MERIDIAN ROOM, DUNSINK.
In 1874 Dr. Brünnow resigned, and was succeeded by the present writer; and about the same time Dr. Ralph Copeland was appointed assistant. In the following year Dr. Copeland went to the Earl of Crawford’s Observatory at Dunecht, and he now fills the distinguished position of Royal Astronomer of Scotland. Dr. Copeland was succeeded as assistant at Dunsink by Mr. C. E. Burton. Failing health caused Mr. Burton’s resignation in 1878, and Dr. J. L. E. Dreyer then came to Dunsink, where he remained till the death of the late Dr. Romney Robinson in 1882 created a vacancy in the post of Astronomer at Armagh, to which Dr. Dreyer was then appointed. His place at Dunsink was filled by Dr. Arthur A. Rambaut, the present assistant.
Among the additions made to the Observatory under my direction may be mentioned an electric chronograph for recording transits. A time service has also been in operation for many years, by which the standard mean time clock in the Observatory controls, on Jones’ system, the Front clock and the Board-room clock in the Port and Docks Office, Westmoreland Street, Dublin. The ball falls at this office at 1 p.m., Greenwich time, and the fact of falling reports itself automatically at Dunsink, while the Front clock reports itself at Dunsink every minute. But the chief addition to the Observatory in late years is the superb reflecting telescope for photographic purposes, which is the gift of Isaac Roberts, Esq., F.R.S., of Crowborough, Sussex. This instrument has been established in the small dome on the top of the Observatory.
The last chronicle of Dunsink that it may be necessary here to mention is that Sir Robert Ball was appointed, on 20th February, 1892, to succeed Professor J. Couch Adams as Lowndean Professor of Astronomy in the University of Cambridge.
FOOTNOTES:
[107] Graves’ Life of Hamilton, vol. i., p. 46.
[108] Life of De Morgan, by his wife, p. 333.
[109] Ibid.