Airy, George Biddell 1801-1892.
English astronomer. He installed a transit
telescope at the Cambridge University
Observatory at Greenwich, England, and
accurately measured Greenwhich Mean Time by
the stars along the line of zero longitude
defined by the position of the observatory.
Airy was made director of the Cambridge
University Observatory in 1828, and became
the seventh Astronomer Royal in 1835. He
began the distribution of Greenwich time
signals by telegraph, and Greenwich Mean Time
as measured by Airy's telescope was adopted
as legal time in Britain in 1880.