Today’s Google Doodle celebrates clockmaker John Harrison, whose efforts to calculate longitude helped people figure out their place in the world — literally.
Harrison was born 325 years ago in Yorkshire, England, and he grew up to become a clockmaker. Before he died in 1776, he developed a series of increasingly accurate clocks that could be used to determine a ship’s position on the globe’s east-west axis, also known as its longitude.
Seamen had long used the position of the sun or North Star in the sky to figure out latitude — that is, the distance from the equator in the north-south direction, according to The Conversation. But calculating longitude was much trickier, leading to deadly navigational errors. In 1707, for example, a five-ship pile-up off the Cornish coast killed 1,400 people. So in 1714, the British Board of Longitude announced a competition: £20,000 (or £1.5m in today’s currency, The Conversation reports) would be awarded to whoever developed the most accurate way to calculate longitude at sea. One way to do that, at least in theory, was to use time.
Since the Earth rotates 360 degrees in 24 hours, that means it rotates 15 degrees each hour. So if you know the time where you are and the time at zero-degrees longitude (which is arbitrarily set in Greenwich, England) you should be able to calculate your longitude, the Australian National Maritime Museum explains. So Harrison entered the competition with a hand-crafted clock that could accurately keep time even at sea. Over the next 40 years, he perfected the technology. But he didn’t win the £20,000 — at least not at first.
In 1765, his son, William Harrison, took the fourth-generation clock — called H4, or the sea watch — for a test voyage to Jamaica. The sea watch passed the test, according to the Royal Museums Greenwich. But still, the Board of Longitude wasn’t ready to call him a winner and ordered another test run — this time to Barbados, against two teams using methods that relied on astronomy rather than timepieces.
The watch was accurate, but what the Board of Longitude really wanted was a “practical solution,” according to an Oxford University Press blog post by science historian Jim Bennett. That meant scaling up production of the watch, which would be challenging with such a carefully crafted device. So the Board agreed to award Harrison a partial prize of £10,000. He only received the full amount after King George III insisted, according to Smithsonian’s Time and Navigation series.
A compelling version of the narrative is that John Harrison solved the longitude problem, but was slighted by the scientific establishment, Bennett writes in a blog post for Oxford University Press. That version of the story ignores the contributions of other clockmakers in the UK and in France who also were making progress toward developing reliable chronometers. “It is difficult to claim without important qualification that Harrison solved the longitude problem in a practical sense,” he says. Harrison’s work showed that it was truly possible.
British clockmaker John Harrison (1693-1776), the man who built the first marine chronometer to measure longitude, was born 325 years ago today and is celebrated in the latest Google Doodle.
Harrison was raised in Foulby in Yorkshire, the son of a carpenter. He was expected to follow the family trade but became fascinated with mechanical clockwork when he was bedridden with smallpox, aged six, and spent his convalescent hours toying with a pocket watch he had been given as a gift.
The family relocated to Barrow upon Humber in Lincolnshire in 1700, where the young Harrison rose to become choirmaster of the parish church.
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At 20, Harrison combined his interests to build his first grandfather clock, making both the oak cabinet and pendulum mechanism himself. This and two others survive to this day, one of which is on display in London's Science Museum.
Harrison continued to make clocks, often with the aid of his brother James, a gifted joiner. Together they developed the grid-iron pendulum for longcase clocks, making use of alternating brass and iron rods to cancel out the effect of thermal expansion.
Another of Harrison's innovations was the grasshopper escapement, a control device for releasing a clock's driving power that generated minimal friction and did not require lubrication.
The development for which he remains best known is of course his timepiece for determining longitude on long sea voyages.
The Royal Navy had lost too many ships to wrecks over the decades as a result of being unable to determine their positions globally with any accuracy, especially after many weeks on the waves. While latitude could be easily determined by the height of the sun, locating a vessel's position east or west of the prime meridian was a tougher nut to crack.
The British government formed the Board of Longitude in 1714 and tasked it with solving the problem, integral for all maritime operations from defence to trade. The board offered a cash prize of £20,000 to the scientist who could resolve the question.
Isaac Newton doubted it could ever be done: “A good watch may serve to keep a reckoning at sea for some days and to know the time of a celestial observation; and for this end a good Jewel may suffice till a better sort of watch can be found out. But when longitude at sea is lost, it cannot be found again by any watch.”
Harrison, determined to win the prize, worked on his chronometer from 1728 to 1735, presenting an early version of his "Sea clock" to Astronomer Royal Edmond Halley, who referred him in turn to the leading watchmaker of the day, George Graham.
Harrison had constructed a device that could keep time over a 50-day period without suffering from the effects of wavering temperatures, pressure, humidity or corrosion from salt water.
His effort meant that navigators could find longitude by comparing the length of time they had been at sea with local time, ascertainable from the position of the sun in the sky. Local time was one hour ahead for every 15 degrees of longitude eastwards and one hour behind for every 15 degrees of longitude west.
Graham and the Royal Society were sufficiently impressed to test Harrison's device on a sea trial to Lisbon in 1736.
While the clock faltered on its outward journey aboard the HMS Centurion, it performed handsomely on its return aboard the HMS Orford and the Board of Longitude handed Harrison an additional £500 to develop it further for transatlantic voyages.
Harrison's second generation sea clock was smaller and hardier but it was the third - kept back to prevent it falling into Spanish hands during the War of Austrian Succession in 1741 - that really nailed the problem. Harrison realised that he he had not previously reckoned with the effect of a ship's yawing motion when tacking, which had the potential to throw his clocks out of balance.
Although he never quite perfected the sea clock to his satisfaction - having failed to factor in the delicate physics of the springs controlling the clock's balance wheels - his work marked a giant leap forward and revolutionised maritime travel.
Harrison subsequently turned his attention to watchmaking, realising that measuring longitude could be achieved with greater convenience from a pocketwatch.
Harrison's 1713 timepiece (Timothy Allen)
He continued to receive grants from the board and from parliament to further advance his work on chronometers over the course of his career until his death in Hampstead at the age of 83 in 1776.
Harrison's clocks were used by such famous seaman of the period as Captain James Cook and Captain William Bligh and his innovations continue to be lauded today.
Composer Harrison Birtwhistle wrote a piano piece in tribute in 1998 and Michael Gambon played him in Channel 4's admired costume drama Longitude in 1999. Perhaps more surprisingly, he was central to the 1996 Only Fools and Horses Christmas special, in which the Trotters finally made their fortune by auctioning off one of his lesser prototypes.
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British clockmaker John Harrison definitely had time on his side.
The self-educated horologist and carpenter was born on April 3, 1693, in Foulby, Yorkshire.
He is known as the man who came to the rescue of countless sailors by creating the first marine chronometer to calculate longitude at sea.
The British government created the Board of Longitude in 1714, which sought to remedy naval disasters.
They offered a reward of £20,000 to anyone who could devise a navigational instrument that could find the longitude within 30 miles of a sea voyage.
Taking up the challenge, Harrison set to work on his chronometer in 1728 and completed it seven years later in 1735.
He followed up this feat with three watches that were even smaller and more accurate than his first.
Harrison’s extraordinary invention brought him much acclaim. Thanks to him, seamen could determine not only gauge latitude but longitude, making their excursions far safer.
Today's colourful Google Doodle shows the inventor hard at work, surrounded by the tools of his trade.
Harrison's exploits have previously inspired Dava Sobel's 1995 hit book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. It was later transformed into a TV dramatisation starring Michael Gambon as the clockmaker.
John Harrison, (1693-1776). Inventor of the marine chronometer in 1757. A self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea. He was awarded a government prize for its accuracy
John Harrison, (1693-1776). Inventor of the marine chronometer in 1757. A self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea. He was awarded a government prize for its accuracy Heritage Images - Getty Images
English clockmaker John Harrison revolutionized long distance seafaring in the 18th century, solving the problem of calculating longitude at sea and devising tools that helped sailors navigate with precision. Today, on what would have been Harrison's 325th birthday , Google is celebrating the legendary horologist with a special Doodle.
In Harrison's time, seafaring was dangerous. So much so that, after four ships and 1,300 sailors were lost in the Scilly Naval Disaster of 1707 , the British Parliament offered a £20,000 reward to anyone who could devise a way to calculate longitude at sea. Harrison, a self-taught carpenter, took up the challenge.
Google Doodle
After 7 years of tinkering, in 1735 Harrison created the marine chronometer, a timekeeping device that was powered not by gravity, but by the motion of a ship. It was so accurate that it could be used by sailors as a portable time standard, who compared their local time to Greenwich Mean Time to calculate longitude, or east-west location on the Earth.
John Harrison's third marine chronometer, 1757. John Harrison (1693-1776), English inventor and horologist, discovered the means by which longitude could be determined accurately. He developed a marine chronometer which, in a voyage to Jamaica determined the longitude within 18 geographical miles Science and Society Picture Library - SSPL via Getty Images
Time has looked kindly on Harrison's inventions: In 2015, the Guinness World Records' association declared one of his clocks projects the most accurate swinging pendulum clock in the world. The project drew ridicule when Harrison boasted it would still be accurate within a second after 100 days of ticking; 250 years later, he was proven right.
We're loving today's #GoogleDoodle! Have you seen John Harrison's clocks at the Royal Observatory? ⏰🕰️⏲️https://t.co/gf42T43EHj - Royal Mus. Greenwich (@RMGreenwich) April 3, 2018
