72 
HISTORY OF THE 
[1830-40 
“ the whole establishment ought to be cleared out.” * Though 
Airy acknowledged that “ the establishment was in a queer state,” 
he attributed this to Pond’s ill-health, to the inefficiency of his 
first assistant, and to the intolerable amount of business connected 
with chronometers. This Airy at once got reduced within proper 
limits, while the first assistant was replaced by a high Cambridge 
Wrangler (Main), an arrangement continued ever since. The 
work begun at the Cambridge Observatory was now continued on 
a larger scale at Greenwich, to the incalculable benefit of astronomy. 
At the beginning of this decade the only other observatory in 
the United Kingdom where u seful work was going on and was being 
published, was that at Armagh, where Robinson had commenced 
re-observing Bradley’s stars in 1827. At Dublin (since the retire 
ment of Brinkley) and at Oxford “ grinding the meridian ” was 
going on most steadily and perseveringly, without the slightest 
thought of reduction or publication. It was no doubt these two 
observatories which Airy had in mind when he wrote : *j* “In 
England an observer conceives that he has done everything when 
he has made an observation. He thinks that the merely noting 
the passage of a star over one wire and its bisection by another, 
is all that can be expected from him ; and that the use of a table 
of logarithms or anything beyond the very first stage of reduction, 
ought to be left to others.” At Oxford this state of things came to 
an end in 1839, when Johnson was appointed Radcliffe Observer. 
Of the work done at the Cape Observatory by Henderson we have 
already spoken. From 1835, valuable observations were both 
made and regularly published by him at the Edinburgh Observatory. 
As regards instrumental equipment, the transit instrument 
and the mural circle reigned supreme in British Observatories. 
Romer’s plan of observing both Right Ascension and Declination 
with one instrument had at last been imitated by Troughton in the 
transit circle, which he made for Groombridge in 1806.J But 
he never made another, and a few years later he constructed the 
first mural circle for Greenwich. Why this form of instrument, 
large and lopsided, should have become such a favourite in this 
country, though hardly anywhere else, is difficult to explain ; 
perhaps it was because it was supposed that in order to lessen the 
effect of division errors the circle would have to be very large.§ * * * § 
* Airy’s Autobiography (Cambridge, 1896), pp. 109 and 128. 
f “ Report on the progress of Astronomy during the present Century.” 
Second Report of the Brit. Assoc. (1832), p. 184. In a footnote Airy adds that 
this is, of course, not the character of every English observer. 
$ It had a telescope of 5 feet and a circle 4 feet in diameter. 
§ It is, at any rate, something to be thankful for, that the “ preposterous ” 
circle (as Newcomb called it) of 8 feet diameter, at Dunsink, was not imitated. 
It helped to make most of Brinkley’s observations useless.