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The Instruments at the Lisbon Astronomical Observatory: The Meridian Circle, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society

September 2022

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Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia

This article aims at assessing the historical potential of a large set of correspondence between Frederico Augusto Ooom (1830-1890), the first director of the Lisbon Astronomical Observatory (OAL), and the instrument maker, Repsold, responsible for the construction of the Observatory's main instruments. Some of this correspondence, located at the Observatory itself, was already well known and a large part of it was retrieved from the Hamburg State Archive thanks to a SIS Grant.

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