In 1885, when Van Keulen of Amsterdam, founded in 1678, was dissolved, it became the oldest active firm in Europe for the publication of charts and nautical works.
In 1851 he completed the revision of Richard Brookes's Gazetteer, and the same year published his first major work, on the Coasts and Islands of the Pacific Ocean, in 2 vols.
[1] Findlay issued six large nautical directories, which have proved invaluable to the maritime world.
[2] Sir Henry Rawlinson commented that these works had become standard authorities; he also executed a series of charts widely used by the mercantile marine.
Findlay served on various committees appointed by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and contributed the following papers to section E: at Liverpool in 1853, On the Currents of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; Exeter, 1869, On the Gulf Stream, and its supposed influence upon the Climate of N.-W.
At the time of Sir John Franklin's loss he sifted all the possible routes; and as a member of the Arctic committee of the Royal Geographical Society worked on the arguments which induced the government to send out the Alert and Discovery expedition of 1875.
Findlay devoted much time to the labours of his friend David Livingstone, in central Africa, and he also investigated the sources of the Nile.