Note 20 — Chapter III
Reading edition
Delambre dates the commencement of modern astronomical observation in its most perfect form from Maskelyne, who was the first who gave what is now called a standard catalogue (a.d. 1790) of stars; that is, a number of stars observed with such frequency and accuracy, that their places serve as standard points of the heavens. His suggestion of the Nautical Almanack, and his superintendence of it to the end of his life, from its first publication in 1767, are mentioned in the Almanack (vol. i. p. 364); his Schehallion Experiment on Attraction in vol. iii. p. 69; and the character of his Greenwich Observations in Greenwich Observatory in vol. ii. p. 442.