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In life and in death: The changing fortunes of John Flamsteed

Flamsteed Astronomy Society Lecture, 24 April 2025

This page is intended to support a lecture given by Graham Dolan

 

 

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The 1712 & 1725 Historias

Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis - links to online copies and a guide to the different sections

Flamsteed’s Historia Coelestis and the etchings of Francis Place – a comparative study

Text of the Warrant setting up the Board of Visitors (1710)

The supressed preface to Flamsteed's Historia

 

Solar eclipse observations & Correspondence

Solar eclipses observed at Greenwich during the time of Flamsteed (1675–1719)

Flamsteed's Correspondence

 

Atlas Coelestis

High resolution copy from the Linda Hall library (1729)

High resolution copy from the Linda Hall library (1753)

High resolution copy from the University of Zurich library (1753)*

       * This copy lacks the frontispiece (portrait of Flamsteed) but has better scans of the star charts

 

The Giant Steps

The Royal Observatory and the Giant Steps (the Grand Ascent)

 

Burial and monuments

The Burial Place of John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal

 

Telescopes

Long Refractors (pre-1675)

7-foot Equatorial Sextant (1676)

Hooke's 10-foot Mural Quadrant (1676)

Well Telescope (1676)

Sirius Telescope (1677)

'Slight' Mural Arc (1683)

Mural Arc (1689)

 

Planning applications lodged with Royal Borough of Greenwich

Planning application relating to the Giant Steps:

19/4305/F & 23/2509/SD

Application relating to the Royal Observatory

24/2640/F

The text of the letter from the Royal Astronomical Society objecting to the demolition of Flamsteed's Sextant and Quadrant House can be found in the Officer's Delegated Report.

The planning documents refer to Flamsteed's Quadrant and Sextant Houses as the "ticket office".

The Sextant and Quadrant Houses are of great heritage significance as:

• They were designed by Sir Christopher Wren
• Are grade 1 listed and part of a scheduled ancient monument as well as being within a World Heritage Site and conservation area
• Unlike Flamsteed House which Wren stated he had designed ‘for the observator's habitation and a little for pompe’ they were the beating heart of the Observatory and remained so for the first forty of so years of its existence.

As part of a Grade 1 listed building and scheduled ancient monument the Sextant and Quadrant house has the highest degree of protection that can be given. None the less, the Royal borough of Greenwich with the support of Historic England have agreed to their demolition.

The listing (Grade 1) for the Meridian Building states:

'C17 and C18 two storey brick building with C19 and modern alterations. This contains the transit telescopes of three Astronomers Royal, with a collection of other relevant material; and the finally decided Prime Meridian runs through the eastern part. A series of rooms on the south side fitted and furnished as if to be used by the first Astronomer Royal in late C17.'

 

Digitial copies of manuscripts relating to the publication of the 1712 Historia

From the University of Cambridge

From the Macclesfield Collection, CUL (MS Add.9597/13/6/72a-87)

From Newton's Papers, CUL (MS Add.4006)

From the Royal Society

Royal Sociey Letters

 

Videos

Adrian Johns (author of the Nature of the Book) and Jason Dean explore the scholarship, personality conflicts, and crime embodied in the Linda Hall Library's copy of the 1712 Historia Coelestis

 

Modern papers

An analysis of the errors in John Flamsteed’s mural arc observations. William Blitstein, Vistas in Astronomy Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 139-155 (1997)

The seven identified observations of Uranus made by John Flamsteed using his mural arc. William Blitzstein, The Observatory, vol. 118, p9. 219-222 (1998)

Flamsteed's lunar data, 1692-95, sent to Newton. N Kollerstrom, & B.D. Yallop. Journal for the History of Astronomy, p.237-246 (1995)

 

Other Reading

An account of the Rev.D John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer-Royal; compiled from his own manuscripts, and other authentic documents, never before published. To which is added his British catalogue of stars, corrected and enlarged by Francis Baily Esq; printed by order of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Francis Baily (1835)

The nature of the book. Adrian Johns (1998)