Where Will the Clocks of John Harrison Go Next?

[arydberg]

For those few of you close to Mystic, CT I would like to mention that the Mystic Seaport Museum has a exhibit on the clocks of John Harrison. It is closing March 28 so there is not too much time left. Here is a link

http://www.mysticseaport.org

 

[jedishrfu]

Thanks for sharing. John Harrison's legacy really revolutionized maritime navigation. It's hard to imagine what we'd be doing today without it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_(book)

and NOVA did show on his work based on the Sobel's book Longitude.

 

[Astronuc]

http://www.mysticseaport.org/ships-clocks-stars/
Exhibition produced by the National Maritime Museum, London

I wish that I had known about it. Where will the exhibit go from there?

 

[BornCane]

Thanks for sharing. John Harrison's legacy really revolutionized maritime navigation. It's hard to imagine what we'd be doing today without it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_(book)

and NOVA did show on his work based on the Sobel's book Longitude.

historicallywhy was longitude a harder problem to solve for navigators than latitude

 

[jedishrfu]

Its due to the Earth's 24 hour rotation so can't simply find it by looking at the stars unless you know the time.

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2002/9/finding-out-the-longitude

Why was longitude determination such a difficult problem compared with finding latitude? A very basic answer is that latitude is measured north or south and so is independent of the Earth's east-west rotation, whereas longitude's determination by celestial means is affected by that rotation. Latitude can be found, in principle, from angular measures alone—say the angle of the midday sun above the horizon—but longitude requires knowledge of time. Thus if a mariner had a clock keeping Greenwich time and found that it read 2 p.m. when the sun was at its maximum angle above the horizon—the local noon—he would know that his longitude was two hours west of Greenwich. The whole problem lay in finding a clock that would keep time with sufficient accuracy over the long voyages of the 17th and 18th centuries. The best timekeepers of the age were pendulum clocks, but these were useless on the heaving deck of a small ship, whereas spring-wound clocks were relatively crude and hopelessly inaccurate for voyages over many weeks or months.

 

[arydberg]

http://www.mysticseaport.org/ships-clocks-stars/
Exhibition produced by the National Maritime Museum, London

I wish that I had known about it. Where will the exhibit go from there?

Sydney, Australia Then back to England