This paper examines the relationship between the Admiralty and the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, by studying the roles of the Hydrographer and the Astronomer Royal as they worked together on the problem of communicating accurate time to ships. The collaboration between the Astronomer Royal and the Hydrographer directed the development of time balls and other visual signals throughout their period of use in Britain and its colonies. This paper focuses on the time ball and clock developed by the Astronomer Royal William (...) Christie and the Hydrographer William Wharton as a key example of significant and productive collaboration between the two institutions. The paper also highlights the importance of the telegraph system to visual time signals. The ability to drop a time ball at a distance from an observatory created significant opportunities to improve the time signal service to mariners and stimulated further innovation in this field. (shrink)

Astronomy does not often appear in the socio-political and economic history of nineteenthcentury Britain. Whereas contemporary literature, poetry and the visual arts made significant reference to the heavens, the more earthbound arena of finance seems an improbable place to encounter astronomical themes. This paper shows that astronomical practice was an important factor in the emergence of what can be described as an accountant's view of the world. I begin by exploring the senses of the term ‘calculation’ in Regency England, and (...) then seek to reveal how the dramatic growth of vigilance in science, the organization and control of labour, and the monitoring of society and the economy drew upon and informed this disciplined numerical technique. Observations in all these areas could only be trusted if correctly reduced through a single system of calculation assisted by a group of standardized tables and division of mental labour. Within this setting the stellar economy provided an object that was seemingly ordered and law-like and therefore predictable through a powerful combination of techniques. (shrink)