Constructing the ‘automatic’ Greenwich time system: George Biddell Airy and the telegraphic distribution of time,c.1852–1880

Abstract

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.

At the ends of the line: How the Airy Transit Circle was gradually overshadowed by the Greenwich Prime Meridian

“…Such measurements give the position (or coordinates) of a celestial body, which help in locating and identifying them. The measurements made with the Airy Transit Circle were used for several other purposes too: as the basis for astronomical tables (such as the annually published Greenwich Observations) that recorded data about the motions of celestial bodies, as data for the Nautical Almanac to aid in the navigation of ships, as establishing geographical reference points for cartographers, and as the basis for the time signal distributed at local, national and global levels (Morus 2000;Rooney & Nye 2009;Ishibashi 2020). The Airy Transit Circle thus served as the starting point for producing time and space for the British Empire.…”