That the export of Scottish engineers and engineering teachers to Japan in the 1870s aided that country's astonishingly rapid process of modernization from a feudal to a capitalist, industrialized society will not occasion surprise or dissent. As the Japan weekly mail editorialized in 1878: In no direction has Japan symbolised her advance towards assimilation of the civilisation of the Western world more emphatically than in that of applied science.

Rossbank functioned from 1840 to 1854 as one of a chain of British Colonial Observatories which combined with European and Asian observatories in the study of terrestrial magnetism. It was established in Hobart, Tasmania, by the Governor of Van Diemen's Land, Sir John Franklin, and Captain James Clark Ross, R.N., commanding H.M. ships Erebus and Terror. The history and operation of the Rossbank Observatory is related, its instruments described, and the results discussed.Biographical notes on the Observatory staff, with lists of (...) its archives and instruments are provided. A number of previously unpublished pictures show the Observatory in use and the surviving buildings and instruments today. (shrink)