56 
HISTORY OF THE 
[1830-40 ] 
the Commissioners of Longitude,” but Maskelyne was responsible c 
for it from the beginning till his death in 1811. During the next c 
seven years nobody in particular seems to have looked after it t 
(though the Astronomer Royal was still supposed to be the editor), f 
and it lost the character for accuracy which the work had hitherto t 
enjoyed. It was said in the House of Commons in 1818 (and c 
could not be denied) that it had become “ a bye-word amongst f 
the literati of Europe.” This was said during a debate on a bill ] 
for reorganising the Board of Longitude. But this Board was, j 
even when thus renovated, an anachronism. The members, who ^ 
met only four times a year and then only for a very short time, 
were very numerous and included many whose opinion on questions t 
of astronomy or navigation can hardly have been of much value.* t 
This might not have mattered, if only a suitable person had been 1 
selected for the new post of Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac. I 
But Thomas Young, who was appointed Secretary to the Board I 
and Superintendent of the Almanac, was a perfect stranger to b 
practical astronomy and navigation, however distinguished he e 
was by his discovery of the interference of light and other scientific 
works, not to speak of his researches on the interpretation of I 
hieroglyphics. Though he did much to retrieve the lost character c 
of the Almanac for accuracy, he set his face against every proposal, 
however moderate, of reform of the publication. One of his 
arguments, the additional expense, was not worth noticing; and 
not much more serious was his objection, that it would confuse 
sailors to give them a book containing a good deal of information 
which they did not want. He thought it better to publish pre 
dictions of occultations and similar details in the Journal of the 
Royal Institution. But his chief argument was that astronomers 
had no special claim to be aided in their work at the public 
expense.f 
The call for reform of the Nautical Almanac was first voiced 
by Baily. In the Appendix to the translation of Cagnoli’s Memoir 
on determining the figure of the earth (1819), he says that the new 
Board of Longitude have now the power and the means (£4000 per 
annum) to enlarge the original plan of the Nautical Almanac and 
undertake other astronomical work. He published in the following 
year in the Philosophical Magazine an ephemeris of the apparent 
place of the pole star for every day of the years 1820, 1821, and 
1822. He next printed for private circulation Astro 7 iomical Tables 
* Among them were the Speaker, the Secretary to the Treasury, the Judge 
of the High Court of Admiralty, etc. The Professors of Astronomy at Oxford 
and Cambridge were on the Board, but were said not to attend its meetings 
very regularly. 
f Young was thus a precursor of those who fifty years later objected to 
“ the endowment of research.”