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THE ROYAL OBSERVATORY, 

 GREENWICH. 



THE first object of the foundation of Greenwich Observatory 

 was not research in pure science, but practical usefulness. 



Until the end of the I5th century, navigation had been 

 confined to the closed waters of the Mediterranean and its 

 annexes, and to coasting voyages beyond its limits. But 

 with the voyage of Columbus to the Bahamas in 1492 and 

 that of Vasco da Gama to India round the Cape in 1498, 

 the scope of navigation was enlarged to the open ocean. 

 Here the seaman was confronted with a problem of a new 

 order, one that at first sight seemed insoluble. How could 

 he determine the position of his ship when for weeks and 

 even months together he had been far out of sight of land ? 

 The problem became more insistent as the new oceanic 

 navigation developed, and by the end of the i6th century 

 the need for a solution was urgently felt. In 1598, Philip III. 

 of Spain offered a prize of 100,000 crowns to anyone who 

 would devise a method by which the captain of a vessel 

 could determine his position when on the open ocean, and 

 Holland followed very shortly after with the offer of the 

 reward of 30,000 florins. During the Middle Ages, Europe 

 had, commercially, faced eastward, and the great centres of 

 maritime trade were the Mediterranean seaports, especially 

 Venice and Genoa. With the discovery of the New World, 

 commercial Europe began to face westward; and the five 

 countries on the Atlantic seaboard Spain, Portugal, France, 

 Britain, and Holland entered into competition for ocean 

 supremacy. Spain and Portugal were the first to enter the 

 field; but England, under Elizabeth, had challenged Spain, 

 and the nation kept the importance of the development of 

 navigation well in view through all changes of rulers, policies, 

 and forms of government. In 1674, a Frenchman, Le Sieur 

 de St. Pierre, applied to Charles II. for a reward for a method 

 of determining the longitude of a ship at sea which he claimed 

 to have invented. The method was submitted to a provincial 

 clergyman, well known for his mathematical and astronomical 

 ability, the REV. JOHN FLAMSTEED (1646-1719), who reported 

 that the method was sound in principle, but that it required 

 knowledge of the motions of the moon and of the places of 

 the fixed stars far more accurate than was then possessed. 

 The king was much impressed by this report, and appointed 

 Flamsteed his " astronomical observator " and ordered an 



