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Simms, William (1793-1860) scientific instrument maker
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Letter from George Airy
Letter from George Airy
Add. MS a/200/163 · Item · 17 Nov. 1860
Part of Additional Manuscripts a

Royal Observatory Greenwich - GA requested Simms [William Simms, instrument maker] to give an estimate for Transit-Circles of different uses, and he encloses the estimates [no longer attached].
Letter from George Airy
Letter from George Airy
Add. MS a/200/22 · Item · 27 Apr. 1838
Part of Additional Manuscripts a

Royal Observatory Greenwich - The clock for the Northumberland telescope is nearly finished. Could WW get [James] Challis to send to [William] Simms or GA 'the breadth of the hole that is left by the side of the south pier of the polar axis for the clock weights to drop into; as that will determine the construction of our weights'. Could WW ask the President of the Council of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, whether they would present to the library of the Royal Observatory a copy of the Transactions of the Society. This will help bind the links between the Observatory and Cambridge.
Letter from Richard Sheepshanks
Add. MS a/213/75 · Item · 13 Nov. 1826
Part of Additional Manuscripts a

RS has just had a letter from Simms [William Simms] requesting him to return the theodolite which WW and George Airy used in Cornwall: 'I informed him some time ago that it was so incomplete as not to answer my wants'. Will WW or Airy send it to him. RS's two sisters have gone to Bray therefore he has the house to himself - would WW like to stay? What has been done in University matters?
Letter from Richard Sheepshanks
Add. MS a/213/78 · Item · 27 Jan. 1827
Part of Additional Manuscripts a

Thanks WW for the University information. RS has put pressure on Troughton and Simms to send the 'top' as soon as possible. An update on RS's horse riding lessons. He ought to find a way of repaying the £100 he owes WW. RS 'had got a clumsy scheme in my head of supporting an invariable pendulum not by knife edges but upon a well ground steel cylinder said cylinder resting upon capital friction wheels...I am however inclined to suspect that the work of such friction wheels would be very expensive and their action a little uncertain'. A pendulum 'with a spring and with the clips invariably united to the spring would be more invariable than knife edges and Troughton [Edward Troughton] says that is the way he always asserted the experiment should be made'.