The Airy Transit Circle

Page 5 of 6

• 1. Airy's advances
• 2. New transit instrument
• 3. Chronograph
• 4. Innovations
• 5. Airy the man
• 6. Find out more
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Airy the man

A quote often used when describing Airy, comes from an ex-employee, Maunder, writing in 1900, who in turn quoted De Morgan who 'jocularly said that if Airy wiped his pen on a piece of blotting paper he would duly endorse the blotting paper with the date and particulars of its use, and file it away amongst his papers'. There is another anecdote, also from Maunder, where he describes Airy as having spent an entire afternoon labelling empty boxes 'empty'.

While there is undoubtedly some truth in these descriptions of his rather fastidious behaviour, it is also fair to say that it was this obsessive attention to detail that made him an extremely good at his job. It allowed him to break down each project the Observatory was involved in into a series of steps. These he could then delegate accordingly so that each employee could specialise in one particular stage of the process.

For the years 1835 to 1881 Airy lived at the Observatory with his wife and children. Of his nine children, six were born while the family lived at the Observatory.

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Published: 2002-07-01