Description
The Royal Observatory stands on the hill of Greenwich Park, in south-east London, above the Thames: the place where the Prime Meridian, longitude 0°, gave the world its starting line for east and west and its name to Greenwich Mean Time.
Today it is a museum of astronomy and timekeeping, one of the Royal Museums Greenwich with the National Maritime Museum, the Queen's House and the clipper Cutty Sark. Every night since 1999 a green laser has marked the meridian, shining north across the London sky.
In the courtyard, a stainless steel strip marks the Prime Meridian: whoever stands astride it has one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one in the western. It runs through Airy's transit circle, the telescope chosen as the zero line in 1884.
Flamsteed House, designed by Christopher Wren, was Britain's first purpose-built scientific research building. Its high Octagon Room held two clocks with four-meter pendulums, accurate to seven seconds a day, an unheard-of precision at the time.
Inside are John Harrison's marine timekeepers: H4, the pioneering chronometer that earned him a large reward from the Board of Longitude, and the three that came before it. Under the onion dome waits the Great Equatorial Telescope of 1893, the largest of its kind in the UK.
On the roof, a red time ball has dropped at 1 pm every day since 1833, so that ships on the Thames could set their clocks. By the gate, the Shepherd Clock was one of the first electric clocks driven from a master clock.
It all began with a problem at sea. In 1675 Charles II founded the observatory to find "the so much desired longitude of places", so ships could find their way. Wren chose the hill of an old Tudor castle, where Henry VIII reportedly kept his mistresses.
Flamsteed House cost £520 and was built largely from recycled materials. Set on old foundations, it points 13 degrees away from true north, much to the annoyance of John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal.
The irony? With the modern global reference systems, the true zero line has moved about 100 meters east of the famous strip.
In 1894 a French anarchist died in the park when his bomb went off in his hands near the observatory. Nobody knows what he meant to hit; Joseph Conrad used the story in his novel The Secret Agent.
Today it is a museum of astronomy and timekeeping, one of the Royal Museums Greenwich with the National Maritime Museum, the Queen's House and the clipper Cutty Sark. Every night since 1999 a green laser has marked the meridian, shining north across the London sky.
In the courtyard, a stainless steel strip marks the Prime Meridian: whoever stands astride it has one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one in the western. It runs through Airy's transit circle, the telescope chosen as the zero line in 1884.
Flamsteed House, designed by Christopher Wren, was Britain's first purpose-built scientific research building. Its high Octagon Room held two clocks with four-meter pendulums, accurate to seven seconds a day, an unheard-of precision at the time.
Inside are John Harrison's marine timekeepers: H4, the pioneering chronometer that earned him a large reward from the Board of Longitude, and the three that came before it. Under the onion dome waits the Great Equatorial Telescope of 1893, the largest of its kind in the UK.
On the roof, a red time ball has dropped at 1 pm every day since 1833, so that ships on the Thames could set their clocks. By the gate, the Shepherd Clock was one of the first electric clocks driven from a master clock.
It all began with a problem at sea. In 1675 Charles II founded the observatory to find "the so much desired longitude of places", so ships could find their way. Wren chose the hill of an old Tudor castle, where Henry VIII reportedly kept his mistresses.
Flamsteed House cost £520 and was built largely from recycled materials. Set on old foundations, it points 13 degrees away from true north, much to the annoyance of John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal.
The irony? With the modern global reference systems, the true zero line has moved about 100 meters east of the famous strip.
In 1894 a French anarchist died in the park when his bomb went off in his hands near the observatory. Nobody knows what he meant to hit; Joseph Conrad used the story in his novel The Secret Agent.