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TraiiHition Studies 60 



yet been recognised as njoribund. His work, however good, perishes with 

 its subject. The greatest tragedy in the history of discovery is the invention 

 of a great improvement on some existing process, which process itself is 

 then in a brief time complt'telv replact-d by some novel and wide-n-afliirifr 

 development. 



Olosely allied to (ialton's meteorological work was his ass vsilli 



the Kew Observatory. The Kew Observatory, constructed for ' ^ Ill's 

 amust^nient, had been handed over by the Government at the suggestion of 

 the Council of the British A.s.sociation (1842) as a centre for testing scientific 

 instrument.s, and it ultimately fell under the control of the Itoyal S<H^iety 

 (1872). We have already seen that Galton was placed on the Managing 

 Committee in 1858 as a result of the movement set going by him for the 

 standardisation of sextants and other portable angle-instruments. On this 

 Con)mittee Galton made or strengthened several scientific friendships, 

 notably those with Sir Edward Sabine, who largely influenced Galton'a 

 scientific career, with .1. F. Ga.ssiot', and with Warren l)e la Rue. Galton 

 succeeded I)e la Rue as Chairman of the Kew Committee in 1889 and held 

 that po.st till 1901, when the Committee ceased to exi.st as an independent 

 body on the constitution of the National Physical Observatory. Sabine 

 had made Kew a central magnetic ob-servatory for the world. Galton 

 busied himself mostly with apparatus for the testing and standardisjition of 

 instruments of all kinds. Sextants, thermometers, watches, telescopes, field- 

 glasses, photographic lenses were all tested at Kew, and in many of these 

 cases it was Galton on whom fell the chief responsibility for selecting the 

 methods and instruments used in the tests. We have already referred to 

 Galton's first j>roposal to test sextants* by heliostatic processes, i.e. by 

 flashing light from the Observatory to distant fixed mirrors, which would 

 reflect the light for angular measurement back to the Observatory. This 

 method was discarded owing to its dependence on suitable weather ; it was 

 succeeded by a system of collimators rJext, an instrument for standardising 

 thermometers devised by Galton with the aid of suggestions by De la Kue 

 was made by Mr R. Mnnro, and set up at Kew in 187 5. After two years 

 service, which suggested certain modifications, the instrument and its method 

 of use were described by Galton in a paper entitled : " Description of the 

 Process of Verifying Thermometers at the Kew Observatory," read at the 

 Royal Society, March 15, 1877*. The apparatus reveals Galton's charac- 

 teristic ingenuity, but is of too specialised a nature to be descriljed here*. 

 In 1 890 a pamphlet entitled : Tests and Certijicates of the Kew Observatory. 



' The Gassiots are frequently iiietitioned in L. G.'s Record, as present on social occasions 

 and as joining the Galtons when on travel. 



' Even as late as 1889, if we exclude thermometers, sextants stood second only to Navy 

 binoculars, 292 to 341, in the statistics of instruments tested at Kew. In 1912 over 1000 

 sextants a year were being examined. 



• Proc. Roy. Soc. Vol. xxvi, pp. 84-9, 1877. See also PhU. Mag. 1877, pp. 226-31. 



* In 1911' it was still in use at Kew and wius familiarly called "The Galton." That it 

 should have survived nearly forty years service is a strong testimonial to itii inventor's 

 instrumental thoroughness. 



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