1926 First Melbourne
Astrographic Catalogue is
published.
1923 The first Sydney
Astrographic Catalogue is
published.
1932
SYDNEY HARBOUR BRIDGE
1939
WWII STARTS
1927
AUSTRALIA’S PARLIAMENT
HOUSE OPENS
longer on the machine. And then we would swap
places and the other one would have a turn.
“The four of us were working beside each other
with the two different machines. But we talked all the
time, while we were doing it, and swapped gossip and
jokes. And we had a great time apart from work.”BELLAMY WAS AMONG the more than 70 women
employed to measure, log and calculate the position of
stars for the AC at Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and
Perth observatories. They were called “computers”,
“star measurers” and
“clerical assistants”.
But they were far
more than an anonymous
group of women who
measured. They were
fascinating individuals
who produced new
knowledge about stars,
particularly those in the
southern hemisphere,
and they had agency
within the observatories
that has not previously
been recognised.
They have in common
their contribution to
astronomy – and the fact
that their work has been
almost forgotten.
Women had
worked in astronomy
as daughters, wives and
sisters of astronomers
for centuries, but the first
Australian woman paid a
regular wage for her work
was Mary Emma Greayer(1861-1910), who was employed in 1890 on a
temporary clerical contract at Adelaide Observatory.
Greayer was educated to the equivalent of today’s
School Certificate. Her sister married William Cooke,
an assistant astronomer at Adelaide Observatory, to
which Greayer became a regular visitor. It appears
she was genuinely interested. Charles Todd, the
Government Astronomer, must have noticed her
aptitude, because she left teaching to start work as
one of two observatory computers.
The attendance books reveal that she did a
lot more than computations while working from
7:30pm to 10pm, two or three evenings a week.
And when I found the observation logbooks, I
was surprised to see her initials regularly noted as
“observer”; she was determining star positions,
looking through the large transit telescope and
reading out the location and magnitude of stars,
sometimes to Cooke and sometimes to assistant
astronomer Richard Griffiths, alternating with them
to record their observations.
Greayer was, in all ways, doing the work of an
astronomer, and she was one of the first women to be
elected to the South Australian Astronomical Society,
where she presented papers. Although she didn’t
have access to a university education, she clearly had
an aptitude and passion.
Other passions were developing during those
long stellar nights, however, and in 1899 she married
Griffiths and had to resign – as married women were
required to do. Todd lamented her departure and
wrote to other government astronomers comparing
her to the renowned German comet discoverer
Caroline Herschel.MELBOURNE OBSERVATORY was the first Australian
institution to establish an AC measuring bureau –
imitating what the Paris Observatory established
in 1890 – by employing women as computers andPhysicist Ruby Payne-Scott
(below, at left, in 1948) was
one of the global pioneers of
radio astronomy. In the late
1940s, she worked with Alec
Little, centre, to design and
build equipment to map solar
radio emission strength. Like
the female AC computers,
Payne-Scott is better known
now than during her lifetime.
40 – COSMOS Issue 86
ASTROGRAPHIC CATALOGUE