When Airy entered on his duties at Greenwich he found
there an enormous mass of observations which, though implicitly
containing materials of the greatest value to astronomers, were, in
their unreduced form, entirely unavailable for any useful purpose.
He, therefore, devoted himself to coping with the reduction of the
observations of his predecessors. He framed systematic methods by
which the reductions were to be effected, and he so arranged the work
that little more than careful attention to numerical accuracy would
be required for the conduct of the operations. Encouraged by the
Admiralty, for it is under this department that Greenwich Observatory
is placed, the Astronomer Royal employed a large force of computers
to deal with the work. BY his energy and admirable organisation he
managed to reduce an extremely valuable series of planetary
observations, and to publish the results, which have been of the
greatest importance to astronomical investigation.
The Astronomer Royal was a capable, practical engineer as well as an
optician, and he presently occupied himself by designing astronomical
instruments of improved pattern, which should replace the antiquated
instruments he found in the observatory. In the course of years the
entire equipment underwent a total transformation.
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