Virtual global project management in eighteenth-century astronomy

What is it about?

Astronomers in the 18th century mastered the art of virtual global project management. Build-ing on common standards of scientific explorations and research as well as mutual trust in their application, they reduced project transaction costs in a similar way as new technologies favored virtual projects in the late 1990s. This is illustrated by referring to observations of the Venus transits in 1761 and 1769. Beyond astronomy, these observations were important for navigation, they lead to discoveries of unknown islands and to better information on unex-plored parts of kingdoms participating in the observations. Reliability of results was improved by aggregating data from multiple observatory locations across the globe.

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