NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
French Bureau of Longitude in 1885
From: Paul Hirose
Date: 2016 Sep 28, 12:46 -0700
From: Paul Hirose
Date: 2016 Sep 28, 12:46 -0700
The Bureau des Longitudes has been mentioned, and by coincidence I
noticed this article ("THE OBSERVATORY AT NICE") while browsing the New
York Times archive:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9806E7DB1439E533A25751C2A9609C94649FD7CF&legacy=true
Clearly the author (not named) has a low opinion of the Bureau.
"... since 1848 they have solved a problem in comparison with which the
squaring of the circle is mere child's play. With a few exceptions each
of the members of the bureau is individually a scientist of real merit,
and yet by the addition of these unities the result obtained is zero.
... The essential mission of this superannuated institution was to watch
over the French meridian as an initial meridian and to calculate
directly the celestial ephemerides for the longitude of Paris. It has
not even done this ..."
That is near the end of the article, which is mainly about the
construction of a new observatory. I wonder how that 95,000 kg floating
dome turned out.
