History
The history of the SAAO began when the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope was founded in 1820, the first scientific institution in Africa. Construction of the main buildings were completed in 1829 at a cost of £30,000 (equivalent to £2.2 million in 2012). The post of Her Majesty's astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope was awarded the Royal Medal on two occasions; the first to Thomas Maclear in 1869 for measurement of an arc of the meridian at the Cape of Good Hope and the second to David Gill in 1903 for researches in solar and stellar parallax, and his energetic direction of the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope.
During the 1970s, the Republic Observatory in Johannesburg and the Radcliffe Observatory in Pretoria merged with the much older Royal Observatory to form the South African Astronomical Observatory.
SAAO was established in January 1972 as a result of a joint agreement by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) of South Africa and Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) of United Kingdom. The headquarters are located on the grounds of the old Royal Observatory where the main building, offices, national library for astronomy and computer facilities are housed. Historic telescopes are also found at the headquarters in a number of domes and a small museum that displays scientific instruments. The South African Astronomical Observatory is administered as a National Facility under management of the National Research Foundation (NRF), now formerly Foundation for Research Development (FRD). In 1974, when the Radcliffe Observatory in Pretoria closed, the Royal Observatory and the Republic Observatory combined facilities. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) purchased the 1.9 Radcliffe telescope and transported it to Sutherland.
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