All that remained was to decide on a reference time zone. This was no doubt a great relief to the Astronomer Royal who could now return to Greenwich from months at sea, judging the operation of the device. What was needed was a way of calculating a reference time at a known point and then a method of recording that time and comparing it to local time.īy the 1760s, John Harrison’s brilliant marine chronometers were overcoming the problem of operating clocks on moving ships.

Yet this was not enough to measure longitude.

However, the Board did not meet until 1737 when the development of accurate small marine timepieces began to interest astronomers.īy this point, the observatory had greatly improved the charting of the night sky – the third Astronomer Royal’s 60,000-star catalogue proved so accurate it was still used in the Second World War. This should have taken on a greater urgency in July 1714 when, following the wreck of a British fleet off Scilly, the Longitude Act set up a Board of Commissioners, including the Astronomer Royal, to find a more reliable method of determining longitude than the then current soundings and dead reckoning. When he began, the best star catalogues charted a mere 100 stars. He was less delighted to discover that Wren had built his observatory on an extant foundation and his observatory was 13 degrees off true north.įlamsteed and his successors had a lot on their plate. Just a year later, Flamsteed was delighted to be at the helm of England’s greatest scientific institution. Fortunately, Wren also had something of a reputation as an architect and so was given the job of building Flamsteed House on the site, whose foundation stone was laid on 10 August 1675. What he needed now was a building and some serious engineering to measure the heavens. John Flamsteed’s job was to use the stars to help navigate on Earth. Charles II clearly liked the plan and called for immediate action, appointing the first ‘King’s Astronomical Observator’ (later Astronomer Royal) the same day. Wren had handily been Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, and his commission recommended the building of England’s first state-funded scientific institution in the clear country air of Greenwich.

He was part of a commission tasked with creating a Royal Observatory. That hill was of interest to perhaps the period’s greatest engineer, Sir Christopher Wren. The word had connotations of lowly craft, yet in the Age of Enlightenment there were engineers everywhere, simply known by other names, and not least on a small hill deep in the countryside to the east of London. In the 17th century, it was not the ‘done’ thing to call yourself an engineer.

Greenwich royal observatory