50 



MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1831. 



1830-31. 

 Seconds 

 pendulum. 



1831-32. 



Society. 



drawn up by Mr. Baily, who had given the subject un- 

 remitting attention. The recommendations of this Report 

 were adopted by Government, and the Nautical Almanac, 

 in its improved state, was the result. Lieutenant Strat- 

 ford was appointed Superintendent. 



The pendulum experiments had been repeated by Mr. 

 Baily in 1828, under conditions which precluded any but 

 an almost imperceptible amount of error. Many other 

 determinations depended on these, a most important one 

 being the national standard of length ; for, in the event of 

 the standard yard being lost, the length of vibration of 

 the seconds pendulum was the only source from which a 

 new measure could be constructed. In 1832 a new scale 

 was formed by the Astronomical Society under Mr. Baily's 

 superintendence. This, which was rigorously tested, was 

 compared with the imperial standard, and with another 

 made by Bird in 1758. It was well that this work was 

 completed, as both these scales, as well as the national 

 standard of weight, were destroyed by fire in the Houses 

 of Parliament in 1834. 



In all these works, after 1828, Mr. De Morgan took a 

 deep interest, but he was not an experimenter. He had a 

 great love for scientific instruments, and in his various 

 writings described their construction and work in such a 

 way as to make them readily understood by any person of 

 average intelligence. But his want of sight prevented his 

 using them himself, and his share of the work done at this 

 time of revival was, at least as to applied Science, that 

 of an expounder and historian. I believe that every dis- 

 covery, or determination of fact, of any importance, was 

 made as clear to the world as the subject allowed in his 

 articles in the ' Companion to the Almanac,' ' The Penny 

 Cyclopaedia,' and many other works. 



The institution of the London University had been an 

 effect of that quickening of thought and action which ac- 

 companied what Mr. De Morgan called the social pot-boil- 

 ing. Another result in the same direction was the formation 



