Veiled beneath the Astrographic Catalogue’s canopy of stars was a corps of female “computers”, who measured and recorded the stars’ positions – and much more besides.
PERCHED AT TWO STURDY TABLES are four young women working in pairs. One, an observer, is concentrating deeply, looking down into a microscope at stars on a fragile glassplate negative. The window shines onto a mirror that reflects light to illuminate the stars on the photograph.
The observer has positioned the glass plate so she can see a single square of the réseau grid lines. She turns tiny screws to move the microscope up, down or across and focusses the eyepiece on a single starspeck within the grid, making sure the réseau lines align with a square – made from taut spider-web silk – visible through the eyepiece.
Guided by a glass reticle with a graduated X-Y axis scale, she reads out the co-ordinates for the star’s position to her partner, who writes them down in a neatly ruled logbook with a sharpened pencil. Then she compares the size of the star with a slide of “standard star” brightness dots, which she passes in front of the eyepiece using tweezers.
Around the women are dark timber bookshelves filled with logbooks, manuscripts ready for the printer, and hundreds of boxes containing thousands of photographic glass-plate negatives taken at Melbourne Observatory and by their own Sydney Observatory astronomers.
It’s 1948. The observer – Winsome Bellamy – and her three colleagues have been employed to finish the Astrographic Catalogue, which Sydney and Melbourne observatories had begun back in 1887. The machines they are using were designed in 1904 and their methods are the same as used decades earlier.
When I interviewed Bellamy years later, she recalled that she found the work routine: “We had turns about to use the machine, because your eyes became very tired with looking through the micrometer. The other person would sit and write the figures down. We did about half an hour, or perhaps
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 and
Greayer was doing the work of an astronomer, and was one of the first women to be elected to the SA Astronomical Society, where she presented papers
measurers. In Australia in the early 20th century, women were generally paid 54-64% of a male salary when the work was specifically identified as “women’s work”. This made women attractive as a cheap source of labour.
In 1902, an anonymous journalist writing about the Melbourne Observatory women in “The Women’s Corner” section of the Brisbane Courier said: “Their hours are from 9am to 5pm on weekdays and to noon on Saturdays, an hour being allowed for lunch. Their salary is £40 a year. (The editor has only one remark… no man would undertake it at more than double the amount).”
Charlotte Emily Fforde Peel (1877-1974) was selected as an “astrographic computer” in 1898 due to her outstanding mathematical ability – demonstrated in the exam set by the observatory. She had been a teacher and was transferred from the Education Department at the age of 21 as the most promising of the first six women to work on AC star measurement.
The women were trained for six months or longer and Peel became their leader, checking the accuracy of their measurements, timing each woman’s efficiency against it and calibrating the measuring machines. It was estimated that 80 stars per hour could be measured using the highcost, finely tooled machines made by Repsold, from Hamburg, Germany, and pace as well as accuracy was essential.
Peel was performing the same duties as Dorothea Klumpke, the first woman with an advanced degree in astronomy, who was the Director of Paris Observatory’s Bureau des Measures from 1890.
Melbourne Observatory, which had been a maledominated building, had to become more feminised. The women’s spaces were separated from the men’s; there was a fear that the men would be distracted. Isolation had its benefits, and the women often formed strong friendships with their measuring partners and socialised after work. Logistics, such as a lack of outhouses (toilets) had to be solved. New conveniences were built in 1903 – but not connected until years later. This understandably caused angst.
Peel was officially gazetted as “assistant astronomical computer” in 1900. She was the first woman to hold a permanent position in astronomy in Australia. She worked on the AC for 20 years and only left when she married Robert Sangster, the observatory librarian, in 1919.
WHEN PERTH OBSERVATORY joined the AC program and established its “measuring bureau”, Prudence Valentine Williams (1891–1968) – already identified as an outstanding student by winning a gold medal in her leaving exam – was one of two women employed as junior clerks in 1906. She was 16, but highly intelligent and capable, and soon became the leader of a growing number of employed women.
Williams was passionate about astronomy and was elected to the Astronomical Society of Western Australia. Her work ethic and diligence
Bellamy became dedicated to the project, bringing in spiders from home so their web-silk could be used for the cross hairs in the measuring machines.
were extraordinary, but even more remarkable are her letters to the observatory director HB Curlewis, where she championed the rights of the women.
In 1913, through her letters, and with the support of the Government Astronomer, Williams managed to gain a stepped increase in wages for the women, which effectively meant their wages doubled within a few years. She also successfully argued for her level of responsibility to be acknowledged financially and by title as Librarian and Astrographic Supervisor. Her demands that the women become permanent public servants was never granted, however.
In 1914 a male astronomer reported the women for spending too much time talking. Williams wrote to Curlewis that “…Mr Nossiter must have a vivid imagination when he states that some days we talk almost incessantly; he is evidently judging us by himself, as for about two months… he and Mr Whitby talked almost incessantly”.
Williams explained that the four women had twice measured, calculated and prepared for publication 21,221 stars within a six-month period, ending pithily: “…I am afraid he cannot show a corresponding amount of work for the same period.” Curlewis supported the women.
Williams and the other women were identifying not only star positions and brightness, but also unusual images of double stars and anything that seemed out of the ordinary. Their double-star observations were published by an astronomer without recognition of their work in identifying and measuring the stars.
Williams left the observatory in 1918 to care for her brother, who was returning from the Great War. She is not mentioned again in astronomy.
WHEN MELBOURNE OBSERVATORY closed in 1948, Sydney Observatory undertook the completion of the AC and a new group of women, including Winsome Bellamy, then 20, were employed. Like the women who’d preceded them, they had no higher education in astronomy.
“I finished my training as a children’s nurse,” says Bellamy. “And my mother got very sick and I had to be home decent hours. We had three small children at home… So, I got a job with the public service. They didn’t tell me what I’d be doing…. I had not experienced anything to do with astronomy before and I found it boring.”
Although she was employed temporarily, Bellamy stayed on
for 20 years and became dedicated to the project, bringing in spiders from home so their web-silk could be used for the cross hairs in the measuring machines an other instruments. She enjoyed the company of the different women who came and went every few years, mainly leaving because they married. Only single women could be employed in most areas of the public service.
When Sydney Observatory set up its measuring bureau, a new wing was added and the women had their own space and library. Bellamy was featured in photographs for the newspaper when a new measuring machine was purchased; she was herself an avid photographer of the social life at the observatory.
During lunchbreaks the women played badminton or, when it rained, fixed a net onto a large table to play table tennis. The young astrographic measurers enjoyed their lunches overlooking Observatory Hill. Every now and then they dressed up to attend one the many weddings that would signal the end of working life for one of their colleagues.
Through the AC, colonial state government astronomers were connected with new methods of science via international co-operation and collaboration. It was at the forefront of what we now call “big data” – but it’s not a well-known project.
Sydney Observatory director Harley Wood wrote about the AC in his 1964 doctoral thesis: “It must be understood that this work is essentially that of a team. The photographs on which the catalogue is based were taken mainly before my arrival... The measurement of the plates was performed mainly by assistants without scientific training. Throughout the years 19 assistants have been engaged with me in this work, with not more than four being employed at any one time.”
Wood acknowledged Bellamy’s work, and that of her close co-worker, Margaret Colville, in the publication of the catalogue of stars.
The women were essential to that team. With the exception of Charlotte Peel and the acknowledgement she received for comet observation, even when the women discovered unusual phenomena such as double stars, they were obscured from recognition in scientific papers.
Dorothea Klumpke described the work of producing astronomical catalogues as “astronomical labour”. She acknowledged that it was tedious, but “truly scientific” in its nature.
According to Klumpke, women have: “qualities prerequisite for producing lasting results – concentration and enthusiasm, powerful levers that move worlds. Ours is a work of the night and day! ... astronomical science now becomes universal! She knows no boundaries, no rank, no sex, no age!”