From Pukekohe to the Nautical Almanac

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 447, 16 January 1948, Page 24

From Pukekohe to the Nautical Almanac

OBODY, | said © Cromwell, ' goes so far as the man who does not know where he is going. When Leslie John Comrie, of Pukekohe, and Auckland University College, boarded a transport in 1918, he only knew that he was going to the war, and the circumstances of his going were so peculiar that he must have thought it a miracle that he was there at all. Although he had been actively interested in astronomy, he can hardly have thought that one day he would be Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac, the most important publication of the kind in the world. Dr. Comrie is now back in New Zealand with his wife, after 30 years’ absence. At our request he told us something about his career, including the work in which he has specialised. He was born at Pukekohe 50 odd years ago (the son of a farmer) and educated at Pukekohe High School and Auckland Grammar School. At the Grammar School he was top in mathe- — matics, but he took chemistry for his Honours subject at Auckland University College. Now, at A.U.C. there was a telescope, presented many years before by an Auckland resident. The telescope wasn’t much used. Comrle and some of his pals at A‘U.C. thought they would play round with it. One upshot of this interest was that in 1914 Comrie found a new comet with the naked eye. We asked him if he got the honour of discovery, and he said, "No, I was beaten by two days by someone in South Africa, and someone in South America, and C. J. Westland, of Christchurch. The comet was called 1914e." Then came the war. Comrie had suffered since childhood from deafness which made it very difficult to become a soldier. He offered himself again and again, but they wouldn’t take him. At last he got in by a mixture of good luck and guile, and was chosen for a N.C.O. course at Trentham. Unfortunately one day the instructor, Captain Cheator, whom many veterans of the first war will remember, gave him an order on his bad ear. "I didn’t hear a word of it, and Cheator let off a volley of language. He never forgave me. I was put into office work, but I kept begging to be sent to the front. They said: ‘What’s the good? A German may come up behind you and bayonet you and you won’t hear him.’ However, I got away in the end, and on the ship I hid myself until we were out of sight of land." Plotting the Course Meanwhile Comrie had been playing round with another telescope, the one at the Observatory in Wellington. He quickly found an astronomical interest on board ship. The route of the transport was kept a dead secret. "The Captain wouldn’t tell us where we were going. When we left Wellington we sailed east and everybody thought we were going through Panama. Then we doubled back at night, and went through Cook Strait westward. However, I was able by observations and the aid of my tables to make a pretty accurate plot of the course. We went south of Tasmania to Albany and then to Colombo

and Egypt. I was able to ascertain that we went south of Tasmania and not through Bass Strait." Dr. Comrie explained to us how this was done. For instance, you strolled along just before mid-day to a positig@: where you could see the Captain and an officer taking the noon sights and you knew when they disappeared into the chart room that that was 12’ o'clock ship’s time. Your watch was kept on Greenwich Mean Time, and it was an easy calculation from that to find the ship’s longitude, Latitude was found by measuring the length of the day from sunrise to sunset, which depends on the time of the year and the latitude. We murmured something here about it being easy to do if you knew how, like a lot of other things. Then service in France. During an attack a shell-and a British one at that-wounded him so badly that a leg had to be taken off. The next thing was hospital in England. "While I was in hospital somebody came along and told us about training servicemen for jobs after the war-bootmaking, woolclassing, and that sort of thing. I said I was an M.A. of New Zealand and could they make it possible for me to continue my University studies? So they sent me to University College, London, where I spent eight months. I was under the famous Professor Karl Pearson, mathematician, statistician, and authority on genetics. He was the man that influenced me most. I was having my first lesson from him on a Brunsviga calculating machine at precisely 11.0 a.m. on November 11, 1918 (Armistice Day). "I was on the point of returning to New Zealand in 1918 when I heard of the N.Z.E.F. Scholarship scheme. I got a scholarship to St. John’s College, Cambridge, and meant to sit for the Mathematical Tripos. However, there was a snag. They wouldn’t take my New Zealand M.A. as the equivalent to Cambridge matriculation, because, so they said, I hadn’t done enough languages. But my tutor said I was too old to worry about this now, and found a way out. (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) By some university regulation I could be admitted as a research student on my New Zealand degree, so on his suggestion I went for a research degree ‘in astronomy. Eventually I noticed that thete was an Isaac Newton Scholarship in Astronomy going begging. Two of us put in for it and both of us were given one. The other chap is now Professor W. M. H. Greaves, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and Professor of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. -He married’ my wife’s sister. Off to Philadelphia "Well, after Cambridge it was time to think of getting something to do. I was appointed to a position in Swarthmore College near Philadelphia to do astronomical research. When I got there they asked me to do some teaching too, which I was willing to do at a little more salary. From there I went to Northwestern University in Chicago. I was ranked as an Assistant-Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy, but in a British country I would have been only a lecturer. All this time I was using two of the largest telescopes in America. Then again I was ready to come back to New Zealand, but I heard of a vacancy on the Nautical Almanac in England — Deputy Superintendent, with the expectation of succeeding to the Superintendent in 1930 if I proved satisfactory. I got the position. That was in 1925."

"Will you tell us what the Nautical Almanac is? Everybody knows its name, but what does it do?" "Well, the Nautical Almanac is the Sailor’s Bible." : We interrupted here. With all reverence we pointed out that the comparison was not quite accurate. In respect to the material affairs of life a man could dispense with the Bible. We took it that a sailor could not do without the Nautical Almanac. "That’s quite right. The Nautical Almanac is indispensable to the sailor. It predicts’ the position of the sun, moon, planets and stars. There are two edi-tions-a big one of about 1000 pages, and one of 200 odd pages. It’s under the Admiralty, and in my time there there was a staff of 12. The big edition is used by all observatories, and astronomers of any standing, and is carried by large survey parties, Ft’s the smaller one that is used by every ship." "Is the Almanac used by other countries?" "Yes, in this way: They supply us with a certain’ amount. of information and we do the rest. The greater part of all Almanacs is our work, so we give a world service," d "Is the meridian of Greenwich still universally used as a starting point?" "Rather. I used to walk across it every day going from my home at Blackheath to my office in the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. I believe Hitler had some idea of a meridian of his own, but it didn’t come to anything." Mechanised Mathematics Dr. Comrie was Deputy-Superintend-ent for five years, and Superintendent from 1930 to 1936. He introduced a number of improvements includin revolutionary methods of mechanica calculation. While he was still at Cambridge he founded the British Astronomical Association Computing Section and

compiled the first handbook, and later introduced computation as part of the curriculum of the two American universities with which he was connected. While he was at Greenwich, he found a new use for one of the commercial accounting machines which was taken up not only by the Wautical Almanac but by the British Association, the National Physical Laboratory, and the Ordnance Board. As a result of his special interest in this kind of work, and the number of requests. for computations that came to the WNautical Almanac office, he decided in 1937 to set up for himself and founded Scientific Computing Service Ltd. At first this was a private venture but was soon turned into a limited company. It is difficult to give laymen an idea of the sort of work that is done in this office, but Dr. Comrie furnished a few examples. The Royal Horticultural Society decided to move the whole of its very large set of glasshouses to another place. They wanted to know the answers to a number of questions before they re-erected the building, such as what pitch should they set the glass at. This involved the position of the sun. Dr, Comrie’s office worked out the calculations on their machines, of which there are 40 of about 12 different kinds. But the most dramatic experiences occurred during the war. At 2 o’clock jon the day that war was declared, the War Office asked whether Dr. Comrie could work. out tables for the three types of antiaircraft guns used in London. The Ordnance Board estimated ‘that it would take one month to do each table. The Comrie office supplied two tables in 12

days. This included not only the actual working out of the tables on the machines, but printing, checking and binding. It’s only fair to the Ordnance Board to say that they got the third table done in three weeks. Later on, six weeks "before D Day the office was asked by the Americans ‘for tables for the Norden bomb-sight. These were supplied in five weeks instead of the four months estimated by Washington. Among the other jobs done for the Government was map projection for the forces invading Holland and Belgium and Germany. Girls Do the Work We asked what sort of staff was employed to do these jobs.. Dr. Comrie explained that he had a number of highly-qualified assistants, but the actual work oh the machines was done by girls, who for admission had to have at least the Higher School Certificate in Mathematics. The girls are taught in the office in a series of lectures and practical classes. "Take the American request for bomb-sight tables. I called the girls together and explained what was wanted, and they did the job quite easily." We quoted the old Cambridge toast: "Here’s to the higher mathematics; may they never be any use to anybody." What did Dr. Comrie think of that? "Well, I deal in applied mathematics. There is a school of pure mathematics in Cambridge which looks down upon the use of calculating machines. They say that if one cannot solve a differential _ equation: analytically there are numerical methods that low-down engineers and physicists use; but they would not sully their hands with them. However, I think there’s something in the toast. I agree that all academic progress in mathematics is good. For one thing you never know when it will lead to something useful, like advances in other scientific fields."