series of incidental factors that provide a case study in the technical and political obstacles to be overcome in building a new government observatory. Airy attached less importance to meteorology than he did to geomagnetism. In 1840, he set up a full programme of meteorological observations at Greenwich – and thus turned his magnetic observatory into the ‘Magnetic and Meteorological department’ – only as the price of foiling an attempt by Edward Sabine and others in the London scientific elite to found a rival magnetic and meteorological observatory. Studying the origins of Airy’s Magnetic and Meteorological department highlights how important the context of other institutions and trends in science is to understanding the development of Britain’s national observatory.

Riotous assemblage and the materials of regulation.

In the stores of the British Museum are three exquisite springs, made in the late 1820s and 1830s, to regulate the most precise timepieces in the world. Barely the thickness of a hair, they are exquisite because they are made entirely of glass. Combining new documentary evidence, funded by the Antiquarian Horological Society, with the first technical analysis of the springs, undertaken in collaboration with the British Museum, the research presented here uncovers their extraordinary significance to the global extension of nineteenth century capitalism through the repeal of the Corn Laws. In the 1830s and 1840s the Astronomer Royal, George Biddell Airy; the Hydrographer to the Admiralty, Francis Beaufort; and the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, collaborated with the virtuoso chronometer-maker, Edward John Dent, to mobilize the specificity of particular forms of glass, the salience of the Glass Tax, and the significance of state standards, as means to reform. These protagonists looked to glass and its properties to transform the fiscal military state into an exquisitely regulated machine with the appearance of automation and the gloss of the free-trade liberal ideal. Surprising but significant connections, linking Newcastle mobs to tales of Cinderella and the use of small change, demonstrate why historians must attend to materials and how such attention exposes claims to knowledge, the interests behind such claims, and the impact they have had upon the design and architecture of the modern world. Through the pivotal role of glass, this paper reveals the entangled emergence of state and market capitalism, and how the means of production was transformed in vitreous proportions.

The Historical Meridian: Antiquity and Scripture in the Public Work of George Biddell Airy

George Airy, the Astronomer Royal between 1835 and 1881, was the most prolific public scientist and governmental adviser in nineteenth-century Britain. His contributions to parliamentary commissions, like his management of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, have been characterised as an attempt to impose order across Victorian society. However, the cultural subtext to this governmental work has not been explored. By profiling his non-professional investigations into ancient history and scriptural criticism, recorded in the Royal Observatory archives, this article examines the ideas and beliefs that framed Airy’s contribution to Victorian governance. In doing so, it reveals intimate connections between science, administration and cultural heritage in Victorian Britain.

Compasses and sinking ships: Mrs Janet Taylor’s contribution in the compass adjusting controversy of mid-nineteenth-century England

The mid-nineteenth century was a highpoint of empire building, and reliable navigation across the oceans was crucial. While the effects of magnetic variation and deviation on compasses were well known by 1800, iron ships brought with them an even bigger challenge. The nautical world divided between ‘applied’ and ‘theoretical’ approaches to addressing the ‘compass problem’. This article focuses on the role of Janet Taylor, who lived and worked in the heart of this community, as a writer, teacher, inventor, chart-seller and compass adjuster, as a follower of the system of compass adjustment advocated by the Astronomer Royal, Professor George Airy. Janet Taylor’s achievements in the compass adjusting field and her interactions with the Astronomer Royal are explored, adding another insight into Mrs Taylor’s distinctive story.

Approximation of a Great Circle by using a Circular Arc on a Mercator Chart

This paper describes George Biddell Airy's almost completely unknown method of approximating an orthodromic arc (great circle arc) using a circular arc in the normal aspect Mercator projection of a sphere. In addition, it is demonstrated that the centre of the circle can be defined in at least two different ways, which yields slightly different results. Airy's approach is built upon in this paper. The method of computing coordinates of Airy's circle arc centre is described. The formulae derived in the paper can be used to calculate the length of Airy's approximation of the orthodromic arc connecting two points on the sphere and on the Mercator chart. Moreover, the actual length of the orthodromic arc on the sphere and on the Mercator chart can be computed using the formulae derived in this paper. The purpose of the paper is not to suggest an application of Airy's method in navigation, but to analyse Airy's proposal and to show that a great circle arc on a Mercator chart is close to a circular arc for distances which are not too great. This property can be useful in education, having in mind that the stereographic projection is the only one that maps any circle on a sphere onto a circle in the projection plane.

A New Way to Demonstrate the Rainbow

The rainbow is a beautiful optical phenomenon that has fascinated humankind since antiquity. It is caused by a huge number of water droplets in the atmosphere illuminated by the Sun. Many noted physicists have contributed to the explanation of the rainbow. The wave theory of the rainbow was developed by George Airy, and modern descriptions are based on Mie scattering as developed by Gustav Mie. For educational purposes the simpler theory by Descartes, which is based solely on geometrical optics and is much more accessible, is used.

How the Term "Shock Waves" Came Into Being

The present paper considers the history of works on shock waves beginning from S. D. Poisson′s publication in 1808. It expounds on the establishment of the Polytechnic School in Paris and its fellows and teachers — Gaspard Monge, Lazare Carnot, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, Simeon Denis Poisson, Henri Navier, Augustin Louis Cauchy, Joseph Liouville, Ademar de Saint-Venant, Henri Regnault, Pierre Dulong, Emile Jouguet, Pierre Duhem, and others. It also describes the participation in the development of the shock wave theory of young scientists from the universities of Cambridge, among which were George Airy, James Challis, Samuel Earnshaw, George Stokes, Lord Rayleigh, Lord Kelvin, and James Maxwell, as well as of scientists from the Gottingen University, Germany — Bernhard Riemann and Ernst Heinrich Weber. The pioneer works on shock waves of the Scottish engineer William Renkin, the French artillerist Pierre-Henri Hugoniot, German scientists August Toepler and Ernst Mach, and a Hungarian scientist Gyozo Zemplen are also considered.

Hétérogénéité individuelle et dépendance d'état : De George Biddel Airy à James Joseph Heckman

In this paper I examine the evolution of an idea: that differences between statistical relationships and the observations on which they are based, or disturbances, may have meaning and structure and that such meaning and structure must be taken into account despite the fact that they arise from unobservables. When working with micro data, principal unobservables arise from individual heterogeneity which may occur in part from path dependence. My disturbing conclusion is that we cannot separate individual unobserved behavior due to past experience from other types of unobserved heterogeneity. This means, in particular, that we cannot obtain economically meaningful estimates of distributed lags or other models of path dependence without making ad hoc assumptions having no economic content.

In Pursuit of Accurate Timekeeping: Liverpool and Victorian Electrical Horology

SummaryThis paper explores how nineteenth-century Liverpool became such an advanced city with regard to public timekeeping, and the wider impact of this on the standardisation of time. From the mid-1840s, local scientists and municipal bodies in the port city were engaged in improving the ways in which accurate time was communicated to ships and the general public. As a result, Liverpool was the first British city to witness the formation of a synchronised clock system, based on an invention by Robert Jones. His method gained a considerable reputation in the scientific and engineering communities, which led to its subsequent replication at a number of astronomical observatories such as Greenwich and Edinburgh. As a further key example of developments in time-signalling techniques, this paper also focuses on the time ball established in Liverpool by the Electric Telegraph Company in collaboration with George Biddell Airy, the Astronomer Royal. This is a particularly significant development because, as the present paper illustrates, one of the most important technologies in measuring the accuracy of the Greenwich time signal took shape in the experimental operation of the time ball. The inventions and knowledge which emerged from the context of Liverpool were vital to the transformation of public timekeeping in Victorian Britain.

Richard Christopher Carrington: Briefly Among the Great Scientists of His Time

We recount the life and career of Richard Christopher Carrington (1826 – 1875) and explore his pivotal relationship with Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy. Carrington was the pre-eminent solar astronomer of the 19th century. During a ten year span, he determined the position of the Sun’s rotation axis and made the following discoveries: i) the latitude variation of sunspots over the solar cycle, ii) the Sun’s differential rotation, and iii) the first solar flare (with Hodgson). Due to the combined effects of family responsibilities, failure to secure a funded position in astronomy (reflecting Airy’s influence), and ill health, Carrington’s productive period ended when he was at the peak of his powers.

Helmholtz and the British scientific elite: From force conservation to energy conservation

This article discusses the close relationship that developed during the 1850s and 1860s between Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94), one of the leading German scientists during the second half of the nineteenth century, and the British scientific elite generally. It focuses especially on the importance of the law of conservation of energy to both sides of that relationship as the law emerged and became popularized. In presenting this Anglo-German relationship, the article relates Helmholtz's friendships or acquaintanceships with numerous members of the British elite, including William Thomson, John Tyndall, Henry Enfield Roscoe, Michael Faraday, Edward Sabine, Henry Bence Jones, George Gabriel Stokes, James Clerk Maxwell, Peter Guthrie Tait, George Biddell Airy and James Thomson. It suggests that the building of these social relationships helped create a sense of trust between Helmholtz and the British elite that, in turn, eased the revision of the understanding of the law of conservation of force into that of energy and consolidated its acceptance, and that laid the personal groundwork for Helmholtz's future promotion of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory in Germany and for Anglo-German agreements in electrical metrology.

The Transit of Venus Enterprise in Victorian Britain (review)

Reviewed by: The Transit of Venus Enterprise in Victorian Britain Deborah Jean Warner (bio) The Transit of Venus Enterprise in Victorian Britain. By Jessica Ratcliff. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007. Pp. ix+220. $99. Transits of Venus occur when the small planet passes between the earth and the sun. They are short, lasting at most about four hours. They are infrequent. And each is visible only from specific and often far-flung locales. The first transit of Venus that is known to have been seen (by one observer in England) occurred in 1639. Edmond Halley observed a transit of Mercury in 1677 and eventually realized that if astronomers could measure the duration of planetary transits, or time-specific aspects of transits, they could determine the distance between the earth and the sun, a figure considered to be the fundamental astronomical unit. Recognizing the value of this suggestion, Europeans mounted several enormously expensive expeditions to observe the Venus transits of 1761 and 1769. Jessica Ratcliff focuses her attention on the British expeditions to observe the transit of 1874 (with a postscript on the transit of 1882). She writes from a history-of-science perspective but is mindful of matters of technology. Indeed, she explains clearly that the results of the transit observations may have been understood primarily as contributions to pure science, but most of the challenges of the project pertained to technology. Moreover, comparing the British expeditions with those mounted by France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, she concludes that the transit offered an important arena for international competition, and that the technological design of each observing program was a “national product” (p. 76). The transit of Venus of 1874 occasioned the costliest British science project of the nineteenth century, and it was supported almost entirely by government funds funneled through the Admiralty. George Biddell Airy, the long-term and now elderly director of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich— a government-sponsored institution established for the determination of longitude and the improvement of navigation—was given responsibility for planning and organizing the several expeditions and making sense of the results obtained by observers sent to distant lands. One set of problems on his plate pertained to photography, a technology that may have been ubiquitous in Victorian culture but that had not yet shown that it was up to precision measurements. Each aspect of photography presented pros and cons. Which emulsion (collodion or daguerreotype) would capture the best images? Which would have the least distortion, or perhaps the most equal distortion in all directions? Which optical system should be used to focus the astronomical image onto the photographic plate? Determining how to model the transit so that observers could practice before the event was equally perplexing and critical. So too were decisions pertaining [End Page 463] to such technologies as submarine telegraphy and precision chronometry that were used to determine the positions of the observing stations. Ratcliff provides a particularly fascinating account of the challenges involved in making sense of observations that were, literally, all over the map. While trials with the model had led everyone involved to expect smooth sailing, the actual transit proved frustratingly complex. With regard to clocking the moment of internal contact, for instance, observers standing side by side might differ by as much as twenty or thirty seconds. When the observations finally returned to England, an astronomer or two at Greenwich faced the daunting task of interpretation. Should they disregard outlying observations as aberrations, or might outlying observations on one side compensate for those on the other? How should they understand observers who admitted relying on personal judgment? How far should they trust women, even if their observations were close to the norm? And so the project dragged on, with government calling for results and the aged Airy eager to retire. In the end, despite all the new technologies employed and the care taken by observers from several nations, the astronomical results of the nineteenth-century transits of Venus were no better than those obtained in the late eighteenth century. But as presented by Ratcliff in a book that is remarkably informed, insightful, and accessible, the transits provide a window onto many important aspects of science and...

Nervous Conditions: Science and the Body Politic in Early Industrial Britain (review)

Reviewed by: Nervous Conditions: Science and the Body Politic in Early Industrial Britain L. S. Jacyna Elizabeth Green Musselman . Nervous Conditions: Science and the Body Politic in Early Industrial Britain. SUNY Series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century. SUNY Series in Science, Technology, and Society. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. xi + 276 pp. Ill. $75.00 (0-7914-6679-5). The main focus of this book is on the nervous disorders that appear to have afflicted so many natural philosophers in the early decades of the nineteenth century. It also deals more generally with the way in which men of science sought to comprehend and manage extreme and aberrant mental phenomena. Thus there are chapters on the color blindness of, inter alia, John Dalton; on those who suffered from optical spectra and hemiopsy; and on the sensory illusions and hallucinations recorded by other scientists of the period. It is Elizabeth Musselman's contention that a study of these matters provides access to a range of issues with which early nineteenth-century natural philosophers [End Page 200] felt obliged to wrestle. She argues, in particular, that the way in which British scientists sought to comprehend and deal with these abnormalities paralleled their ambition to present themselves as a group capable of managing the key problems of an emergent industrial society. Within this context, the body of the natural philosopher became a potent metaphor for the body politic. The scientist's ability to master his own nervous processes and to transform any abnormalities he experienced into a fruitful subject for scientific inquiry provided a model for how scientific expertise might be employed for the good of the community. Or, as the author puts it: "Cleverly, natural philosophers learned to package their nervous struggles as a kind of pilgrim's progress that imbued them with more, not less, authority to manage their nation's problems" (p. 51). A problem that particularly exercised these philosophers was the tensions between center and periphery that beset early nineteenth-century Britain. This was a concern within the scientific community itself: how were the autonomy and special competences of the numerous provincial natural philosophical societies to be reconciled with the hegemonic authority increasingly asserted by metropolitan science? But the question was also writ large in the struggles of central government with a plethora of often obdurate and uncooperative local authorities fiercely protective of their own prerogatives. By Musselman's account, one reason that color blindness was the object of so much attention during this period was that it served as metaphor for such provincialism: it represented a partiality of vision comparable to that presented by those who failed to see how local interests needed to be integrated into and subordinated to the greater good. The success of a provincial natural philosopher such as Dalton in mastering his own color blindness and becoming a contributing member of the national scientific community limned a strategy for resolving these conflicts: if natural philosophers could manage the problems of subjectivity and localism posed by color blindness, "by extension . . . they could manage other issues as well" (p. 68). More generally, British natural philosophers in the first half of the nineteenth century assumed a managerial pose modeled upon the assumptions and procedures of the factory boss. This strategy was exemplified by George Airy's administration of the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Airy and his like no longer sought to transcend human observational imperfections; instead, they sought to manage these sources of inefficiency in an optimal fashion. The kinds of connections between research agendas and wider social and political programs that Musselman seeks to establish are, by their nature, a matter of inference and not amenable to demonstration. Her book is, however, a stimulating contribution to a growing literature that seeks to insist on the importance of the scientific flesh—with all its attendant weaknesses—as a legitimate focus of historical enquiry. L. S. Jacyna Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London Copyright © 2008 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Models, Metaphors, and the Transit of Venus at Victorian Greenwich

During the nineteenth century, the Royal Observatory Greenwich underwent a remarkable transformation, which has been described by historians as like an industrial revolution in observatory science. George Biddell Airy (Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881) was a leading figure in this period. The effort to measure the distance to the sun (solar parallax) using observations of the 1874 transit of Venus was one of the most ambitious enterprises of his career. In many ways the transit program became a proving ground for the new methods of “industrial” astronomy that had been developing over the previous half-century. In order for the plan to succeed, multiple geographically-separated observations of a particular moment in the transit’s passage would have to be made. The problem was that no one alive had ever witnessed a transit or knew what this moment would look like. The response was to build simulation transits of Venus-mechanical models-to be used for experimentation and training. The design of these models was driven in part by calculations and in part by the astronomical reports from previous transits of Venus in the eighteenth century. Some of these reports evoked metaphorical descriptions of a “black drop effect” at the crucial moment to be observed. When it was found that some models also produced a black drop effect, the phenomenon came to be thought of by Airy and his assistants as real and reliable. This belief would turn out to be false.