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I also want to defend Maskelyne:

I would certainly not call Maskelyne "a bureaucrat" or the position of 
Astronomer Royal a bureaucratic/administrative position.
Astronomer Royal is a research position and usually the best available researcher was appointed.
Think of Flamsteed, Halley, Badley,  or J. B Airy (the list of Astronomers 
Royal is available on Wikipedia).

As an Astronomer Royal, Maskelyne did not decide or mandate what method navigators had to use.
All his "wrongdoing" consists of being extremely slow and cautious in 
recommending the award for Harrison.
I suppose navigators were free to choose the most appropriate method themselves.

Maskelyne's position was very natural under those circumstances.
It frequently happen that the same problem has several solutions: one "mathematical", and
another "hardware solution". It was natural for a astronomer/mathematician to trust the
"mathematical solution". But indeed, it frequently happens in history that  "hardware solution" wins.

As in my life time a "hardware solution" (navigation satellites) won over 
"mathematical solution" (CelNav).

But we don't blame people who developed CelNav, say in 1960s for not switching 
to development of satellites:-)

Alex.



 
________________________________________
From: NavList@fer3.com [NavList@fer3.com] on behalf of Wolfgang K�berer [NoReply_Koberer@fer3.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 3:32 PM
To: eremenko@math.purdue.edu
Subject: [NavList] Re: Maskelyne: Astronomer Royal

Dear all,
although Frank is distancing himself a bit from the falsifying narrative of 
Dava Sobel, he still is belittling Maskelyne as a �bureaucrat� who was 
narrow-minded and looking for fame for himself.
As for narrow-mindedness: none other than Newton ( a person not especially 
known for being unable to think beyond his nose) had judged that 
watches/clocks would not be able to help with the solution to the longitude 
problem.
Apart from that Maskelyne was a civil servant (it may be a special American 
angle to view these as �buraucrats�) who had to see to fulfilling the needs 
of the state/country. It was fine to supply an explorer with a single 
timekeeper but at the time (1765) the British navy had 266 ships. There was 
simply no better way than to provide them with a mathematical solution/tables 
after the basic problem � calculating the exact position of the moon in 
advance � had been solved by Tobias Mayer in G�ttingen. That was a low cost 
solution that could be put in place very soon. Just compare that to the 
production of chronometers which was a cottage industry even in the late 19th 
century (I recommend reading the relevant chapters of Betts� �Chronometers at 
Greenwich" � expensive but worth it). So it is no surprise � and certainly 
not due to Maskelyne�s �bureaucratic� stance that they were only a standard 
issue in the British navy in the 1840s (N.A.M. Rodgers, The command of the 
Ocean, p. 382).
So the �Manhattan Project� fantasy at the end of Frank�s post is � like all 
such fantasies - lacking insight into the real conditions and restraints at 
the time.
Best
Wolfgang

   

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