The visitors on the first
occasion were A. Murray, Matthew Young, George Hall, and John
Barrett. They record that they find the buildings, books and
instruments in good condition; but the chief feature in this report,
as well as in many which followed it, related to a circumstance to
which we have not yet referred.
In the original equipment of the observatory, Ussher, with the
natural ambition of a founder, desired to place in it a telescope of
more magnificent proportions than could be found anywhere else. The
Board gave a spirited support to this enterprise, and negotiations
were entered into with the most eminent instrument-maker of those
days. This was Jesse Ramsden (1735-1800), famous as the improver of
the sextant, as the constructor of the great theodolite used by
General Roy in the English Survey, and as the inventor of the
dividing engine for graduating astronomical instruments. Ramsden had
built for Sir George Schuckburgh the largest and most perfect
equatorial ever attempted. He had constructed mural quadrants for
Padua and Verona, which elicited the wonder of astronomers when Dr.
Maskelyne declared he could detect no error in their graduation so
large as two seconds and a half. But Ramsden maintained that even
better results would be obtained by superseding the entire quadrant
by the circle.
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