Harold Jacoby

Practical Talks by an Astronomer - Original Edition Harold Jacoby

Astronomical precision can no further go: he had listed even the list itself. Truly, Airy was rightly styled "prince of precisians." A worthy Astronomer Royal was he, to act under the royal warrant of Charles II., who established the office in 1675. Down to this present day that warrant still makes it the duty of His Majesty's Astronomer "to apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying of the tables of the motions of the heavens and the places of the fixed stars, in order to find out the so much desired longitude at sea, for the perfecting the art of navigation."