For decades the Astrographic Catalogue was largely ignored. The data were difficult to work with because they were available neither in machine-readable form nor in equatorial coordinates. Decades of labour were expended internationally before the project was superseded by modern astronomical techniques. One problem was that the work took much longer than expected. As originally envisaged, the project was meant to have taken only 10 to 15 years. A more serious problem was that while many European astronomers were preoccupied with this project, which required steady, methodical labor rather than creativity, in other parts of the world notably the United States astrophysics was becoming far more important than astrometry. As a result, French astronomy in particular fell behind and lagged for decades.
