Records of the Royal Greenwich Observatory

RGO

1605-1998

Records of the Royal Greenwich Observatory and its predecessor, the Royal Observatory, mainly concerning astronomical observations, and including the papers of several astronomers royal, the records of the Board of Longitude and the Nautical Almanac Office.

Records of the Board of Visitors of the Observatory are in ADM 190

Reports of the Admiralty Computing Service, set up at the Nautical Almanac Office in 1943, are in ADM 283

Public Record(s)

English, French, German and Latin

• Royal Greenwich Observatory, 1948-1998
• Royal Observatory, 1675-1948

211 series

Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated

Topics

Research

Unless otherwise shown, individual series have not been transferred to The National Archives.

The Observatory was founded at Greenwich in 1675 and was under the direction of an astronomer royal. In 1828 the Observatory absorbed the Board of Longitude which had been set up in 1714 to carry out work on the calculation of longitude; it also absorbed the Nautical Almanac Office, which came into being after the dissolution of the Board in 1828 and inherited its responsibilities for the annual publication of the almanac which enabled sailors to determine their longitude at sea. In 1948 the Observatory moved to Herstmonceux Castle, Sussex, and its title was changed to the Royal Greenwich Observatory. In 1990 it moved to Cambridge. In August 1965 control of the Observatory was transferred from the Ministry of Defence to the Science Research Council, and subsequently to the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council. On 31 October 1998 the Royal Greenwich Observatory was closed down.

Microfilm copies of RGO 1, RGO 2, RGO 3 and RGO 14 only are available on open access at The National Archives, Kew.