Question: What was the institution headed by "The Last Universalist" during the 19th century charged with?
Context: The Bureau des Longitudes (] ) is a French scientific institution, founded by decree of 25 June 1795 and charged with the improvement of nautical navigation, standardisation of time-keeping, geodesy and astronomical observation.  During the 19th century, it was responsible for synchronizing clocks across the world.  It was headed during this time by François Arago and Henri Poincaré.  The Bureau now functions as an academy and still meets monthly to discuss topics related to astronomy. Massachusetts was the first colony in New England with slave ownership and was a center for the slave trade throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.  No legislation was passed that abolished slavery until the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 was ratified by the state.  Instead, the practice of slavery was ended through case law; and as an institution it died out in the late 18th century through judicial actions litigated on behalf of slaves seeking manumission.  These court cases, starting in 1781, heard arguments contending that slavery was a violation of Christian principles and also a violation of the constitution of the commonwealth.  1783 saw additional high-profile court cases that began a general trend of slaves winning their emancipation on a case-by-case basis through lawsuit.  As slavery dwindled in the last decade of the 18th century in Massachusetts, many of the instances where it remained, the slaveholders sometimes applied semantics of a name change to indentured servitude to maintain their property.  The 1790 federal census, however, listed no slaves.  Massachusetts was a center for the abolition movement in the 19th century. The Andover Public Library is located on Church Street in Andover, Maine, United States.  Although a private library funded by subscription was founded in the town in 1795, it was not until the establishment of the Andover Public Library Association in 1891 that movement to a publicly-funded library began.  It was originally quartered in a room of the Andover Town Hall, until 1943, when its present building was purchased from a Universalist church organization.  The building is one of only two octagonal religious buildings known to have been built anywhere in Maine, and was probably the last building in the state built with inspiration from Orson Squire Fowler's promotion of octagonal buildings in the 19th century.  On January 27, 1981, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Spidertown was a small, agricultural supply and services based community in southwestern Ontario, Canada that existed in the last half of the 19th and the early 20th century.  The site of the former hamlet is located at the present intersection of Mount Carmel Drive, Blackbush Line and Salem Road, on the boundary between the current municipality of North Middlesex and the municipality of South Huron.  Little is currently known of Spidertown's founding, nor the origin of its name.  The hamlet is described in one source as consisting, at one point in time, of "taverns on both corners" and "four homes".  It is known, that in the latter 19th century a general store was operated in the community by Alexander Todd, presumably the same individual who operated two other general stores during the period at Maguire and Moray as well.  A medical doctor, T. L. Flaherty, maintained a practice in a corner house in the hamlet in the latter 19th century, but is known to have moved his office to Mount Carmel, 2 km to the east, before 1898.  It is believed that Spidertown began to go into decline because of its inability to compete economically with the nearby hamlet of Mount Carmel.  Spidertown is recorded as having disappeared by 1914. The Luxembourg Commission was a labor commission in the 19th century.  It was introduced by the Provisional Government of France which formed on 25 February 1848, following the abdication of Louis-Philippe.  The establishment of the Luxembourg Commission, an assembly of workers' delegates headed by Louis Blanc, was charged with the task of surveying social problems and suggesting solutions; an elegant gesture from the Provisional government.  It was discontinued later the same year. The historical records for the Shroud of Turin can be separated into two time periods: before 1390 and from 1390 to the present.  The period until 1390 is subject to debate and controversy among historians.  Prior to the 14th century there are some allegedly congruent but controversial references such as the Pray Codex.  It is often mentioned that the first certain historical record dates from 1353 or 1357.  However the presence of the Turin Shroud in Lirey, France, is only undoubtedly attested in 1390 when Bishop Pierre d'Arcis wrote a memorandum where he charged that the Shroud was a forgery.  The history from the 15th century to the present is well documented.  In 1453 Margaret de Charny deeded the Shroud to the House of Savoy.  As of the 17th century the shroud has been displayed (e.g. in the chapel built for that purpose by Guarino Guarini) and in the 19th century it was first photographed during a public exhibition. The Divan-ı Hümâyûn, in English the Imperial Council, was the "de facto" cabinet of the Ottoman Empire for most of its history.  Initially an informal gathering of the senior ministers presided over by the Sultan in person, in the mid-15th century the Council's composition and function became firmly regulated.  The Grand Vizier, who became the Sultan's deputy as the head of government, assumed the role of chairing the Council, which comprised also the other viziers, charged with military and political affairs, the two "kadi'askers" or military judges, the "defterdars" in charge of finances, the "nişancı" in charge of the palace scribal service, and later the Kapudan Pasha, the head of the Ottoman Navy, and occasionally the "beylerbey" of Rumelia and the Agha of the Janissaries.  The Council met in a dedicated building in the Second Courtyard of the Topkapi Palace, initially daily, then for four days a week by the 16th century.  Its remit encompassed all matters of governance of the Empire, although the exact proceedings are no longer known.  It was assisted by an extensive secretarial bureaucracy under the "reis ül-küttab" for the drafting of appropriate documents and the keeping of records.  The Imperial Council remained the main executive organ of the Ottoman state until the mid-17th century, after which it lost most of its power to the office of the Grand Vizier.  With the Tanzimat reforms of the early 19th century, it was eventually succeeded by a Western-style cabinet government. The Oxford Main Street Historic District is a national historic district encompassing the historic center of Oxford, Massachusetts.  The 95 acre district extends along Main Street from Huguenot Street in the south to Front Street in the north.  Its oldest buildings are residential houses built in the late 19th century, while most of the properties were built in the 19th century, with Greek Revival architecture predominating.  The oldest commercial building, the John Wetherell Store, was built c. 1817, and now houses offices.  The district includes four churches, including the 1793 Universalist church and 1829 First Congregational Church, and a number of municipal buildings, including the town hall, two schools, and the 1903 Classical Revival Charles Larned Memorial Library. Jules Henri Poincaré (] ; 29 April 1854 – 17 July 1912) was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science.  He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The Last Universalist" by Eric Temple Bell, since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime. The history of Tufts University, originally Tufts College, can be traced back to 1847 when the Universalist Church set up convention for the creation of a university for the parish.  In 1852, the college was established when Boston businessman Charles Tufts donated 20 acres of land to the church to establish the college.  It is the second oldest college that was founded in the Boston area.  .  During the 19th century the college grew.  The official college seal, bearing the motto Pax et Lux (Peace and Light) was adopted in 1857.  The school colors of brown and blue were selected in 1876.  Tufts' mascot became Jumbo when P.T. Barnum gave a natural history museum to the university.
Answer: the improvement of nautical navigation