Temporary Measures: Women Computers at the Royal Observatory,Greenwich,1890–1895

Greenwich in the nineteenth century

It is therefore all the more notable that women were hired at Greenwich, which in the nineteenth century was an observatory of great international importance. It was famed for its precise observations, such that when an international conference in 1884 chose a common zero of longitude, it was the Greenwich meridian that was approved. Yet Greenwich was not only important for its output, but also the way it went about producing that output. A body of literature now exists that describes some of the ways that Greenwich transformed the practice of astronomy. ¹² Normally attributed to the regime of Sir George Biddell Airy, Greenwich’s seventh Astronomer Royal, astronomy at Greenwich was industrialized, de-skilled, perhaps akin to an accountant’s office. ¹³ If amateur astronomers previously and elsewhere peered into eyepieces to sketch barely visible nebulae by hand, returning night after night to repeat the ordeal, work at Greenwich was significantly different. The astronomy of professional observatories in the nineteenth century focused more on the position of the heavenly bodies and less on their substance. The process of acquiring the precise and accurate observations required to determine a body’s position with any degree of certainty was, by end of the century, a matter of basic rule-following rather than intuitive or skilled operation. Under Airy, the drive for consistent observational accuracy entailed a host of reformations purposed to discipline and regulate both the staff and its output–pro forma sheets, standardized rules of operation, divisions of labour, and much more. Thus, when women appeared at Greenwich in 1890, they passed into an increasingly structured, regulated, and supervised space. Staff clocked in and out, took scheduled lunch breaks in between regulated tasks, and were closely scrutinized by their superiors. This industrialization has been covered elsewhere, but in short was the product of Airy’s application of business methods to astronomical endeavour. That it happened gives this study reason to consider the broader social implications of such reorganization.

William Christie, the incumbent Chief Assistant at Greenwich who succeeded Airy as Astronomer Royal, inherited the operation of this structured, disciplined, and aging institution in 1881. In the shadow of Airy, Christie has not drawn much attention from scholars. As Robert Smith has noted, “scholars agree that [Airy] put his stamps on the institution to a much greater degree than the other nineteenth-century directors.” ¹⁴ Yet, Christie’s 11 years as Chief Assistant at Greenwich left him highly informed as to the state of things, and he indeed implemented notable change. Herbert Hall Turner, Christie’s Chief Assistant for many years, supposed that Greenwich owed its largest extensions in buildings and instruments to Christie. Turner remembered the man as one who “could not perhaps be called brilliant in any direction; but he had a sturdy simplicity in thought which often made a good substitute for brilliance.” ¹⁵ By 1881, Greenwich wanted for space, new instrumentation, and buildings, and Christie proved skilled in persuading the Admiralty to fund their acquisition. Under Christie, Greenwich acquired a new 28-inch refractor to replace the existing 13-inch telescope, engaged in the international star mapping project, the Astrographic Chart, constructed the large New Physical Observatory intended to modernize the Observatory’s work, and oversaw the establishment of a global zero meridian at Greenwich. By 1900, he had also more than doubled the number of staff.

Through his tenure, women’s education – particularly the issue of whether women should be granted university degrees – was a contentious topic. In 1888, women students from Girton College protested through the streets of Cambridge on the matter. The demonstration drew much publicity and directed attention to the issue of jobs and degrees for educated women. Christie’s hiring of Cambridge women shortly thereafter, something Airy was clearly not disposed to do, might have therefore been an aid to their cause. ¹⁶ Christie was indeed aware of the often tedious nature of work at Greenwich, such that when appointments were offered, he found it difficult to secure candidates, and experience showed that the work at Greenwich, being largely of a mechanical nature, was efficiently done by those who had been “apprenticed to the trade.” ¹⁷ Indeed, one of his main reformations, the hiring of women computers, was a solution to this problem.

As a prelude, I briefly discuss the experience of Mary Edwards in her work on the Nautical Almanac (a publication that enabled longitude to be derived at sea) in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Mary was not an observer, though she was paid for astronomical work nearly 100 years before the Greenwich women. As the only preceding example of a paid woman computer in Britain, an understanding of her employment affords a better understanding of the significance of the Greenwich programme. I then consider some reasons as to why and how the participation of women was possible at Greenwich. Here the focus is on the process of industrialization that preceded their arrival and it is argued that this affected the act of observation in ways that rendered it less exclusive and less conceptually masculine. The next section is entirely original and unearths the workings of a network of applicants to Greenwich. It is shown how the Astronomer Royal leveraged his connections – some usual (like Cambridge University) and some novel (like women’s groups) – and ran a competition for the posts. Women in professional astronomy to that point were normally married into it, or happened upon a unique opportunity through some personal connection. Yet here we have a merit-based application process, though, as we will see, it did nothing to hurt one’s chances to be a member of a feminist organization. The correspondence concerning each individual’s appointment reveals how women’s groups and champions of women’s education played substantial roles as referees and in connecting women with this potential employer. To conclude, I consider the five women employed at the Observatory and use their salaries, work, and experience to demonstrate that within the walls of the Observatory, the Greenwich women operated much more as assistant astronomers and less as computers.

Mary Edwards and astronomical computing in Britain

Before the first woman was hired at Greenwich, indeed even before Caroline Herschel had accepted her royal pension, Nevil Maskelyne (Britain’s fifth Astronomer Royal) hired a woman to work on the Nautical Almanac, a publication meant to provide the tools needed to determine longitude at sea. Mary Edwards began her career as a computer in 1773, at first secretly performing the computations for her husband John. She was likely the very first woman in Britain to obtain paid work in astronomy. Her experience as Britain’s first woman computer sheds light on how the culture and practice of astronomy evolved over a century. How Edward’s attained her post, the work she performed, her structure of pay, and her lifestyle all differed vastly from those of any of the Greenwich computers into the twentieth century.

Edward’s position allowed her a degree of mobility and control, something altogether foreign to the Greenwich computers throughout the long nineteenth century. From Ludlow in Shropshire, Mary began computing for the Nautical Almanac as early as 1773. Her husband, the clergyman John Edwards, was introduced to Nevil Maskelyne earlier that year. A shared interest in astronomy earned John the official position of Nautical Almanac computer, although from the start it was Mary who performed the work. As Maskelyne had “always been a kind friend” to Mary, it is accepted that this arrangement was known only to the Astronomer Royal. ¹⁸ John Edwards was in fact an enthusiastic telescope builder and experimented with expensive metal alloys for his mirrors. As a rural clergyman he earned roughly £30 per year, such that his taking on the computing job – one that paid £75 per year – more than doubled their household income. ¹⁹ When in 1784, John “fell martyr to the pernicious fumes of the metal” with which he experimented, Mary was left with two children and the financial obligations. In a letter dated 1811, Mary revealed to the Board of Longitude (BoL) that “for more than thirty-seven years she [had] dedicated the greatest part of her time to the computation of the Nautical Almanac.” ²⁰ Indeed, between 1773 and her husband’s death in 1784, Mary computed, on average, 6 months of each edition of the Nautical Almanac. After her husband’s passing, Mary doubled her workload (with Maskelyne’s permission). The 12 months she computed annually thereafter constituted half of all the computing needed for each Nautical Almanac. Given the workload, Maskelyne was apparently keen on having Mary’s two daughters assist their mother, “it being impossible for any one [person] to do it.” ²¹

The job was her main source of income, and Edwards depended on it for her livelihood. When the publication was suspended for 4 years between 1793 and 1797 (a result of the computations being nearly a decade ahead), Edwards petitioned the BoL for compensation, and Maskelyne scavenged to find extra computing work for her so that she could support her children. ²² Her yearly incomes varied widely – between May and November of 1804 alone, she collected £407 from the BoL. Conversely, she collected only a single payment of £30 in 1798. ²³

She was free to work from home and at her convenience, but the work to be done was highly supervised by Maskelyne. Indeed, writing a letter to Maskelyne in the summer of 1785, Edwards indicates that she had been “obliged to move house.” Furthermore, her temporary housemate had provided her “a room to keep the books and instruments in,” instruments she was attempting to sell in order to settle her late husband’s account with the telescope maker Edward Troughton. The apparent freedom is somewhat dampened by a note in the postscript. To avoid confusion and a potential break in communication, Edwards restates her address “as there is a maiden gentlewoman of my name which sometimes makes a mistake.” ²⁴ And constant communication was indeed crucial. The Astronomer Royal’s diary is filled with organizational notes and instructions that reveal the Almanac computers were frequently jumping between publications. In January of 1794, Maskelyne asked Edwards to compute tables for 1795. In March he needed data for 1797, and in May for 1799. ²⁵ Edwards and her computing peers were in this way both highly organized and highly mobile.

Between 1765 and 1811, 35 people worked as Nautical Almanac computers, but Edwards was the only woman. Edwards’ experience as a Nautical Almanac computer – an arrangement in which she was free to move about at her own pace, select her own working hours, and perhaps most importantly, work wherever she pleased – contrasted sharply with that of Maskelyne’s staffers at Greenwich. One of these, the astronomer Thomas Evans, remarked on the “tediousness and ennui of the life the assistants lead” at Greenwich, “excluded from all society.” ²⁶ Maskelyne’s Greenwich assistants worked and lived at the Observatory as they needed to be available for regular observations. They took their meals alone, had their offices directly below their bedrooms, and rarely left the grounds due to the intense observing schedule. In one instance in late 1794, Greenwich assistants were averaging just 2 hours of sleep per night. ²⁷ The geographical separation gained by the Almanac computers afforded a very different pattern of living, such that a computer who made the move in 1831 to a centralized London office, William Dunkin, expressed “real regret at the loss of his semi-independent position . . . in exchange for the daily sedentary confinement to an office-desk for a stated number of hours in the company of colleagues all junior to himself in age and habits.” ²⁸

Computing in Britain in the nineteenth century

Aside from Edwards, women occupied no place in professional astronomical computing in Britain until 1890. Computers remained centred around the Nautical Almanac (replaced by the British Nautical Almanac, a centralized London office that replaced the network of home-based computers) until George Airy, upon his appointment to Greenwich in 1835, decided to handle the backlog of unreduced observations that cluttered the rooms at Greenwich. Airy more or less began the practice of hiring temporary computers at Greenwich when he gained approval in 1842 for the hiring of “occasional computers.” Before that, however, John Glashier (brother of Airy’s then assistant James Glashier) was the Observatory’s first “occasional” computer, brought on by Airy to reduce lunar and planetary observations made at Greenwich between 1750 and 1830. Brothers Richard and Edwin Dunkin joined Glashier in the reductions in 1838. Airy’s assistants and computers were notorious for dreading their lonely and monotonous lives – for a time between 1835 and 1840 the computers worked from 8 in the morning until 8 at night (though this was largely their choice, being compensated at an hourly rate). Shortly thereafter, Airy switched their salary to a monthly schedule.

Junior computers under Airy were typically boys and young men, to be hired at cheap rates on promises of experience, mathematical training, and mentorship. ²⁹ These were normally selected through civil service exams, and few stayed on longer than a year or 2. By 1896, there were indeed “established” computers on the permanent payroll, but until then the temporary nature of the supernumerary position suggested limited prospects. Indeed, the splitting of Assistants into first and second grades in 1872 occurred simultaneously with the introduction of competitive civil service examinations to fill the lower ranks. Since one needed to be between 18 years old and 26 years old to take the exam, a computer who had not received a promotion by the age of 26 was virtually shut off from the possibility of promotion. This system was in place until 1896 when the post of Second Class Assistant was transformed into Established Computer, but by that time the women “experiment” had ended.

Mary Edward’s computing experience contrasted sharply with her contemporaries at the Royal Observatory through the nineteenth century. If Edwards and her Nautical Almanac peers worked where and whenever they chose, computers at Greenwich worked from 8 in the morning until 8 at night “without the slightest intermission, except for an hour at midday.” Airy would also

draw up for each one . . . instructions, telling them by what trains to travel, where to change, and so forth, with the same minuteness that one might for a child who was taking his first journey alone; and he himself packed up soap and towels with the instruments, lest his astronomers should find themselves, in Co. Durham, out of reach of these necessities of civilization. ³⁰

Edward’s computing experience in some ways typifies the scientific experience of many women in the eighteenth and nineteenth century – gained through her husband, maintained through personal relationships and proficiency, and kept out of the public eye. Conversely, those women hired at Greenwich applied for the posts individually, secured them on merit, and were highly visible. Indeed, at Greenwich’s annual Visitation Day in 1890, the Board of Visitors – a body of scientific men who reported directly to the Admiralty and possessed great influence over the affairs of the Observatory – was surprised to see women employees demonstrating the use of instruments. ³¹ The women’s appointments signalled a change; their in-plain-sight activities a far deeper one.

Personality

A driving force behind the change was the problem of the personal equation. At a positional observatory, routine tasks such as when to record a transit or how exactly to bisect a star image with a micrometer, and how to ensure that precisely the same method was applied across all observers, was of the highest importance to accrue the most accurate observation. Transit observations (involving the determination of the time at which a star crosses the meridian of the place of observation) were the primary concern at Greenwich through the nineteenth century. From these one could derive data such as declination and right ascension, thereby setting the coordinates of every star in the hemisphere. Transit observations also yielded the rate of the Observatory’s clocks and therefore set the exact local time. ³⁶ Their importance was great, and it was very much the case that two people could perform the same observation in precisely the same manner and reach two different results. Airy and his many contemporaries believed strict discipline was enough to resolve the problem of personality. It was reasoned that with a “chronometric regime of vigilant surveillance of subordinate observers,” the problem of personality was solvable – strict discipline, constant method, and a host of mediating technologies could ensure observations were virtually identical every time. ³⁷ These practical measures indeed reduced personality in results, and by the late nineteenth century, a system of checks and balances was in place to deal with the issue.

However, concern over the personal equation extended beyond its effects in positional astronomy. Others pondered its psychological source. Jimena Canales has noted that

astronomers debated different ways to gain objectivity, and these debates were connected to their views on the role of skill, discipline, and mechanization in science. Furthermore, by debating the nature of personal differences in observations – and how to eliminate them – astronomers sketched different conceptions of “man.” ³⁸

If some, like Swiss astronomer Adolph Hirsch, believed personal differences were due mainly to different brains, others like Charles Wolf at the Paris Observatory and Airy at Greenwich believed they were the product of different levels of skill and education and could be corrected through discipline. It is, therefore, pertinent to consider briefly the theory behind the personal equation, as well as its practical controls, as finding its source involved debate on conceptions of “man” and carried broad implications as to who could observe. ³⁹

The personal equation was first noted by Britain’s fifth Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne in the late eighteenth century in his dispute with his assistant David Kinnebrooke. Maskelyne had noticed that Kinnebrooke’s observations continually lagged behind his own by between 0.5 seconds and 1 second in transit observations (or about 13 seconds of arc). Kinnebrooke was fired over the dispute, and Maskelyne, having never quite taken to his assistant in any regard, chalked it up to Kinnebrooke’s lack of observational skill. Prussian astronomer F.W. Bessel, after reading an account of the firing, began his own studies about 20 years later. Bessel similarly found that his own observations differed from those of his colleague and offered an interpretation of personality as, rather than arising from observer error, having a constant physiological source. The historian of psychology Edwin Boring agreed: “it was already plain that at bottom the problem is psychological, that expectation, preparation, and attention are factors in the explanation.” ⁴⁰

At the Neuchatel Observatory in Switzerland, Adolph Hirsch performed his experiments using a “Hipp chronoscope” (a device for measuring very short time intervals). His findings tightened the link between observer and instrument. As he wrote, the body “is . . . exactly like a precision machine,” and “like a meridian transit instrument or a pendulum, its correction is variable.” ⁴¹ To Hirsch, training and skill did little to improve precision – rather, a person’s state of attention or demeanour could have more influence. ⁴² An observer with a calm personality might have a shorter reaction time and therefore be of more practical use. In the philosophy of Victor Cousin – the most well-known French philosopher of the mid nineteenth century – women were naturally calm and sensible, therefore suggesting them to the tasks of positional astronomy. ⁴³ Even J.S. Mill contended in The Subjection of Women that women’s minds, drawn ever to the present, render them less likely to fall into error when sticking to a rule:

When a man and a woman are equal in what experience they have had and in general intellectual level, she will usually see much more of what is immediately before them than he will; and this awareness of the present is the main quality that is needed for practical (as distinct from theoretical) ability . . . ⁴⁴

Expanding, Mill suggested that for those “whose business is with the fleeting and perishable,” as most certainly was the plight of the observer at Greenwich,

speed of thought is second only to power of thought in importance. If someone dealing with the contingencies of action does not have his faculties under immediate command, he might as well not have them! Now this is what women are agreed to excel at. ⁴⁵

With the arrival of Airy at Greenwich, it was a common practice for observers’ personal equations to be derived, registered, and compared against one another for correction. To Airy – who, thanks to bad eyesight, was never much of an observer – his system of discipline rendered observation among the lowliest tasks at an observatory: “The lowest of all the employments in an Observatory is the mere observation. No intellect and very little skill are required for it. An idiot, with a few days of practice, may observe well.” ⁴⁶ This outlook made it entirely usual for computers, both temporary and established, to observe with a range of telescopes. Christie even encouraged his supernumeraries in obtaining certification with the transit circle and photoheliographs, both of which came with wage increases. Temporary computer David Edney achieved certification with the astrographic telescope and the transit circle in 1893; Oswald Tuck became proficient with the transit circle and the Sheepshanks equatorial, again in 1893; Albert Wilkin was allowed to begin observing with the Dallmeyer photoheliograph in 1895. In this way, Greenwich included computers in observation rotas under the belief that training and skill meant little – personality could and would be mitigated simply through regulation and discipline.

Yet, while such controls indeed diminished personality in practice, astronomers still wondered about the impact of one’s natural ability. The astronomer David Gill supposed that good observation at professional observatories still required “special natural gifts, patience and devotion, and a high sense of the importance of [the] work.” ⁴⁷ Indeed, the idea that skill and proficiency produced better observations and combatted personality more effectively was still present among Greenwich senior staff.

Yet in early 1892, three women “computers” took turns observing, photographing, and measuring the recently discovered Nova Aurigae. The trio worked alongside Christie and his assistant George Criswick using the astrographic telescope, and the resulting measurements showed “decided evidence of personality,” most notably between the deduced magnitudes of observers Edith Rix and Alice Everett. ⁴⁸ Everett continued to track the star into the later stages of the year: “in this telescope it was noted as visible . . . on October 25 by Miss Everett.” She also took photographs that contributed to the numerous ongoing studies of the star. ⁴⁹ The differing observations made by Everett and Rix were the subject of an 1893 paper by Christie and another assistant, Frank Dyson. While the measurements were described as accurate enough, it was noted that some were rough “in consequence of the want of familiarity of the measurers with their instruments,” suggesting that some skill was advantageous in mitigating personality. ⁵⁰ Thus, while the existing process of observation at Greenwich corrected for personality through discipline, its senior staff seems to have considered natural ability valuable, and it is significant that this did not disqualify women.

Technology at Greenwich

The most common instruments used by the women observers were the Airy Transit Circle, the astrographic equatorial, and the photoheliographs (although we will see that Everett, at least, had been proficient with many more). The way each instrument was used was in accordance with the goal of minimizing personality in the result, thereby changing the act of observation itself. By 1890, the observer’s work was understood as straightforward, and it was understood that discovery was no longer the principal goal in professional astronomy: “It presents no dreamy contemplation, no watching for new stars, no unexpected or startling phenomena.” ⁵¹ Describing the use of heliometers (telescopes normally used to measure the sun’s diameter, but could also measure angular distances), the astronomer David Gill stated that “there is no searching for objects, no contemplative watching, nothing sensational of any kind.” ⁵² Discussing the kind of work that Everett would have done on the Astrographic Chart with the astrographic telescope, Gill says that “the observer’s work during the exposure is simply to direct the telescope to the required part of the sky, and then the clock-work nearly does the rest.” ⁵³ The only active work was either accelerating or slowing the motor with right ascension and declination buttons. Even Airy’s altazimuth, which would have been used by Everett to make lunar observations, was made in as few pieces as possible in order to allow “the observations themselves to determine the errors which were then allowed for in computation.” ⁵⁴

Airy’s transit instrument, introduced in 1851 and effectively the backbone of the Observatory, was largely of his own creation and from the very start contained checks against the observer. For instance, in its original construction, six micrometers read the angle above the horizon of the star, and the average of the six was used. ⁵⁵ Thus, if one was slightly out, the error was largely controlled. Most notably, in 1854, an electric chronograph was brought into practice. Meant to minimize the time delay between seeing a star image bisect a wire and noting the moment of transit (a primary source of error), the chronograph reduced the act of transit observation down to the mere tap of a button. Prior to the chronograph (Figure 1), observers used the eye-and-ear method. That is, taking the time from a sidereal clock, the observer “counted in” the star as it approached each fixed wire in the field, and that astronomers should individually flavour this process was inevitable.

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Figure 1.

The chronograph.

William Ellis, a former worker at Greenwich, described his method: using the beats of a nearby pendulum clock as the image of the star crossed the wires of the eyepiece:

it was in all cases my custom to take the second off the clock as the object approached the first wire, count through the transit without looking at the clock, and invariably check the counting after the passage at the last wire. As to the manner of estimating fractions of seconds, my own custom, from the very first transit I ever observed . . . was to note the position of the star in the field at the clock-beat before reaching the wire, and again at the beat next after passing the wire, and estimate by eye the fractional part of the second corresponding to the position of the wire, and never in any case by mental estimation of the fraction of time elapsed between the preceding clock-beat and the bisection of the star by the wire. ⁵⁶

Yet, when using the chronograph, observers needed only to push a galvanic button to instantly record initiation, and declinations were measured by a second observer. It was assumed that such technology reduced the probability of error by about a third. ⁵⁷ Ellis’ method changed accordingly:

I well remember my first night of work with the new method of transit by “touch,” in which for quick-moving stars my custom always was to endeavour to make the contact complete simultaneously with the apparent bisection of the star by the wire – that is to say, I did not wait until the star was on the wire before moving the finger. ⁵⁸

In addition, the transits observed with the chronograph took less time to complete, rendering it “possible to secure, in a given time, a greater number of observations than by the old method, with less fatigue to the observer. The winter wind might bluster, the observer now remained impassive.” ⁵⁹ Furthermore, in 1885, Christie installed the Personal Equation Machine for use with the transit circle. With this machine, observers ostensibly determined their absolute personal equations by observing an artificial star. By comparing the observed times with the actual times and positions, a base for an individual’s equation could be derived. ⁶⁰

If Airy’s transit instrument had been supplemented with mediating technology, the astrographic refractor – used primarily by Alice Everett, but also employed at least by Annie Russell and Edith Rix, and likely the other female astronomers – was built specifically to minimize the influence of personality. Built explicitly for use on the Astrographic Catalogue, it was 1 of 18 identical scopes used by 18 different observatories to chart the stars: “The eighteen observatories all undertook to use instruments of the same capacity. This was to be a photographic refractor, with an object-glass of 13 inches aperture and 11 feet focus.” ⁶¹ The instrument housed a number of error-reducing features. Any irregularities in its clock-motor were levelled by a second wheel that accelerated or slowed the driving clock as necessary. In this way, the scope moved evenly upon its mount, and the observer hardly had to touch it. As the plates for the camera needed about a 40-minute exposure for the Carte du Ciel (a simultaneous cataloguing project) observations, a second guiding telescope was fixed to the main barrel. The observer could watch as the star approached the centre of the field to be photographed, represented in the eye piece by two crossed wires. If the star was to be off centred when crossing the wires in the telescope’s field of view, the observer needed only to “press one of two buttons on a little plate which he carries in his hand, and which is connected by an electric wire with the driving clock, to bring it back to its position.” ⁶²

Furthermore, Annie Russell’s heliometer, which she used to observe and photograph the sun and map sunspots in relation to its centre, was also the subject of scrutiny. The steps to position and very briefly expose the camera were not complicated. ⁶³ Yet, a paper by Dyer and Thackeray in 1894 found that “there is a considerable amount of personality among the different observers in determining the position of the centre of the Sun.” ⁶⁴ Thus, where personality reared its head with photoheliographs was in measurement. From a photograph of the sun, the measurer would find a sunspot’s distance from the centre of the sun, the angle between it and the north point, the size of the spot, and the size of its umbra (its dark central portion). To do so, a thin piece of glass, on which a number of cross-lines (small squares) one-hundredth of an inch apart was ruled, was placed over the photograph. The measurer did his best, with the help of a magnifying glass, to count the squares covering a spot. These then needed to be reduced and expressed as longitude and latitude on the sun. Not a difficult process, according to Maunder. ⁶⁵

The electric chronograph, and similar instruments like micrometers and clock-driven motors, had profound implications for the status of astronomical observation. Schaffer describes the effects:

The observer was part of the “instrument” to be calibrated. Artificial stars and galvanic clocks substituted eye-and-ear methods. The act of observation was destroyed and then painstakingly rebuilt through a range of surrogates for some notional “direct” experience. This rebuilding accompanied a process of social reorganization. The observatory became a factory, if not a “panopticon.” “Mere” observers were relegated to the base of a hierarchy of management and vigilance, inspected by their superiors with as much concern as were the stars themselves. Observation was mechanized, and observers transformed into machine minders. ⁶⁶

Perhaps, this type of programme – one that did not pursue discovery and which was heavily mediated by error-reducing technology – blunted the affront of the female astronomers to the traditionally skilled and masculine space. If operating the transit circle, the heliographs, and the astrographic refractor were de-skilled practices, then it can perhaps be said that women observers were, by nineteenth century standards, disposed to the work in much the same way that they were considered able clerks. They might serve as extensions to the instrument, and further, refrain from infusing their work with too much interpretation – their presupposed lack of skill a shift away from speculative tradition. As Daston and Galison have noted, unskilled workers could provide a “tacit guarantee that data thus gathered were not the figment of a scientist’s imagination.” ⁶⁷

It seems that it was not the fact of observation that carried significance, but rather the act. What was being sought and how it was to be sought affected who could do the seeking. A result was the observer’s loss of authority within the discipline. Astronomers discussed what now was required of an accomplished observer: “While in the old method long practice was required . . . in the new method a few nights of practice give all desirable experience.” ⁶⁸ Thus, the act of observation at Greenwich was significantly detached from instrument manipulation. Much of the work done at the telescope simply involved vigilance and the occasional tap of a key. The instruments required step by step processes rather than active and intuitive manipulation. The idea of observation was changed: no longer a bastion of the most skilled, the brilliant, or the prophetic, observation at Greenwich could be performed by just about anyone willing to follow the rules.

Differences in education

In order to get a sense of the degree to which the women candidates were educated relative to their male peers, consider the Greenwich computer examination. Boys could request to sit the Greenwich test, or else they were recommended to the Observatory through one of their teachers or headmasters. One institution from which Greenwich drew numerous candidates was the Royal Hospital School, then located at Greenwich. Twenty-eight boys were recruited out of the Hospital School between 1889 and 1899, but Christie also tried his luck at other places like the Boys’ Orphanage on Dartmouth Hill. ⁸⁰ Fifteen-year-old Oswald J. Tuck of the Greenwich Hospital School wrote Christie in October 1891 and requested to sit the exam. ⁸¹ Once the test had been written and the results sorted, the Astronomer Royal would hire accordingly – that is, from the top. Thus, after noting Tuck’s paper as “excellent,” Christie hired Tuck at a rate of £3 a month. The Greenwich exam generally contained between 18 and 20 relatively simple questions. It tested writers on arithmetic, logarithms, and algebra. For example, a question on the September 1892 exam asked students to find the average motion of the moon in 1 hour in degrees, minutes, and seconds. And on the same exam: “find by logarithm the fifth root of 2.9981.” ⁸² The test was straightforward and rather to the point – an entirely practical screening.

The women hired at Greenwich were not required to sit the test. They were, however, required to hold a degree from a women’s college. London University began granting women students degrees in 1878, while from 1881 women could sit the Tripos examination at Cambridge, and most Oxford exams were open to women by 1884, though neither the Cambridge nor Oxford exams granted women any certification, degree, or formal equivalency. However, even an Ordinary Degree examination from Cambridge or Oxford, neither of which was perceived in especially high regard, exposed its takers to a level of classics and mathematics. ⁸³ Indeed, for the women, the closest comparable to the Greenwich exam, if altogether incomparable in difficulty, was the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos. The Tripos exam was written by 7 of the 21 women who ultimately applied to Greenwich, three of whom were unsuccessful candidates – B.M Gilford, Ruth Livingstone, and Olivia Dymond. Edith Rix was the sole holdout among those hired, although she still held residence at Newnham for 4 years. Still, the Tripos ranked among the greatest intellectual challenges for an undergraduate in the world, and among its past Senior Wranglers (first place) were John Herschel, George Airy, and John Couch Adams. Test takers normally sat for 5.5 hours of exams every day for 8 days, writing 12 papers and 192 questions in total. Those in contention for the position of Wrangler then sat for 3 more days. It was common for students to hire dedicated coaches and study for several months in advance. Questions on the Tripos were so complex that even the brightest could only hope to solve one or two questions on a single paper, perhaps attempting three or four more of the sixteen. More than a 20-question quiz, the Tripos problems contained elements of number theory, hydrodynamics, and astronomy. Students were required to be well versed in Newton and Euclid, be able to predict eclipses, and be comfortable with all two and three-dimensional conics. ⁸⁴ The exam’s difficulty can hardly be compared to the Greenwich paper. But for a woman, as far as obtaining one of the few positions at Greenwich, a Cambridge residency and a Tripos examination seemed to have been all but necessary.

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Figure 2.

The 20 September 1892 Greenwich computer exam. Cambridge University Library, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives, RGO 7/133.

The women’s movement comes to Greenwich

One of the Royal Observatory’s traditional strategies during the nineteenth century to recruit temporary computers was to contact the headmasters of boys’ schools and orphanages and request recommendations. Popular centres were the Royal Hospital School at Greenwich, the Boys’ Orphanage on Dartmouth Hill, and the Roan School. ⁸⁵ It appears that something of a similar tactic was employed in the recruitment of women. A select group of individuals normally associated with reforming women’s education in the latter half of the nineteenth century played a pivotal role in informing women students of the potential work at Greenwich and in suggesting specific names to the Astronomer Royal. Many of the applicants mentioned having heard of the job in their letters, and among the names listed as informants are Dorothea Beale, Constance Elder, Anne Clough, and Bertha Johnson, all of whom stand as notable figures in the reformation of women’s higher education through the latter half of the nineteenth century. For instance, Dorothea Beale was the long-time principal of Cheltenham Ladies College, a founding member of the Kensington Society (a rather elite women’s intellectual group, including Emily Davies, Elizabeth Garret, Ann Clough, Francis Mary Buss, and Helen Taylor, who lobbied for suffrage in the 1860s) and champion of women’s education reformation through the back half of the nineteenth century. Anne Clough founded the first Ladies College at Cambridge (Newnham) in 1879 and was an active promoter of women’s higher education throughout her life, sitting on a number of associations for the promotion of women’s education and, notably, organizing a women’s lecture circuit on astronomy in 1867. Bertha Johnson had set up the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women in Oxford in 1878 and helped found the women’s societies Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville Hall in 1879, meaning she was deeply connected to students and senior faculty. Johnson made the promotion of women’s education her life’s work, focusing primarily on organizing tuition for “home students” (those not attached to a hall). In addition to these individuals, the University Association of Women Teachers (UAWT), a feminist body founded by Clough in 1882, also seems to have had a hand in the recruiting of women candidates for Greenwich.

Anne Clough and Constance Elder comprised half of the executive of the UAWT in 1891. ⁸⁶ The body was set up in 1882 to “serve as a registry for university-trained teachers, to watch over the interests of women teachers generally, and do something to improve their position professionally.” ⁸⁷ The UAWT’s treasurer also happened to be Isabella Clemes, one of the first women hired at Greenwich. Elder gave more detail about the group in an 1893 paper submitted to the International Congress of Education, suggesting that the body was an attempt at a “centre where employers and those seeking work could be put into communication with each other.” ⁸⁸ Not in search of educators, Christie nonetheless seems to have used the organization to fill posts at Greenwich. Given that “part of the most valuable work done by the Association” was the “widening of interests of its members,” it appears the UAWT was eager to supply Christie with candidates.

In fact, the group was conveniently organized for the Astronomer Royal’s purposes. Christie had made it clear in one of his letters that the Observatory would not recognize “any qualification for Lady Computers except that of graduation at a university ladies’ college.” ⁸⁹ To serve its own purposes, the UAWT was neatly divided into two classes, class A and class B. Those in class A had either attained the standard of the Cambridge Tripos, the Oxford public examination, or held an equivalent degree from London University, Victoria University, or the Royal University of Ireland. Those placed in class B possessed lower grade qualifications, such as the Cambridge and Oxford ordinary degrees, considerably less mathematically challenging exams than the Tripos. ⁹⁰ In considering the UAWT, its structure, and executive members, a clearer picture emerges as to why and how those women considered for employment at Greenwich were selected. If the hiring of women at Greenwich was indeed a primarily exploitive programme, then the UAWT’s internal structure made it easy for Christie to ensure that each individual was capable of much more than mere computing.

Yet, not all candidates were recruited out of the UAWT’s ranks. Agnes Clerke, who by this time was famous for her Popular History of Astronomy and was well-known to Simon Newcomb, Norman Lockyer, and had even observed with David Gill in South Africa, had been offered a position outright in 1889. According to Brück, Clerke was indeed tempted by the initial offer as it made a passing mention of the exclusive use of the Lassell reflector for her own observing programme. Yet, the low pay, the ambiguity around her appointment, and her being in the middle of writing The System of the Stars was enough for Clerke to reject the offer. ⁹¹ However, the fact that Clerke was offered exclusive use of the Observatory’s otherwise little-used 24-inch reflector strongly supports the view that the Astronomer Royal intended to leverage gender inequalities into disproportionately cheap labour. Clerke was quite critical of the conditions. Greenwich Park posed “insurmountable difficulties” for ladies at night, and she could not see how “any educated woman would accept such a post at such a minute salary.” ⁹² The formal offer was a “supernumerary computership” paid at £8 a month, yet the earlier offer spoke of far greater opportunity.

To combat some of the issues raised by Clerke, the UAWT and its members retained influence in matters beyond the suggestion of candidates. Elder’s brief rundown makes it clear that the UAWT endeavoured to extend its reach and influence as much as it could, and she further notes that it was not uncommon for Anne Clough to promote Newnham students to posts around the world in America, Australia, India, Japan, and Africa. ⁹³ As secretary of the group, Elder was contacted at least twice to aid in the recruitment of women computers at Greenwich, once in early 1890 at the start of the scheme, and again in late 1891 to replace Edith Rix, who at the time was struggling with an illness (she would officially leave the Observatory in March of 1892). An 1891 letter from Greenwich’s Chief Assistant to Elder reads,

Some time ago you kindly helped us in the filling up of some appointments here, as an experiment on the suitability of computing and other astronomical work for ladies . . . We have a vacancy for another lady, and should be glad to hear from you if you think there are any of your correspondents who desire such work. ⁹⁴

The assistant, H.H. Turner, claimed that the work “would appear to be more particularly suitable for those enthusiastic about science than for those to whom salary is a consideration of the first importance.” He could offer in 1891 a wage of £4 a month with a potential increase to £5 “as some efficiency in the use of the Photographic Equatorial is acquired.” ⁹⁵ Presumably, one of the women tipped off by Elder was Constance Marks, who applied in 1890 and again in late 1891. Once put in contact with Turner, Marks inquired about salary and the overall conditions of work at Greenwich. Turner told her to direct such questions to Edith Rix and Alice Everett, who might possess answers to questions “about which you might enquire.” ⁹⁶ A Miss Walter applied in early 1890 at the behest of Rix and Elder. Both Walter and Marks were offered a job in late 1891, but both declined in lieu of the new and diminutive offer of a monthly £4. Yet there is some evidence that the UAWT and the backing of women’s advocates helped, in some cases, increase the salaries of some of the women at Greenwich. Elder notes the group’s broader concern of advancing “the cause” more generally, especially as regards salary. When Dorothea Beale was asked by Edith Rix (then employed at Greenwich) to recommend a “lady as Assistant in the Observatory,” she responded in promotion of Olivia Dymond – a Newnham student who had taken Senior Optime (grouped in the second class of test takers) on the Tripos. Beale wrote to Christie in early 1890 as the experiment was just getting off the ground, and she made sure he understood, given her pupil’s education, that “she might earn three times the salary offered” elsewhere. ⁹⁷ A month later, she reiterated, “the salary [was] far below what [Dymond] could get by teaching.” ⁹⁸ Christie appeared amenable, as even though the posts were filled by that time, he speculated that, should a spot open up, he could potentially offer Dymond up to £10 a month, an amount over triple the average salary of temporary computers and one that approached the annual £180 salary of the Magnetic Assistants at Greenwich. Indeed, Clemes, the treasurer of the UAWT, was for a short time in 1890 employed at Greenwich at a rate of £8 a month. ⁹⁹ At a time when the usual stipend amounted to just over £3 for supernumeraries, the high rates offered to both Dymond and Clemes, while certainly indicative of a measure of the Astronomer Royal’s initial optimism, were all but certainly influenced by the UAWT and individual women’s advocates.

Earning money at Greenwich

However, there were avenues through which computers might earn more money, and their starting salaries were subject to influence as well. As regards a supernumerary’s pay, the 1888 Greenwich Computer Regulations stipulated, “The commencing stipend is usually about £3 1/ per month. Increments are granted at the discretion of the Astronomer Royal, the usefulness of the Computer and his general conduct being taken into consideration.” ¹⁰² Thus, the salary of the female astronomers told something of their ability. A note in the archives from April of 1890 entitled “Salaries of Lady Computers,” shows the monthly salaries for each of the four initial hires and serves as a good starting point. Edith Rix began at £4 per month, although she eventually was receiving £5 for her use of the photographic equatorial. Furniss began at £4, Everett at £6, and Clemes at £8. While the women were indeed hired in the same vein and tagged with the same title, none were offered less than £4. This may be due to the women being older than the teenage boys, or in recognition of their comparatively advanced education, or even in acknowledgement of their increased responsibility. In any case, all the women were earning a fair bit more than the average by the end of their tenure.

It is unclear why or how Clemes attained the high wage of £8. She was older than the other ladies – she took the Tripos in 1881 and would have been at or nearing 30 by the time she was hired at Greenwich. Clemes was also the secretary of the UAWT, the group headed by Ann Clough and Constance Elder and used to secure candidates for the programme on more than one occasion. These factors, combined with Christie’s initial optimism towards funding possibilities, likely played into her higher rate. Similarly, Alice Everett likely owed her higher pay to her father, Joseph Everett, who had done important work in underground thermometry in Nova Scotia and enjoyed a close connection to Greenwich Observatory. Annie Russell had expressed distress upon learning of the wage: “the salary offered me (4£ a month) is so small that I could scarcely live on it.” ¹⁰³ In support of her application, Russell (with help from her father) elicited a letter from Sir Robert Ball, the influential Irish astronomer, writer, and popularizer who had worked with the Leviathan of Parsonstown (the Earl of Rosse’s giant telescope), managed Dunsink Observatory as Ireland’s Royal Astronomer, and succeeded John Couch Adams as the Lowndean Professor of astronomy at Cambridge in 1892, a post he held until his death. In the end, she decided to accept the job.

Upon being hired, it was possible to increase one’s pay through achieving proficiency with certain telescopes. Computers could receive increases in pay for obtaining certificates in observing with the transit circle, the heliographs, or the astrographic telescope. Christie’s notes show that raises of 10 shillings per month were given to both Everett and Russell in May of 1894 for proficiency with the photographic equatorial. ¹⁰⁴ A five-shilling increase was also given to those who could properly use the Dallmeyer and Thompson photoheliographs, a skill also acquired by Russell, Everett, and likely Edith Rix. ¹⁰⁵ In fact, correspondence with applicants reveal that observation was all but expected of any potential lady computer, and wage was directly tied to observing ability. Constance Marks was told that her salary would be “increased to £5 a month when efficiency with the photographic equatorial has been achieved,” and Olivia Dymond was told she might earn as much as £10 a month. ¹⁰⁶ The observation increases applied to Rix, Everett, and Russell, and likely the other two women as well. By the autumn of 1891, Edith Rix had had her pay bumped to £5, and a year later, Everett and Russell were noted to be making slightly more than their earlier wages of £6 and £4. ¹⁰⁷

Another way to increase one’s pay was to amass observing hours. Scheduled observing duty came with a nine pence addition whether or not observations were in fact made. If they were, a shilling for the first hour and six pence for each additional hour were given for observations with the photographic telescopes. For the transit circle, the bonus six pence was only dispensed if 50 or more stars were observed in RA and ZD. Furthermore, an occultation of a star by the moon, something observed multiple times by Alice Everett, earned a shilling. ¹⁰⁸

“Women’s work” at the observatory

Three of the five hires had left, for one reason or another, by the spring of 1892. Only two, Annie Russell and Alive Everett, remained until 1895. Due to these departures, and owing to the critical lack of evidence for the work done by Furniss and Clemes, and only very little of that performed by Rix, the work of Alice Everett and Annie Russell will be more closely considered here. While the specifics of each individual’s regime were likely quite different, the general contours and patterns of work – observation, development, measuring, computing – were likely quite similar. There is no reason to think that Clemes and Furniss were not involved in observational duty – in fact, Clemes’ higher wage implies she was involved as an observer, was especially capable with a range of instruments, and possibly served as an alternative to Agnes Clerke, perhaps operating the 24-inch Lassell reflector. The papers even reported that Clemes was at the head of the cohort. ¹⁰⁹ In any case, Clemes had left Greenwich by the spring of 1891.

Edith Rix began her appointment in April 1890. She is listed as a regular observer in the 1891 and 1892 publications of Greenwich Observations and is noted elsewhere as having used the astrographic telescope to photograph and measure stars in the summer of 1891. However, hers was also a shortened stint. Late in 1891, Rix became ill after walking home from the Observatory in a storm:

It was the day of the Great Gale, 11^th November. She left her house and went through the storm to her work at the Observatory getting thoroughly wet through, and returned in the gale to her room and found that chimney pits had been blown down. The house full of smoke and no fires or food obtainable, and finding herself very ill, she wisely took the train and came to her friends here, where she immediately had to take to her bed, and has remained there ever since. ¹¹⁰

Rix wrote Christie to request time off, though she did not “expect nor wish to get paid for doing nothing.” Christie allowed her to take sick leave with pay. Rix found it difficult to return to work, and her parents believed her living alone was a primary factor in her ailment. It is clear that at one point, Rix shared a room with Harriet Furniss, likely to cut expenses (the Observatory’s housing allowance had ceased in the early 1870s). When Furniss resigned on 31 January 1891, Rix continued on alone. Furthermore, Rix’s parents relayed to Christie how difficult it was “to find a suitable home for her in Greenwich, near the Observatory” (computers were obligated to live within “about a mile” of the Observatory). ¹¹¹ Edith evidently felt strongly about her eventual return to Greenwich, turning down a post at the Labour Commission and a £150 a year salary for 5 years because, “although that work is interesting, I prefer astronomy.” ¹¹² Her parents did not seem to agree, and wrote soon afterwards to inform the Astronomer Royal that Edith would not be returning. To their minds, the working conditions were too harsh: “the cold has of course been extremely trying to all the workers . . . but it seems that it is the heavy instruments which both Dr. Hiebs and Mr. Arthur Carpenter think are doing her the most harm.” They then thanked Christie for giving Edith so “honourable and interesting a position.” Finally, they mention that Edith will likely take up teaching high school. ¹¹³

Thus, by 1892 the original five women had been reduced to two, and none would be hired to fill the apparent void. Yet, the applications kept drifting in – Ruth Livingstone from Girton came exceedingly close to accepting a position, seemingly to replace Rix, but Christie decided that her requested £6 a month was too high and her application failed. A Miss. A. Money was also in negotiations with Turner for a position in May of 1893, though Turner concluded her interest in astronomy was not strong enough to eclipse the menial pay, and deemed it “best not to proceed further in the matter.” ¹¹⁴ By 1894, the Observatory had apparently decided that it would not be engaging more women, for when B.M. Gilford of Girton applied in June of that year, she was told there was “no vacancy for such an appointment as you are seeking.” ¹¹⁵

The women at Greenwich were not necessarily to work together or as a team on an exclusive project, as one newspaper believed to be the case:

It is not generally known that a department has been recently opened at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, which is presided over entirely by women. Four ex-Newnham students, at the head of whom is Miss Clemes, a lady who was for some years resident in Manchester, are engaged in daily work at the Observatory. ¹¹⁶

Rather than being set apart as a “women’s department,” they seem to have been absorbed into the working of the Observatory. Everett recalled that she and Annie Russell were able to “work along quite naturally in the midst of [men],” and that the two were “not always present together.” ¹¹⁷ Computers worked in different departments and normally under 1 of the 10 Astronomical Assistants, though most commonly under E.W. Maunder, G.S. Criswick, and W.G. Thackeray. They did work in varying departments including time, meridian, solar, and photographic, and were often required to perform a certain degree of research and observation in tandem with their computations. It did not take long for the women to get into hands-on work – in fact it was expected. Everett was immediately put to observation with the transit circle upon her hiring. All of Rix, Everett, and Russell are listed as astronomical observers in the 1891 and 1892 issues of Greenwich Observations, and Russell and Everett continue to appear on the list to 1895. Their inclusion as observers suggests that they were recognized as fully capable observers. Indeed, from 1893 onward “photographs with the astrographic equatorial were generally taken by Mr. Criswick, Miss Everett, Miss Russell, or one of the senior computers.” ¹¹⁸

Annie Russell, a former Girton student at Cambridge, had been working as a teacher at a girls’ school on the Isle of Jersey when she applied to the post. Her first application was not successful as all of Clemes, Rix, Furniss, and Everett, were then on staff. Hearing of Furniss’ departure through her Girton friend Alice Everett, Russell, with the support of the Irish Royal Astronomer Robert Ball, applied again and this time was successful. She began work at Greenwich on 1 September 1891 at a rate of £4 a month. Despite the small salary, Russell had accepted the post after some deliberation, but ultimately felt she would like the work enough to make up for the scarce pay. She worked in Greenwich’s solar department under Walter Maunder, whom she would marry in 1895, thereby disqualifying her from further employment. Her work resembled Everett’s in the details – observing, photographing, and measuring – although Russell was mainly concerned with the placement of sunspots in relation to the Sun’s centre, essentially building a map of its surface. The observation, photographing, and reduction constituted the entire process of both women’s work, and likely the work of their peers. Walter Maunder explained the astronomer’s process:

An observer with the transit instrument, for instance, will take only three or four minutes to make a complete determination of the place of a single star. But that observation will furnish work to the computers for many hours afterwards. Or, to take a photograph of the sun will occupy about five minutes in setting the instrument, whilst the actual exposure will take but the one-thousandth part of a second. But the plate, once exposed, will have to be developed, fixed, and washed; then measured, and the measures reduced, and, on the average, will provide one person with work for four days before the final results have been printed and published. ¹¹⁹

Observing principally with the astrographic equatorial and the Dallmeyer and Thompson photoheliographs, Russell was involved in every step of the observing process. In 1897, she wrote to Christie for support in her bid for funding from Girton so she could carry out “a photographic survey of the Milky Way.” Christie could help her in this regard, as he had “knowledge of the work which [she] had to do with regard to the astrographic chart.” ¹²⁰ She spent time observing with the astrographic refractor, observing regularly until her departure. She was also responsible for the majority of the preliminary measures and computations for the Astrographic Chart. From 1894 on, she was “entirely engaged in heliographic work and did a good deal of the more responsible work.” ¹²¹ After Greenwich, Annie went on to a long career of solar observation with her husband. ¹²²

Of all the women to be employed at Greenwich, Alice Everett shows up the most in both the Royal Astronomical Society and Greenwich published literature. The Girton College scholar held a BA and MA from Ireland’s Royal University and had taken Senior Optime in the 1889 Mathematical Tripos. She was 25 when she joined Greenwich, and likely owed her £6 a month starting salary – double the salary of male supernumeraries – to the influence of her father, Joseph David Everett, who possessed close connections to the Observatory through his work in Canada on thermometry. Upon her hiring, she was immediately assigned to meridian transit work, making and reducing observations with the Airy Transit Circle. Under the supervision of Criswick, Everett was engaged in the international collaborative Astrographic Chart beginning in 1892 and lasting throughout her tenure. The project endeavoured to document the entire sky photographically, registering every star greater than 11-magnitude. A record of her involvement remains in the Greenwich section of the published catalogue, where Everett is included as having made measurement of photographs from October 1894 to July 1895. ¹²³

In a written application to the observatory at Dunsink, Everett discussed some of the other duties she held and proficiencies she gained at Greenwich. Her use of the astrographic telescope on the Catalogue (Figure 3), which she mentions, required observing twice a week for several hours at a time, involved developing photographs and making measurements with micrometers. As the instrument began to be regularly used in late 1891, and as it was explicitly intended serve the project, Everett was all but certainly among the very first astronomers to use the instrument. ¹²⁴ In fact, Rix, Russell, Everett, and Christie all took turns photographing and measuring stars with the new instrument in the summer of 1891. ¹²⁵ She was also on regular night duty with the instrument, sometimes for up to 7 hours a night. Everett also conducted double-star work with Thomas Lewis, and learned to use the zenith and Sheepshanks telescopes. ¹²⁶ She used the Sheepshanks refractor to observe the Rordame-Quénisset comet in the summer of 1893. ¹²⁷ Criswick also notes that Everett was proficient at taking photographs with the Dallmeyer and Thompson photoheliographs. ¹²⁸ To showcase her range, it is worth noting that “from the roof of a house, No. 18 The Circus, Greenwich, 500 yards due west of the transit circle,” Everett observed with the Simms portable telescope occultations of stars during the total eclipse of the moon on 10 March 1895. ¹²⁹ Shortly after, Everett published “Note on the Binary ι Leonis” in Monthly Notices under her own name. Everett noticed a “tendency of late to let the star drop out of observation,” and published newly reduced observations ephemerides. ¹³⁰ She published again in Monthly Notices of the RAS a year later. ¹³¹

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

The astrographic telescope.

Everett was indeed aware of the unique opportunity afforded her at Greenwich, and had interesting remarks on the division of time of the lady computers:

I have also devoted a considerable portion of my leisure time to utilising the unique opportunities available at Greenwich for practice with instruments generally . . . the office work in our own department . . . takes up comparatively little of our time. ¹³²

That they would have been free to practice with telescopes and other instrumentation in their spare time is notable enough, and quite revealing of how women, or at least these women, were broadly seen in the observatory environment – competent enough to freely employ scientific instruments. More obviously, the women’s computational responsibilities had been either diminished or eclipsed by observational work by 1892. With this “leisure” time, Everett mastered the transit circle, employed the 7-inch and 12-inch equatorials to make drawings of Mars, and observed occultations and other phenomena of Jupiter’s satellites – indeed, she was among those at Greenwich to observe the satellites of Jupiter in September 1892 and July 1893 with the astrographic telescope. ¹³³