y could learn to do in a few weeks, and that in
most of the remaining part plodding industry, properly directed, was
more important than scientific training. He could himself work out
all the mathematical formulae and write all the instructions required
to keep a small army of observers and computers employed, and could
then train in his methods a few able lieutenants, who would see that
all the details were properly executed. Under these lieutenants was a
grade comprising men of sufficient technical education to enable them
to learn how to point the telescope, record a transit, and perform the
other technical operations necessary in an astronomical observation.
A third grade was that of computers: ingenious youth, quick at
figures, ready to work for a compensation which an American laborer
would despise, yet well enough schooled to make simple calculations.
Under the new system they needed to understand only the four rules of
arithmetic; indeed, so far as possible Airy arranged his calculations
in such a way that subtraction and division were rarely required.
His boys had little more to do than add and multiply. Thus, so far
as the doing of work was concerned, he introduced the same sort of
improvement that our times have witnessed in great manufacturing
establishments, where labor is so organized that unskilled men
bring about results that formerly demanded a high grade of technical
ability. He introduced production on a large scale into astronomy.

At the time of my visit, it was much the fashion among astronomers
elsewhere to speak slightingly of the Greenwich system. The
objections to it were, in substance, the same that have been made to
the minute subdivision of labor. The intellect of the individual
was stunted for the benefit of the work. The astronomer became a
mere operative. Yet it must be admitted that the astronomical work
done at Greenwich during the sixty years since Airy introduced his
system has a value and an importance in its specialty that none
done elsewhere can exceed. All future conclusions as to the laws
of motion of the heavenly bodies must depend largely upon it.

The organization of his little army necessarily involved a
corresponding change in the instruments they were to use. Before his
time the trained astronomer worked with instruments of very delicate
construction, so that skill in handling them was one of the requisites
of an observer. Airy made them in the likeness of heavy