Indian Institute of Astrophyics Bangalore

The East India Company having resolved to establish an observatory at Madras for promoting the knowledge of Astronomy, Geography and Navigation in India, Sir Charles Oakeley, then President of the Council had the building for the observatory completed by 1792. The Madras series of observations had commenced in 1787(1786)* through the efforts of a member of the Madras Government - William Petrie - who had in his possession two three-inch achromatic telescopes, two astronomical clocks with compound pendulums and an excellent transit instrument. This equipment formed the nucleus of instrumentation of the new observatory, which soon embarked on a series of observations of the stars, the moon, and eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, with the accurate determination of longitude, as its first concern. The pier that carried the original small transit instrument on a massive granite pillar has on it an inscription in Latin, Tamil, Telugu and Hindustani, so that " Posterity may be informed a thousand years hence of the period when the mathematical sciences were first planted by British Liberality in Asia". In any case this quotation from the first annual report of the observatory is atleast a record of the fact that astronomical activity at the Madras Observatory was indeed the first among British efforts at scientific studies in India.