Longitude

[Bothwell]

If you have never read this Book by Dava Sobel please do. It is about one man's (John Harrison) 50 year struggle to persuade the Longitude Board of England to adopt his clocks for use in calculating Longitude at sea. does not grab you right off does it? but believe me it is fantastic and you do not have be particularly interested in science.

there is also a better than usual Drama/Doc film of the same title starring jeremy Irons and Michael Gambon.

John harrison was a self taught watchmaker who started out life as a carpenter, his machines H1 throught to H4 are on display at the Royal maritime museum in Greenwhich where they still work some 400 years later, his last one H4 loses less that 1.5 seconds a month, these were made in the 18th century!!!!!

This enabled mariners to locate their position whithin 1.5miles as opposed to 60 odd if they could actually get a celestial reading on a sextant. In fact on one of his earliest sea trials Harrison saved a squadron of some 12 ships. the captain and navigator sighted land and believed it was Cape Finistairre when it was actually the Lizard peninsula some 65 miles North. If they had continued on their supposed course all ships would have been lost.

[lady cop]

well we discussed this last night and even though i was not enthralled at first i became so. fascinating history. interesting and compelling.

[john8pies]

Have seen the TV film of this, and , yes, it is actually more interesting than it sounds (don`t know if I`d actually use the world `enthralling` though!)