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by wickedwillie on January 7th, 2005

wickedwillie

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Who invented the chronometer?

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  • by katscratcedme on January 7th, 2005

    katscratcedme

    John Harrison (1693-1776), an English clockmaker and carpenter, is credited with the invention of the chronometer in 1761, although his first (of five) prototype chronometers was actually completed in 1735 (H.1 1735, H.2 1739, H.3 1741, H.4 1761, H.5 1772). The result of years of experimentation and a government sponsored competition aiming to improve the accuracy of their ships' navigation, he persevered with entirely new designs, each time attempting to minimise size and weight while increasing accuracy, until the fourth version (in 1761) finally was up to the required standards for the British navy.

    The necessity for an accurate portable timepiece to determine GMT vs local time and thereby the ship's longitude had long been known to be necessary, but what Harrison did was perfect other technologies along with a few breakthrough ideas of his own to present an accurate balance-spring based portable chronometer. He picked up today's equivalent of two million dollars for his efforts – though this was not presented to him until another ten years had passed and King George III intervened on his behalf after seeing for himself how successful Harrison’s fifth and final longitude time-keeper (which had been completed in 1772 and was mechanically very similar to the fourth) actually was.

    Comments

    • thanks. lots of accurate information plus some interesting trivia and very helpful overall.

      mungobaby

      by mungobaby on January 9th, 2005

    • Rent the DVD of the A&E mini-series "Longitude" (Michael Gambon & Jeremy Irons) -- Wonderful piece of work.

      Aminor

      by Aminor on June 12th, 2005

    • Or get the book, Longitude, by Dava Sobel, on which the series was based. It's even better.

      jalex137

      by jalex137 on July 8th, 2005

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