The Yorkshire Philosophical Society was created in 1822 and soon afterwards founded the Yorkshire Museum and Botanical Gardens. Museum Gardens is also home to York’s Observatory, which is the oldest working observatory in Yorkshire. Completed in 1833 it contains a refractor telescope built by Thomas Cooke. An 1811 clock in the Observatory tells the time based on the positions of stars. All the clocks in York used to be set by this time, for the fee of a sixpence! Today it is still four minutes and 20 seconds behind GMT. The British Association for the Advancement of Science met in the Gardens for its inaugural meeting on the 27th September 1831. Its founders held the meeting in York because ‘old Ebor’ offered a central point and the new Yorkshire Museum provided excellent facilities. The aim of the Association was to drive scientific enquiry and for science to be credited with the respect it deserved. The Association has since become a worldwide scientific authority.