COMITTI - The Navigator Clock 

And they are still running.

Clock works were the rocket science of its time. Cutting edge research and development on materials and mechanical components back then.

I wonder how Bligh navigated the launch with no time. Maybe a watch? They left him his sextant. His journal of that voyage is quite a read.

@@stevek8829 Bligh had a watch, no chronometer. he also had "sailing directions" it was the 18th century version of the Nautical Almanack that we have today. he had very few tables like we have today. in actual fact in 1789 there weren't a lot of preprinted calculations, all the navigation in those days had to be mathematically worked out or as a navigator would say "reduce the sight" and "dead reconning". Bligh made a log line which figured the speed they're going and combined with his genius level navigating and boat handling..

@@JoeyPinter it's been a long time since reading his log of that voyage. I don't remember him mentioning navigation at all. Loaded to the gunnels, dehydrated and starving, he brought all but one thousands of miles. One was killed by locals who didn't appreciate diversity. I don't see how he could know where he was after a few days. Maybe sunrise tables helped guess longitude. He sure proved technical competence.

No. Look at any picture of H1-4. These are fake and the price is ridiculous.

So often I notice that the really great ideas, inventions, discoveries, art works, compositions etc are the product of a single mind. Committees seem only to get in the way and ruin things. Anyone who has worked for a government organization or large corporation will know this.

Actually, the full prize was never awarded to Harrison or his son. The king gave him a grant because the board, led by Sir Haley, of Haley’s comet fame, refused to award the prize.

It took the King intervening for Harrison to finally get his money. The reason for the delay was that the Astronomer Royal had a competing method to measure longitude involving complicated measurements of the moon. The Astronomer Royal was responsible for approving Harrison's clock, and since the Astronomer Royal was also hoping to win the prize money, he slow rolled the approval and kept putting more conditions on the acceptance. The lunar method never did really work, and it was far too complicated for use at sea.

Yes, I seem to remember reading years ago that the balanced pendulum style clocks like the one featured here were subtly thrown off their accuracy by one or another of the specific motions that a ship makes. Don't remember if it was rolling, pitching, or turning, though I think it might have been turning. Also, those clocks were massive and so exceedingly delicate that life at sea wasn't for them. As John Morrison said, the actual winning instrument was the chronograph that was the shape of a very large pocket watch. I don't remember if Harrison's first was mounted in a box on gimbals or not, in the same way that mechanical ships chronometers are still mounted (though of course, almost no seafarers rely on a mechanical chronometer any more. Between radio signals for time and GPS, it is truly an antique.) On most ships that used a chronometer, that wasn't the instrument that actually gave the person using the sextant the time. Instead, there was a second, portable chronometer watch that was calibrated to the ship's chronometer frequently. A lovely video about very interesting modern clocks. Thanks so much!

The disgraceful thing is Harrison never was paid the full amount of prise money as advertised in the competition despite the kings intervention. I surmise the astronomer royal was defiantly holding a goodly portion back in order to pay himself a share as well. Corruption in high places wasn’t unheard of.

@@charleslayton9463 no MK

And he wasn't taken seriously because he was by trade a cabinet maker and knew nothing about working in brass. If you want to know how badly he was treated watch the movie Longitude.

No. It took a while after Harrison’s clocks before they were truly practical and widespread. What people used instead was astronomical observations and books full tables for when various moons would appear around Jupiter (and maybe also Saturn).

@@peterfireflylund Wrong, very wrong. Astronomical observations require time for their elevation measurement to have any relevance. What drivel, the moons of Jupiter! Their relative motion is slow while the earth turns fast. Study celestial navigation and see what you have minus time.

You should take a look at clickspring. On his channel, he makes a clock by hand from scratch.

@@marktuggle5609 Legend, thanks bro.

A price offered by the British Parliament is not the Royal Family

I went to Hackney Poly with a chap called Terry, a super piano player in the pub at lunchtime, when we did our BHI course there...

I do not believe so. This uses the grasshopper escapement.

Congrats Jr. How old are you?

A Patek Phillipe will set you back about $100,000 for a top line watch.

Usually mounted in a wooden box with gimbals to keep it 'level'. As an aside, US Navy ships carried 3 such chronometers. After the war swiss watch execs inspected the Bulova, Elgin, and Benrus plants. When told how many of each type of watch made they said they couldn't have accomplished it. Also these plants were the only wartime plants under 24/7/365 Marine guard

Who knows, maybe the price = 1/3 of a ship

Maybe they're Welsh?

Yes it died out altogether. A UK professor purchased tools from widows of watchmakers and in a few cases collected descriptions of their use from the last few watchmakers. Sadly he died before writing it up. George Daniels (Author of Watchmaking) examined and repaired old watches after looking at the tools, but in many cases it was guesswork and experimentation. Daniels wrote his method up in the book on watchmaking. Malcom Wild wrote a book on making gears without CNC, describing how to make gear cutters. Those two books are bibles really and watchmakers are making watches from raw materials using these methods, a few without CNC. There are drawings of children powering lathes with their hands and feet for the old watchmakers, so powered lathes are OK I guess. Richard Smith has some good videos on RU-vid, one of him cutting gears on a Lathe with a milling attachment.

Plenty of other videos on how John Harrison built his legendary clocks on RU-vid!

@@WICKEDMAN85 yes but not what the title of video said ?

It is Handel.

nothing much has changed with the government, still takes 40yrs to get yu money

You can't build the greatest empire the world has ever known without casualties.

ah "world" Why don't you consider the world with us to be our great empire for all times and for everyone. I hope you don't underestimate "everyone". We do not become strong, do not differentiate, do not deceive each other, and do not have to fight until we see the greatness? Civilizations and with them what I called empires come and go with their goodness and greatness But only her "actions" remain, especially if it includes crimes and the initiation of extra wars. There is no talk at that about the good, and is there any point in talking about causality?

@@locomotech6302 nothing like a pretend moralistic moronic child for entertainment. Thanks! Loco

Why do you say that?

@@charlesgantz5865 How can you claim quality of craftsmanship when a cnc machine profiles everything. A cnc machine is not a craftsman. Craftsmanship is using human skill to produce a quality item in finish and working ability.

Why would you say that? The CNC machine is simply cutting out the frame, and it does so to an accuracy of 10 microns. For a human to make something to that accuracy would take a huge amount of time. Instead they use the human touch at the end, to fine tune the accuracy of the timekeeping.

@@rozinant1237 Your comment my friend answered exactly what I said, I can and that is skill. There is no skill in a numeric machine.

You have no idea what you are talking about! There isn’t a watch or clock made today that isn’t built with sophisticated machinery. I suppose a lathe is OK to use, but a CNC machine is not? What nonsense.

The British invented, among other things, the television, the jet engine, the internet and the first electronic computer which was used in World War Two.

Why don't you pretend it is randomly distributed. But, it isn't and wasn't.

How does that compare to the Sinclair Harding version of the same clock?

Yes, but they are working in the footsteps of the real inventors and masters of quality and accurate time keepers, the British. British Chronometers were know the world over and coveted for their accuracies, back in a time when keeping accurate time was a matter of life and death, not a nice designer dress watch. The British invented and developed the most accurate time keepers, then moved onto other things like trains and railways, Radio, Television, stainless steel, steam ships, Geology, Oceanography, computers, Penicillin, vaccines and just about everything else in daily use in the modern world. While the Swiss stayed playing around perfecting and making watches, very good watches that the world no longer really needs. That is why its called GMT Greenwich Mean Time, not BMT or Bern Mean Time. Between the British and the Swiss, there is no comparison in inventiveness, the British are in a league all of their own. But the Swiss should not be to worried about that, every other nation on the planet is in the same position, the Japanese University of Technology estimated that 78% of everything in common use today was developed by the British.