1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Robinson, John Thomas Romney

ROBINSON, JOHN THOMAS ROMNEY (1792–1882), Irish astronomer and physicist, was born in Dublin on the 23rd of April 1792. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and obtained a fellowship in 1814; for some years he was deputy professor of natural philosophy, until in 1821 he obtained the college living of Enniskillen. In 1823 he was appointed astronomer of the Armagh observatory, with which he (from 1824) combined the living of Carrickmacross, but he always resided at the observatory, engaged in researches connected with astronomy and physics, until his death on the 28th of February 1882.

Robinson published a number of papers in scientific journals, and the Armagh catalogue of stars (Places of 5345 Stars observed from 1828 to 1854 at the Armagh Observatory, Dublin, 1859), but e is best known as the inventor (1846) of the cup-anemometer for registering the velocity of the wind.