The King's Observatory (called for many years the Kew Observatory) is a Grade I listed building in Richmond, London. Now a private dwelling, it formerly housed an astronomical and terrestrial magnetic observatory founded by King George III. The original design by architect Sir William Chambers influenced the architecture of two Irish observatories: Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland, and Dunsink Observatory near Dublin.
Location The observatory and its grounds are located within the grounds of the Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club, which is part of the Old Deer Park of the former Richmond Palace in Richmond, historically in Surrey and now in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The former royal manor of Kew lies to the immediate north. The observatory grounds overlie to the south the site of the former Sheen Priory, the Carthusian monastery established by King Henry V in 1414. The observatory is not publicly accessible, and obscuring woodlands mean that it cannot be viewed from outside the golf course, which is not open to the general public. The observatory is sometimes open to the public.
Personnel
King's Observers 1769, Stephen Charles Triboudet Demainbray (1710–1782) 1782, Stephen George Francis Triboudet Demainbray (1759–1854) Co-Observer
1814 Stephen Peter Rigaud (1774-1839)
Superintendents 1842, Sir Francis Ronalds (1788–1873) 1852 John Welsh (1824–1859) 1859, Balfour Stewart (1828–1887) 1871, Samuel Jeffrey 1876, George Mathews Whipple (1842–1893) 1893, Charles Chree (1860–1928) 1925, Francis John Welsh Whipple (1876–1943) 1939, James Martin Stagg (1900–1975) 1939, Sir George Simpson (1878–1965)
History The observatory was completed in 1769, in time for King George III's observation of the transit of Venus that occurred on 3 June in that year. It was located close to Richmond Lodge, the country residence of the royal family between 1764 and 1771. In 1842, the by then empty building was taken on by the British Association for the Advancement of Science and became widely known as the Kew Observatory. Francis Ronalds was the inaugural Honorary Director for the next decade and founded the observatory's enduring reputation. Responsibility for the facility was transferred to the Royal Society in 1871. The National Physical Laboratory was established there in 1900 and from 1910 it housed the Meteorological Office. The Met Office closed the observatory in 1980. The geomagnetic instruments had already been relocated to Eskdalemuir Observatory in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland in 1908 after the advent of electrification in London led to interference with their operations.
Scientific achievements
Observing the transit of Venus on 3 June 1769
A contemporary report by Stephen Demainbray, the superintendent of the observatory, says: "His Majesty the King who made his observation with a Shorts reflecting telescope, magnifying Diameters 170 Times, was the first to view the Penumbra of Venus touching the Edge of the Sun's Disk. The exact mean time (according to civil Reckoning) was attended to by Stephen Demainbray, appointed to take exact time by Shelton's Regulator, previously regulated by several astronomical observations."
Self-registering instruments Francis Ronalds invented many meteorological, magnetic and electrical instruments at Kew, which saw long-term use around the world. These included the first successful cameras in 1845 to record the variations of parameters such as atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, atmospheric electricity and geomagnetism through the day and night. His photo-barograph was used by Robert Fitzroy from 1862 in making the UK's first official weather forecasts at the Meteorological Office. The network of observing stations set-up in 1867 by the Met Office to assist in understanding the weather was equipped with his cameras – some of these remained in use at Kew until the observatory's closure in 1980.
Atmospheric electricity observations Ronalds also established a sophisticated atmospheric electricity observing system at Kew with a long copper rod protruding through the dome of the observatory and a suite of novel electrometers and electrographs to manually record the data. He supplied this equipment to facilities in England, Spain, France, Italy, India (Colaba and Trivandrum) and the Arctic with the goal of delineating atmospheric electricity on a global scale. At Kew, two-hourly data was recorded in the Reports of the British Association between 1844 and 1847. An entirely new system, providing continuous automatic recording, was installed by Lord Kelvin personally in the early 1860s. This device, based on Kelvin's water dropper potential equaliser with photographic recording, was known as the Kew electrograph. It provided the backbone of a long and almost continuous series of potential gradient measurements which finished in 1980. A secondary system of measurement, operating on different principles, was designed and implemented by the Nobel laureate CTR Wilson, from which records begin in 1906 until the closure of the Observatory. These measurements, which complement those of the Kelvin electrograph, were made on fine days at 1500 GMT. Beyond their applications in atmospheric electricity, the electrograph and Wilson apparatus have been shown to be useful for reconstructing past air pollution changes.
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