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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 December 2019
In the context of the telegraphic distribution of Greenwich time, while the early experiments, the roles of successive Astronomers Royal in its expansion, and its impacts on the standardization of time in Victorian Britain have all been evaluated, the attempts of George Biddell Airy and his collaborators in constructing the Royal Observatory's time signals as the authoritative source of standard time have been underexplored within the existing historical literature. This paper focuses on the wide-ranging activities of Airy, his assistant astronomers, telegraph engineers, clockmakers and others, which served to increase the reliability of the Royal Observatory's time service between the 1850s and 1870s. Airy and his collaborators aimed to mechanize and automate their telegraphic time distribution system in order to improve its accuracy and reliability. The accomplishment of such technological innovations was disseminated via public lectures, journal articles and correspondence with experts, secondary distributors of standard time and the general public. These communications were used to build public trust in the Greenwich time service. However, the unexplored archival material used in the present paper provides fresh insight into the unstable nature of the Greenwich time system, including its clear limits in terms of its scale of automation and degree of accuracy.
I would like to thank Charlotte Sleigh, Amanda Rees and the two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions and assistance in improving this paper. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the British Society for the History of Science annual conference at the University of St Andrews. The author is grateful to the members of the audience for their constructive comments. This work is supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research).
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62 Letter, Latimer Clark to Robert Main, 26 July 1853, RGO 6/611/249.
63 George Airy, ‘Notice to chronometer maker and to the public’, 20 August 1853, RGO 6/611/263.
64 Letter, French to George Airy, 30 September 1856, RGO 6/613/184.
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66 Letter, French to George Airy, 7 October 1856, RGO 6/613/188.
67 Letter, George Airy to French, 16 February 1857, RGO 6/613/190.
68 ‘Professor Airy and the time guns of the Tyne’, Northern Daily Express, 26 January 1864.
69 Letter, James Mather to Cromwell Varley, 6 June 1864, RGO 6/615/136.
70 Letter, Cromwell Varley to George Airy, 10 June 1864, RGO 6/615/137–138.
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