Centralizing Navigational Technology in America: The U.S. Navy’s Depot of Charts and Instruments, 1830—1842 STEVEN J. DICK Since the rise of modern nation-states in the Renaissance, the im provement of oceanic navigation has been a central concern to those nations plying the high seas. Driven by diverse interests from commerce to defense, navigation was and continues to be a highly visible enterprise in which each nation also has at stake its scientific and technological pride. National observatories from Paris and Greenwich to St. Peters burg and Tokyo were founded in large part to improve navigation while hydrographic (and later oceanographic) offices played a more direct role; observational instruments including the sextant, quadrant, and repeating circle were developed and refined in the service of navigation; the cherished ideal of a perfect marine timekeeper found practical fulfillment in the chronometer ofJohn Harrison and his successors; and modern radio and satellite navigational techniques have culminated in positional “fixes” to within a few meters for many purposes. Navigation inspired a large body of astronomical, meteorological, and magnetic observations, learned papers on its theory and practice, and nautical handbooks, almanacs, and periodicals to disseminate the latest informa tion to navigators. Worldwide, the scientific and technological effort expended toward the end of safely voyaging the earth’s seas has been impressive and sustained and forms an important chapter in the history of science and technology. One part of the history of navigation that has not received adequate attention is the rise of navigational technology in the United States, Dr. Dick is an astronomer and historian of science at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Plurality ofWorlds (1982) and is currently at work on a history of the Naval Observatory and of the 20th-century extraterrestrial life debate. He wishes to express his appreciation to the many archivists and librarians consulted during this research, including those at the Navy Historical Center in Washington, D.C., the Military Records Branch of the National Archives, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and particularly to Brenda G. Corbin and Gregory Shelton, librarians at the U.S. Naval Observatory.© 1992 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X792/3303-0003$01.00 467 468 StevenJ. Dick both in its merchant marine and in the U.S. Navy. As a step toward filling that gap, this article addresses the first attempt at centralization of navigational technology in the U.S. Navy by the founding of its Depot of Charts and Instruments in 1830. This centralization process is of interest for many reasons. In a global sense, it may be seen as a case study of activities carried out in similar institutions of many maritime nations.1 In the American context, the depot not only reveals the state of navigational technology in the early 19th century, especially the rise of the chronometer; it is also one indication of a rising scientific spirit in America in the years just prior to “the launching of modern American science.”2 In an age characterized in the United States by a lack of coherent government policy in science—the decade prior to the founding of the Naval Observatory, the Smithsonian Institution, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science—the navy’s Depot of Charts and Instru ments demonstrates how the impetus for centralization and quality control of a nascent technology essential to national interests came not from above but from below, from internal navy concerns recognized by officers of relatively low rank. Although the origin of the depot in 1830 was a technology-driven event, its history reveals the important effects of individual initiative, social and political environment, and European models in institutions, instruments, and methods. Born in an era before specialization, the depot was the original ancestor of several much larger enterprises: the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Hydrographic Office, the Naval Oceanographic Office, and the Defense Mapping Agency. It also contained in embryonic form many of the problems that would preoccupy 19th-century science in America. Finally, the activities at the depot are a direct prelude to the well-known work of Matthew Fontaine Maury, often...