The Royal Observatory, Greenwich

The Royal Observatory, Greenwich: A Glance at Its History and Work is by E. Walter Maunder, with many portraits and illustrations from old prints and original photographs. The book carries a portrait of Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, from the Historia Cœlestis. The preface recalls a popular lecture delivered in Greenwich, where the lecturer remarked that so many English people travel to the ends of the earth and yet entirely neglect places of at least equal importance in their own land.

The text says Galileo, with his newly invented telescope, had discovered that Jupiter was attended by four satellites. The text says the longitude may be expressed as the difference between the local time of the place of observation and the local time at the place chosen as the standard meridian. The text describes a chronometer room, formerly Bradley's transit room, that opens out of the lower computing room, with the chronograph room just across the courtyard. The text says that under Airy the largest equatorial of the time had been furnished with a good micrometer, but that Airy's programme of work was far too rigid.