In anno domini 1674, the Sieur de St. Pierre (a French courtier, never mind the details) had been at some excellent Royal soiree when Louise de Kéroualle and her cleavage had hove into view above the rim of his goblet. Like most men who found themselves in her presence, the Sieur had been seized by an unaccountable need to impress her, somehow, some way. Knowing that Natural Philosophy was a big deal at the Court of Charles II, he had employed the following gambit: he had remarked that one could solve the problem of finding the Longitude by plotting the motions of the moon against the stars and using the heavens as a big clock. Kéroualle had relayed this to the King during some sort of Natural-Philosophic pillow talk, and his majesty had commissioned four Fellows of the Royal Society (the Duke of Gunfleet, Roger Comstock, Robert Hooke, and Christopher Wren) to find out if such a thing were really possible. They had asked one John Flamsteed. Flamsteed was the same age as Daniel. Too sickly to attend school, he had stayed home and taught himself astronomy. Later his health had improved to the point where he'd been able to attend Cambridge and learn what could be taught there, which was not much, at the time. When he had received this inquiry from the aforementioned four Fellows of the Royal Society, he had been just finishing up his studies, and looking for something to do. He had shrewdly written back saying that the proposal of the Sieur de St. Pierre, though it might be possible in theory, was perfectly absurd in practice, owing to a want of reliable astronomical data – which could only be remedied by a lengthy and expensive research program. It was the first and the last politic thing that Flamsteed had ever done. Without delay Charles II had appointed him Astronomer Royal and founded the Royal Observatory.