John Harrison's H1 chronometer. A wooden working replica 

Hi Joseph, thanks for your comments. You are correct. I was aware that strictly speaking the award was never won , but for simplicity I perpetuated the well known story.

Hi Steven, I agree that John Harrison was not awarded the prize as such, and you are right in saying that it was a very complicated situation with Maskelyne and his competing lunar system. In my defence, for simplicity, I reiterated the commonly held view that he did win the prize. Over the years he did receive monies from the Board to pursue his work but it took a petition to the King for the board to benevolently grant him a final payment that brought his total take up to the £20,000 mark. The actual prize has never been won. As regards Masklylene and his lunar system it did work and tables for the computation of longitude were published and used annually from 1766 to 1906. It was a viable but more complicated and time consuming method for determining longitude. The complete story of the trials, tribulation and success of John Harrisons life , against a background of skulduggery, personal feuds and machinations are admirably recorded in Dava Sobel's book Longitude.

@@MrParamount3 Then someone needs to explain this moon thing to me cause I don’t see how it can work.

In simple terms you measure the angular distance between the moon and a star or the sun and then use pre calculated tables of the moon's position to find the time at Greenwich. You then need to make a further observation to find local time. The difference between the two times gives you longitude. Wikipedia gives a good account of the process. Search lunar distance(navigation)@@stevendebettencourt7651

Hi. If you look at www.woodenclockspot.blogspot.com and scroll to the bottom of the H1 article you will find some data on its accuracy.

Hi, thanks for the reply. I was just fishing around on the web for some accuracy information as the general accepted threshold for the longitude problem was half a degree which is two minutes and sailing 40 days to the west indies makes that around 3 secs a day. I was wondering if all of his chronometers achieved that or only the later ones. In any case, if you like wood, why don't you try building his earlier watches from around 1715 which seem to be mostly out of wood. They must have been absolutely remarkable in their own right.

Hi Dave. Thanks for you comment. I think I have updated things but if not my email is nigel@naclimpson.plus.com

Because I am not trained in fine engineering, haven't got the equipment, but I can use a saw

Now this is not noting, This a lot off work to make.