Welcome to this site

It contains the minutes of meetings of the Bureau des longitudes between 1795 and 1932 – a total of 22,000 digital files. The Bureau des longitudes was founded on June 25^th 1795 and still exists today. From its date of creation until 1854, it directed the Observatoire de Paris. Its mission was also to improve how longitudes at sea were determined and to constitute a scientific and technological expert advisory committee for the French State. More specifically, the Bureau was assigned the tasks of calculating ephemerides and publishing La Connaissance des Temps (Knowledge Of Time) and an almanac or calendar which "set those of the Republic" (the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes). In 1877 and 1949 it also published the Annales du Bureau des longitudes.

On this site you will find image versions of all the minutes of meetings for the 1795-1932 period. Eventually the documents online will be fully transcribed but currently transcriptions are available up to the date of August 9^th 1854. This work was carried out by Jean-Marie Feurtet. For the following period, the documents will be transcribed by Julien Muller and progressively published on line.

We would also like to invite you to periodically consult the "Focus" page where you will find short contributions about the history of the Bureau des longitudes.

This web site is the product of a collaboration project between the Bureau des longitudes, the Observatoire de Paris library and the Laboratoire d’histoire des sciences et de philosophie – Archives Henri Poincaré (Université de Lorraine). It was made possible by funding from the French Higher Education and Research Ministry (BSN5-2013 programme) with further support from the Maison des sciences de l’Homme Lorraine. This research into the history of the Bureau des longitudes is part of a French National Research Agency (ANR) project "Le Bureau des Longitudes (1795-1932) – De la Révolution française à la Troisième République".


Martina Schiavon and Laurent Rollet