William Cranch Bond is sent to observe construction of the Greenwich observatory in England.

Sent to England by Nathaniel Bowditch and other Harvard faculty, Cranch returns to Boston, settles at today’s 158 East Cottage Street, and builds a fully-equipped home observatory. Cranch is appointed director of the Harvard College Observatory and moves his family and equipment to Cambridge in 1839. Upon his death in 1859, and is succeeded by his son, George Bond, in that position.