![]() The artist and clockmaker, Martin Burgess, – working on attempts to decipher Harrison’s plans – produced two versions of his great clock. Harrison’s claim that he could build such a clock were also ridiculed.Īs a result, his ideas for his super-accurate pendulum clock were forgotten until the 1970s, when interest in the clockmaker and his remarkable timepieces was re-awakened. Unfortunately for Harrison, the book was savagely criticised, with The London Review of English and Foreign Literature describing it as “one of the most unaccountable productions we have ever met with”. This machine – which would have a large pendulum arc, relatively light bob, and a recoil grasshopper escapement – would be able to keep time to within a second over 100 days (though it would need to be wound regularly). Not long before his death, however, he produced a book in which he lambasted some of his rivals and proclaimed that he could build a timepiece for use on land that was more accurate than any built by his rivals. Harrison was eventually awarded a considerable sum of money for his efforts and he died a rich man. This was done by measuring local time and then comparing it with the time at Greenwich (which was provided by the chronometer). However, Harrison – in response to a government challenge – developed watches that contained a pair of counter-oscillating weighted beams connected by springs that turned out to be remarkably precise and allowed navigators to determine their position accurately. Pinpointing where they lay on the notional lines that run vertically on a map proved extremely difficult for navigators. ![]() Harrison was a self-educated carpenter and clockmaker who achieved considerable fame in the mid-18th century for the marine chronometers that he designed to solve the problem that sailors then faced in determining their longitude while at sea. “It is a quite extraordinary achievement and a complete vindication of Harrison, who suffered ridicule over his claim to be able to achieve such accuracy,” said Rory McEvoy, curator of horology at the Royal Museums Greenwich. At a conference, Harrison Decoded: Towards a Perfect Pendulum Clock, held at Greenwich yesterday, observatory scientists revealed that a clock that had been built to the clockmaker’s exact specifications had run for 100 days during official tests and had lost only five-eighths of a second in that period. The task was simply impossible, it was declared.īut now the last laugh lies with Harrison. His subsequent claim – that he would go on to make a pendulum timepiece that was accurate to within a second over a 100-day period – triggered widespread ridicule. The derision was poured on John Harrison, the British clockmaker whose marine chronometers had revolutionised seafaring in the 18th century (and who was the subject of Longitude by Dava Sobel).
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