Maskelyne's character and policy as Astronomer Royal have been sufficiently dwelt upon. His private character was mild, amiable, and generous. 'Every astronomer, every man of learning, found in him a brother;' and, in particular, when the French Revolution drove some French astronomers to this country to find a refuge, they received from the Astronomer Royal the kindest reception and most delicate assistance.
Maskelyne added no instrument to the Observatory during his reign, though he improved Bradley's transit materially. He designed the mural circle, but it was not completed until after his death. His additions to the Observatory buildings consisted of three new rooms in the Astronomer Royal's house, and the present transit circle room.
John Pond was recommended by Maskelyne as his successor at Greenwich. At the time of his succession he was forty-four years of age, having been born in 1767. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and then spent some considerable time travelling in the south of Europe and Egypt. On his return home he settled at Westbury, where he erected an altazimuth by Troughton, with a two-and-a-half-foot circle. A born observer, his observations of the declinations of some of the principal fixed stars showed that the instrument which Maskelyne was using at Greenwich—the quadrant by Bird—could no longer be trusted. Maskelyne, in consequence, ordered a six-foot mural circle from Troughton, but did not live to see it installed, and in 1816 this was supplemented by Troughton's transit instrument of five inches aperture and ten feet focal length.
The introduction of these two important instruments, and of other new instruments, together with new methods of observation, form one of the chief characteristics of Pond's administration. Under this head must be specially mentioned the introduction of the mercury trough, both for determining the position of the vertical, and for obtaining a check upon the flexure of the mural circle in different positions; and the use in combination of a pair of mural circles for determining the declinations of stars.
Another characteristic of his reign was that under him there was the first attempt to give the Astronomer Royal a salary somewhat higher than that of a mechanic, and to support him with an adequate staff of assistants. His salary was fixed at £600 a year, and the single assistant of Maskelyne was increased to six.
This multiplication of assistants was for the purpose of multiplying observations, for Pond was the first astronomer to recognize the importance of greatly increasing the number of all observations upon which the fundamental data of astronomy were to be based.
In 1833 he finished his standard catalogue of 1113 stars, at that time the fullest of any catalogue prepared on the same scale of accuracy. 'It is not too much to say,' was the verdict of the Royal Astronomical Society, 'that meridian sidereal observation owes more to him than to all his countrymen put together since the time of Bradley.'
A yet higher testimony to the exactness of his work is given by his successor, Airy.