As the name would suggest, this book tells the story of the Royal Observatory Greenwichfrom its foundation to its departure from Greenwich -in a series of one hundred objects.Devoy follows the tried and tested format of Neil MacGregor's History of the World in 100 Objects (2010), using objects to shape, illustrate and simplify complex historical stories.This book is an excellent example of this genre.Devoy's book is more than the story of an institution and its objects; it is many stories of the people living and working at the observatory over its 350-year history.These are stories Devoy is well placed to tell; as curator at the observatory she has been researching these collections for over a decade.The story of the Royal Observatory is told in chronological order, with sections divided according to the career of each Astronomer Royal, interspersed with themed essays.The objects are not equally distributed between Astronomers Royal but weighted according to their length of service and significance.The largest section is given over to George Biddell Airy, the longest-serving and arguably the most influential of the Astronomers Royal.Nathaniel Bliss, who served for only two years, gets no objects at all.Through these carefully chosen objects, each with its own photograph and biography, the text tells the story of an observatory with an ever-changing purpose.Between 1675 and 1948, Greenwich evolved from a government resource, the primary value of which was collecting data useful for navigation, into an institution similar to a university-run-research institute -so similar, in fact, that it eventually (in 1998) rendered itself obsolete.In Devoy's exploration of these objects, one finds the traditional tale of the quest for longitude and the standardization of time, as told through conventional highlights such as the Harrison chronometers and Airy transit circle.But there are also many other stories concerning the work and lives of the assistants, computers, wives, daughters, household staff and instrument makers -all of whom contributed to the day-to-day running of the observatory.Many of these stories are told through the less well-known pieces.Portraits, sketches, photographs and costumes are used to introduce Maskelyne's and Airy's families and their lives at the observatory.Smaller pieces of working materials -a longitude calculation sheet (object 23), a globe (object 22), a hole punch (object 42) and a spider fork (object 79), for example -help flesh out the experiences of the computers and assistants working from home or on site.In this way, the observatory is shown to be both a domestic and a scientific space.These object biographies show how the observatory gradually changed alongside the shifting preoccupations of each Astronomer Royal.
Emily Jane Winterburn (Mon,) studied this question.