| Description | He considers it his duty to report to the President and members of the Royal Society on the researches he made in Spring on Greek temples, for which he was given £100. Together with assistance from the Hellenic Society, this enabled Penrose to examine over twenty sites and to obtain exact amplitudes of the axes of about forty temples, appended in a list [not present], with deductions about the probable dates of their foundation derived from the connection between their orientation and the amplitudes of particular stars. The founding dates might be deduced from the changes in places of the stars in right ascension and declination arising from precession of the equinoxes. Mr. [Joseph Norman] Lockyer has already drawn attention to this line of research and has published in Nature. Several other communications have been sent by Herr Nissen. He refers to the 1885 and 1887 volumes of the Rheinisches Museum. He cites his own paper to the Society of Antiquaries, also abstracted in Nature.
F.C. Penrose was awarded a grant of £100 from the Royal Society's Donation Fund in January 1892, for his researches 'on the orientation of Ancient Greek temples'. |