Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/74

 56 HISTORY OF THE [1830-40 the Commissioners of Longitude," but Maskelyne was responsible for it from the beginning till his death in 1811. During the next seven years nobody in particular seems to have looked after it (though the Astronomer Royal was still supposed to be the editor), and it lost the character for accuracy which the work had hitherto enjoyed. It was said in the House of Commons in 1818 (and could not be denied) that it had become " a bye-word amongst the literati of Europe." This was said during a debate on a bill for reorganising the Board of Longitude. But this Board was, even when thus renovated, an anachronism. The members, who met only four times a year and then only for a very short time, were very numerous and included many whose opinion on questions of astronomy or navigation can hardly have been of much value.* This might not have mattered, if only a suitable person had been selected for the new post of Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac. But Thomas Young, who was appointed Secretary to the Board and Superintendent of the Almanac, was a perfect stranger to practical astronomy and navigation, however distinguished he was by his discovery of the interference of light and other scientific works, not to speak of his researches on the interpretation of hieroglyphics. Though he did much to retrieve the lost character of the Almanac for accuracy, he set his face against every proposal, however moderate, of reform of the publication. One of his arguments, the additional expense, was not worth noticing ; and not much more serious was his objection, that it would confuse sailors to give them a book containing a good deal of information which they did not want. He thought it better to publish pre- dictions of occultations and similar details in the Journal of the Royal Institution. But his chief argument was that astronomers had no special claim to be aided in their work at the public expense.! The call for reform of the Nautical Almanac was first voiced by Baily. In the Appendix to the translation of Cagnoli's Memoir on determining the figure of the earth (1819), he says that the new Board of Longitude have now the power and the means (4000 per annum) to enlarge the original plan of the Nautical Almanac and undertake other astronomical work. He published in the following year in the Philosophical Magazine an ephemeris of the apparent place of the pole star for every day of the years 1820, 1821, and 1822. He next printed for private circulation Astronomical Tables of the High Court of Admiralty, etc. The Professors of Astronomy at Oxford and Cambridge were on the Board, but were said not to attend its meetings very regularly. t Young was thus a precursor of those who fifty years later objected to " the endowment of research."
 * Among them were the Speaker, the Secretary to the Treasury, the Judge