1 Walter Raleigh, Style, London: Edward Arnold, 1897, p. 59.

2 The Simpsons, episode 2F11, original airdate 5 February 1995.

3 On the difficulty of engaging students see Hilton, Margaret L., Singer, Susan R. and Schweingruber, Heidi A. (eds.), America's Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2005, p. xiiGoogle Scholar. On general boredom in the classroom see Tranter, John, ‘Biology: dull, lifeless, and boring?’, Journal of Biological Education (2004) 38, pp. 104–105Google Scholar.

4 Press release, ‘Public praises science; scientists fault public, media’, Pew Research Center, 9 July 2009, available at www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/public-praises-science-scientists-fault-public-media, accessed 9 July 2012.

5 Battersby, Stephen, ‘Now that's what I call boring’, New Scientist (2009) 204, pp. 58–61Google Scholar.

6 In the same episode, Bart's participation in the scientific enterprise is even seen as punishment. The task was imposed because Bart had foiled Skinner's earlier attempt to float a weather balloon. In Skinner's words, ‘Because you have impeded science, you must now aid science.’

7 This is not to confuse boredom with the merely mundane. Latour and Galison have argued persuasively for the role of quotidian practice in resolving scientific problems in Galison, Peter, How Experiments End, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987Google Scholar; Latour, Bruno, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1979Google Scholar. Such works builds on Kuhn's understanding of ‘normal science’ in Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962Google Scholar.

8 Most recently in the ‘Focus’ section of Isis (2009) 100(2). In particular see Andreas W. Daum, ‘Varieties of popular science and the transformations of public knowledge: some historical reflections’, pp. 319–332; Ralph O'Connor, ‘Reflections on popular science in Britain: genres, categories, and historians’, pp. 333–345; Katherine Pandora, ‘Popular science in national and transnational perspective: suggestions from the American context’, pp. 346–358; and Jonathan R. Topham, ‘Introduction’, pp. 310–318.

9 The phenomenon has recently been examined in Porter, Theodore M., ‘How science became technical’, Isis (2009) 100, pp. 292–309Google Scholar.

10 Herzig, Rebecca, Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005Google Scholar. Hecht, Jennifer Michael, The End of the Soul: Scientific Materialism, Atheism, and Anthropology in France, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003Google Scholar.

11 Notably, the most extensive examination of boredom in science has come from the field of anthropology. The most sustained examination of the topic I have found is located in a PhD thesis by María Alejandra Sánchez-Vázquez, ‘Scientific indifference: understanding science in a Mexican planetarium’, University of Manchester, 2004, Th25022, pp. 91–114. The dissertation can be found at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.121.559&rep=rep1&type=pdf, accessed 9 July 2012. In reference to another aspect of nineteenth-century astronomy, it has been suggested that ‘[p]ainstaking (and often boring) experimentation, observation, and data gathering are … important components of science’. Burke, John G., Cosmic Debris: Meteorites in History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, p. 3Google Scholar.

12 Nineteenth-century commentators had many names for these activities, including positional, computational, observational or pure astronomy, but all referred to the practice of creating accurate ephemerides.

13 It should not be assumed that the new observing technologies forced changes in observing techniques. Rather the activities, organization and material means of observing all underwent significant changes together. On this development in the broader field of observation see Crary, Jonathan, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990, pp. 5–9Google Scholar.

14 A nice summary of this development can be found in Smith, Robert W., ‘Remaking astronomy: instruments and practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, in Jo Nye, Mary (ed.), Cambridge History of Science, vol. 5: The Modern Physical and Mathematical Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 154–173, 154–156Google Scholar. See also Williams, Mari, ‘Beyond the planets: early nineteenth-century studies of double stars’, BJHS (1984) 17, pp. 295–300Google Scholar; Sheynin, O.B., ‘On the history of the statistical method in astronomy’, Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences (1984) 29, pp. 151–199Google Scholar.

15 While the literature of professionalization is large, a representative sample would include for England Morrell, Jack and Thackery, Arnold, Gentleman of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of the Sciences, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981Google Scholar. For France the model continues to be Gillispie, Charles Coulton, Science and Polity in France: The End of the Old Regime, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980Google Scholar; Gillispie, , Science and Polity in France: The Revolutionary Years, vol. 2, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004Google Scholar. For Germany an excellent summary of the literature can be found in Geuter, Ulfred, The Professionalization of Psychology in Nazi Germany (tr. Holmes, Richard J.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 20–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Newcomb, Simon, Reminiscences of an Astronomer, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903, p. 139Google Scholar.

17 Healy, Seán Desmond, Boredom, Self, and Culture, Rutherford: Farleigh Dickinson Press, 1984, p. 27Google Scholar.

18 Pascal, Blaise, Pensées (tr. Ariew, Roger), Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2005, pp. 24, 163Google Scholar.

19 This is the central ideal of both Goodstein, Elizabeth S., Experience without Qualities: Boredom and Modernity, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Healy, op. cit. (17). For the particular influence on women see Spacks, Patricia Meyer, Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995Google Scholar.

20 Beckett, Samuel, Proust, New York: Grove Press, 1970, p. 16Google Scholar. Originally published as Beckett, Samuel, Proust, New York: Chatto and Windus, 1931Google Scholar. He may have been referencing Schopenhauer, who wrote that ‘life swings back and forth like a pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom’. Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Representation (trPayne, . E.F.J.), vol. 1, New York: Dover Publications, 1969, p. 312Google Scholar.

21 Healy, op. cit. (17), p. 110.

22 The most notable moment being the placement of Neptune among the planets of the solar system in 1845. Interestingly, the ‘failure’ of Airy to properly attain credit for England was in part due to the fact that the observer who first identified the possible source of Uranus's perturbations, John Coach Adams, fell outside Airy's typical hierarchy of labour. For a work that summarizes and challenges the traditional account of the Neptune controversy see Smith, Robert W., ‘The Cambridge network in action: the discovery of Neptune’, Isis (1989) 80, pp. 395–422Google Scholar. For an interesting account that privileges Adams's personality over the ‘ineptitude’ of Airy and James Challis see Sheehan, William and Thurber, Steven, ‘John Couch Adams's Asperger Syndrome and the British non-discovery of Neptune’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society (2007) 61, pp. 285–299Google Scholar.

23 Quetelet, Adolphe, Astronomie populaire, 2nd edn, Brussels: Remy, 1832, p. viGoogle Scholar.

24 Forbes, James David, ‘National observatories – Greenwich’, Edinburgh Review (1850) 91, pp. 299–356Google Scholar, 301. My thanks to Stephen Case for identifying Forbes as the author of this piece.

25 Everett, Edward, The Uses of Astronomy, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1856, p. 16Google Scholar.

26 For an excellent collection that establishes the importance of observatories for science, politics and foreign policy see Bigg, Charlotte, Aubin, David and Otto Sibum, H. (eds.), The Heavens on Earth: Observatories and Astronomy in Nineteenth-Century Science and Culture, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010Google Scholar.

27 Herrmann, Dieter B., ‘An exponential law for the establishment of observatories in the nineteenth century’, Journal for the History of Astronomy (1973) 4, pp. 57–58Google Scholar.

28 Hutchins, Roger, British University Observatories, Burlington: Ashgate, 2008, pp. 13–51Google Scholar.

29 Adams, John Quincy, ‘First annual address’, in Addresses and Messages of the Presidents of the United States of America, New York: McLean and Taylor, 1838, pp. 287–302Google Scholar, 299, delivered 6 December 1825.

30 Quetelet, Adolphe, ‘Extrait d'un rapport sur la formation d'un observatoire dans le Royaume des Pays-Bas’, Correspondance mathématique et physique (1825) 1, pp. 67–70Google Scholar.

31 A possible exception was France, where the flagship Paris Observatory suffered from a lack of sustained leadership. Aubin, David, ‘The fading star of the Paris Observatory in the nineteenth century: astronomers’ urban culture of circulation and observation’, Osiris (2003) 18, pp. 79–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Kneeland, Timothy William, Managing Science and Technology: A Study of Change, 1868–1919, Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1993Google Scholar; Schaffer, Simon, ‘Astronomers mark time: discipline and the personal equation’, Science in Context (1988) 2, pp. 115–145Google Scholar; Smith, Robert W., ‘A national observatory transformed: Greenwich in the nineteenth century’, Journal for the History of Astronomy (1991) 22, pp. 5–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Bennett, J.A., ‘The English quadrant in Europe: instruments and the growth of consensus in practical astronomy’, Journal for the History of Astronomy (1992) 23, pp. 1–14, 1Google Scholar.

34 Quetelet, Adolphe, Sciences mathématiques et physiques chez les Belges au commencement du XIX siècle, Brussels: Buggenhoudt, 1866, p. 5Google Scholar.

35 On Quetelet's ‘average man’ and his relationship with astronomy, the best source remains Lottin, Joseph, Quetelet, statisticien et sociologue, Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie, 1912Google Scholar.

36 The growth of practical manuals can be seen in Jean-Charles Houzeau's Bibliographie général. In a bibliography of the most important works published in Europe, Houzeau offered four categories of literature, each with a different audience and function: rudiments, popular introductions for beginners; éléments, explanations of material techniques for advanced students and potential future observatory employees or amateurs; traités, for the mathematical and theoretical foundations of observational practice, and grandes ouvrages didactiques, which attempted to summarize all the theory and practice of astronomy combined with a history of the discipline. In all, Houzeau found 203 works since the late eighteenth century, nearly half of which (ninety-six) were éléments devoted to the practice of professional work. Houzeau, J.C. and Lancaster, A. (eds.), Bibliographie général de l'astronomie, Brussels: Hayez, 1889Google Scholar.

37 For ways in which the ‘personal equation’ has been a means both to discipline observers and to control physical bodies see Canales, Jimena, ‘Exit the frog, enter the human: physiology and experimental psychology in nineteenth-century astronomy’, BJHS (2001) 34, pp. 173–197Google Scholar; and Schaffer, op. cit. (32). Rarely discussed in either paper, however, has been what the experience of determining the equation was like for the observers themselves.

38 Duncombe, Raynor L., ‘Personal equation in astronomy’, Popular Astronomy (1945) 53, pp. 2–13Google Scholar, 3.

39 Quetelet, op. cit. (34), p. 253.

40 Quetelet, op. cit. (34), p. 253.

41 Newcomb, op. cit. (16), p. 129.

42 Newcomb, op. cit. (16), pp. 129, 63, 97, 104–105, 102, 110.

43 Though influential in England, Bessel's Königsberg Observatory was something of an anomaly during the first half of the nineteenth century in Germany, where most observatories had few, if any, assistants. For a revisionist account of how Bessel's work ‘destroyed the older conceptions of the astronomical observer as the skillful master of an art’ and both anticipated and broke from English practices of creating observers see Hoffman, Cristoph, ‘Constant differences: Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, the concept of the observer in early nineteenth-century practical astronomy and the history of personal equation’, BJHS (2007) 40, pp. 333–365, 348Google Scholar. For a guided tour of nineteenth-century German observatories see Quetelet, Adolphe, Notes extraits d'un voyage scientifique fait en Allemagne pendant l’été de 1829, Brussels: Hayes, 1830Google Scholar.

44 Herschel, John Frederick, A Brief Notice on the Life, Researches, and Discoveries of Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, London: Barclay, 1847, p. 4Google Scholar.

45 Newcomb, op. cit. (16), p. 112.

46 Schaffer, op. cit. (32), p. 115.

47 From a letter from Charles Biddell Airy to Charles Wood, 22 March 1847. Quoted in Chapman, Allan, The Victorian Amateur Astronomer: Independent Astronomical Research in Britain, 1820–1920, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1998, p. 34Google Scholar.

48 Newcomb, op. cit. (16), p. 139.

49 Herrmann, Dieter B., The History of Astronomy from Herschel to Hertzsprung (tr. Krisciunas, Kevin), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, p. 158Google Scholar.

50 The Observatory (1895) 17, p. 175.

51 Francoeur, L.B., Astronomie pratique: Usage et composition de la connaissance des temps, Paris: Bachelier, 1840, p. viiGoogle Scholar.

52 The Observatory (1895) 17, p. 377.

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54 Forbes, op. cit. (24), p. 329, original emphasis.

55 Airy, Wilfred (ed.), Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896, p. 123Google Scholar.

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57 The Observatory (1895) 18, p. 175.

58 Croarken, Mary, ‘Human computers in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain’, in Robson, Eleanor and Stedall, Jackie (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Mathematics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 336Google Scholar.

59 Hingley, Peter, Dunkin, Edwin and Dabiel, Tamsin (eds.), A Far off Vision: A Cornishman at the Greenwich Observatory: Autobiographical Notes by Edwin Dunkin, Cornwall: Royal Institution of Cornwall, 1999, p. 45Google Scholar. Quoted in Croarken, op. cit. (58), p. 384.

60 Evans, John, The Juvenile Tourist, 4th edn, London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1818, p. 341Google Scholar.

61 Evans, op. cit. (60), pp. 342–343. Quoted in Croarken, op. cit. (58), p. 387.

62 Newcomb, op. cit. (16), p. 312.

63 Gillis, J. Mellville, ‘Report on the erection of a building in Washington, as a depot for charts and instruments’, in Bernard Cohen, I. (ed.), Aspects of Astronomy in America in the Nineteenth Century, New York: Arno Press, 1980, pp. 51–80, 67Google Scholar.

64 Forbes, op. cit. (24), p. 316. Forbes may have been happy to know that a recent history of Pulkovo found that the director, Otto Struve, was fond of equating ‘more lowly personnel with machines’. Simon Werrett, ‘The astronomical capital of the world: Pulkovo Observatory in the Russia of Tsar Nicholas I’, in Bigg, Aubin and Sibum, op. cit. (26) pp. 33–57, 48.

65 Westwood Oliver, John A., Astronomy for Amateurs: A Practical Manual of Telescopic Research in All Latitudes, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1888, p. 14Google Scholar.

66 Oliver, op. cit. (65), p. 15.

67 The Observatory (1897) 20, p. 115.

68 Chandler, Seth Carlo, ‘Third catalog of variable stars’, Astronomical Journal (1896) 16, pp. 145–172, 145Google Scholar.

69 Ewing, Alexander, Practical Astronomy: Containing a Description of the Solar System; the Doctrine of the Sphere; the Principal Problem in Astronomy, Edinburgh: Peter Hill, 1797, p. viGoogle Scholar.

70 The Observatory (1897) 20, p. 115.

71 Kelly, John T., Practical Astronomy during the Seventeenth Century: Almanac-Makers in America and England, New York: Garland, 1991, p. 13Google Scholar.

72 An Astronomical Ephemeris, Calendar, or Almanack for the Year of Our Lord 1783, Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1783.

73 Newcomb, op. cit. (16), p. 62.

74 Bennett, op. cit. (33), p. 1, has also argued that during this period observations became the ‘sine qua non of an astronomical observatory’ even when the data was ‘unpublished’ and ‘unreduced’.

75 Mitchel, O.M., The Planetary and Stellar Worlds: A Popular Exposition of the Great Discoveries and Theories of Modern Astronomy, New York: Baker & Scribner, 1848, p. vGoogle Scholar.

76 Clerke, Agnes Mary, A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century, Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1885, p. 5Google Scholar. Reprinted in Clerke, Agnes Mary, ‘Astronomy still young’, in Danielson, Dennis Richard (ed.), The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking, Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2000, pp. 326–333, 327Google Scholar.

77 Ewing, op. cit. (69), p. v. The comparison to accounting was apt, as the new form of astronomy had many similarities to the world of business. See Ashworth, William J., ‘The calculating eye: Baily, Herschel, Babbage and the business of astronomy’, BJHS (1994) 27, pp. 409–441CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Airy, George Biddell, Gravitation: An Elementary Explanation of the Principal Perturbations in the Solar System, 2nd edn, London: Macmillan, 1884, p. ivGoogle Scholar.

79 On the rise and fall of this model in France see Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette, ‘A public for science: the rapid growth of popularization in nineteenth-century France’, Réseaux (1995) 3, pp. 75–92Google Scholar.

80 The Observatory (1895) 18, p. 376.

81 Morton, E.J.C., Heroes of Science: Astronomers, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1882, p. vGoogle Scholar.

82 Chambers, George F., A Handbook of Descriptive Astronomy, 3rd edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1877, p. viiGoogle Scholar.

83 Chambers, op. cit. (82), p. vii.

84 On the categorization of Chambers's work see Johnson, Peter, ‘George F. Chambers, 1841–1915’, Journal of the British Astronomical Association (1990) 100, pp. 13–16, 14Google Scholar.

85 Arago, François, Astronomie populaire, 4 vols, Paris: Claye, 1854, vol. 1, p. iiiGoogle Scholar.

86 Arago, op. cit. (85), p. iv.

87 It has been suggested that the varying success of Arago's lectures was deeply embedded in French society and politics, though the objections of his colleagues suggest that public inexperience with numbers contributed to their end as well. Theresa Levitt, ‘“I thought this might be of interest …”: the observatory of public enterprise’, in Bigg, Aubin and Sibum, op. cit. (26), pp. 285–304, 302.

88 Arago, op. cit. (85), p. xii.

89 This is not to say that popularizing astronomy could not be done by the professionals. The Berlin Urania was a massive success in attracting attention to the astronomical wonders, but this was a different kind of participation than what Ewing and Arago had called for. Ole Molvig, ‘The Berlin Urania, Humboltian cosmology, and the public’, in Bigg, Aubin and Sibum, op. cit. (26), pp. 326–344.

90 The Observatory (1898) 21, p. 468.

91 The Observatory (1896) 19, p. 69.

92 The Observatory (1895) 18, p. 377, original emphasis.

93 Forbes, op. cit. (24), p. 348.

94 The Observatory (1895) 18, p. 177.

95 Forbes, op. cit. (24), pp. 345–346.

96 Whitman, Walt, ‘When I heard the learn'd astronomer’, in Kaplan, Justin (ed.), Walt Whitman, Poetry and Prose, Washington, DC: Library of America, 1996, p. 409Google Scholar.

97 For an excellent recent treatment of Proctor see Chapter 6 of Lightman, Bernard V., Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp. 295–351Google Scholar.

98 Proctor, Richard A., Old and New Astronomy, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1888, p. iiiGoogle Scholar.

99 Proctor, op. cit. (98), p. 4.

100 Proctor, op. cit. (98), p. 9.

101 Proctor, Robert, ‘Sir John Herschel as a theorist in astronomy’, Saint Pauls Magazine (1871) 8, pp. 326–339, 327Google Scholar.

102 Proctor, op. cit. (101), pp. 335–338.

103 For Herschel's complicated relationship with positional astronomy see Bennett, op. cit. (33), pp. 1–2.

104 Flammarion, Camille, Astronomie populaire: Description générale du ciel, Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1880, p. 2Google Scholar.

105 Flammarion, op. cit. (104), p. 829.

106 Bensaude-Vincent, op. cit. (79), p. 87.

107 Flammarion's dismissal took place against the backdrop of a significant change in the role of astronomer at the Paris Observatory. See Aubin, op. cit. (31).

108 MacPherson, Hector, ‘Camille Flammarion’, Popular Astronomy (1925) 33, pp. 654–658, 656Google Scholar.

109 Woodhouse, Robert, An Elementary Treatise on Astronomy, Cambridge: Smith, 1812, p. viiiGoogle Scholar.

110 Woodhouse, op. cit. (109), p. xiv.

111 Proctor, op. cit. (98).

112 Arago, op. cit. (85), p. 1.

113 Biot, J.B., Traité élémentaire d'astronomie physique, 2nd edn, Paris: Klostermann, 1810, p. ixGoogle Scholar. For an interesting discussion of the ironies of the positions taken on public astronomy by Biot and Arago see Levitt, Theresa, The Shadow of Enlightenment: Optical and Political Transparency in France, 1789–1848, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 71–103Google Scholar.

114 Biot, op. cit. (113), p. x.

115 Bigg has suggested that popular participation in astronomy may have been diverted to astrophysics by the end of the nineteenth century because this field had ‘a preference … for representation rather than calculation, for speculation rather than standardization’. Charlotte Bigg, ‘Staging the heavens: astrophysics and popular astronomy in the late nineteenth century’, in Bigg, Aubin and Sibum, op. cit. (26), pp. 305–324, 322. It has also been argued recently that astrophysics itself could only have originated in those ‘operating outside the boundaries of professional physics’ and not in the ‘workers dedicated to the arduous tasks of mapping the stars’. Becker, Barbara, Unraveling Starlight: William and Margaret Huggins and the Rise of the New Astronomy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Such an emergence may have been short-lived, however; for the re-emergence of professionalism in astrophysics see Lankford, John, ‘Amateurs and astrophysics: a neglected aspect in the development of a scientific specialty’, Social Studies of Science (1981) 11, pp. 275–303Google Scholar. A further study of how popular practices fared in astrophysics in the twentieth century is vital to understanding whether this development was temporary.

116 Committee on Science Engineering and Public Policy, On Being a Scientist: Responsible Conduct in Research, 2nd edn, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1995, pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

117 Bigg, Aubin and Sibum, op. cit. (26), pp. 1–32, 26.

118 Battersby, op. cit. (5), p. 58.