Charles II appointed the astronomer John Flamsted to the Royal Observatory in 1675 to work on the problem of accurate navigation whilst at sea. For his trouble he was rewarded with the sum of £100 per year. The issue was that the British empire at the time was loosing a high number of ships because they had no means to accurately identify their longitudinal location (how far north or south they were). The Royal Observatory was built for this purpose and used as for astronomical research until the city’s pollution was so great that they could no longer study the night sky.