The Longitude Problem - Improving Navigation with the Harrison Clocks 

Hey drach I was recently trying to design my own ship and when I got the fire control system I had an idea is it feasible to design a hybrid optical and radar fire control system? I figured since early radar could sometimes be a bit finicky it might be beneficial to have a backup system

Could you tell us about some of the madder suggestions for finding longitude such as Sir Kenelm Digby and his injured dogs

So, what you're REALLY saying is that the Earth isn't flat?

1) I hope the Observatory will offer copies of this podcast for sale in their giftshop - with getting wealthy beyond your wildest dreams (so you can build HMS Vanguard as your private yacht) from royalties 2) You mention Captain FitzRoy of HMS Beagle - You might want to do a piece on Admiral FitzRoy's Storm Glass (I have one on my desk). "The liquid within the glass is a mixture of several ingredients, most commonly distilled water, ethanol, potassium nitrate, ammonium chloride, and camphor. This specific mixture was promoted by Admiral Robert FitzRoy although similar devices existed even two decades earlier with variants in Italy, France and Germany.[2][3][4][5] FitzRoy carefully documented his claims on how the storm glass would predict the weather:[2][failed verification] If the liquid in the glass is clear, the weather will be bright and clear. If the liquid is cloudy, the weather will be cloudy as well, perhaps with precipitation. If there are small dots in the liquid, humid or foggy weather can be expected. A cloudy glass with small stars indicates thunderstorms. If the liquid contains small stars on sunny winter days, then snow is coming. If there are large flakes throughout the liquid, it will be overcast in temperate seasons or snowy in the winter. If there are crystals at the bottom, this indicates frost. If there are threads near the top, it will be windy. In 1859, violent storms struck the British Isles. In response, the British Crown distributed storm glasses, then known as "FitzRoy's storm barometers," to many small fishing communities around the British Isles for consultation by ships in port before setting sail.

Are you doing Thomas Cochrane?

​@CipiRipi00 he does get to be the villian of Harrison's story.

Maskelyne.

@@HamTransitHistory thank you!

Maskelyne was well liked by his contemporaries and was universally acknowledged to be a very fair man. He was appointed to safeguard the large amounts of public monies offered by parliament. I think he had the right to be careful with it on behalf of the public.

Presumably you think the conference and celebration of Maskelyne that they held in 2011 was a "screw you" to Harrison. Maskelyne's Nautical almanac is the reason that the meridian is at Greenwich in the first place! Presumably this is also a "screw you" to Harrison. That's the way science works isn't it? Complete zero sum game. No cooperation. If someone wins, everyone else has to lose.

Longitude Board: We have a winner! George Harrison: IT'S... NOT... DONE!

But just as amazingly, not tearing it apart and refusing to let anyone see the "flawed" version -- the classic failure mode.

Another obsessive compulsive genius was Abner Doble who built Steam Cars in the 1920’s. It is said by no less an authority than Jay Leno, who owns at least 3 of them, that no 2 are completely alike as Mr. Doble kept tinkering with changes even as his company tried to build them!

You think that's good, hold mah beer! -Harrison

Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good enough, but in the case of precision navigation there is no real reason not to improve at every opportunity. Ships and aircraft (and likely you in your car) today navigate by use of satellites using atomic clocks, the finest timekeeping devices currently available, and are accurate to within a few feet. Harrison was a hero we should all look up to. Even more so because he didn't let the bastards get him down and never gave up.

Especially when you take into account the ships and crew lost during the delay.

If ever there was a time when pettyness ruled supreme it was Hanoverian England

Just your standard case of government agencies in action.

Must *have been heartbreaking

Harrison's crime was being better than his betters.

Thanks for the information! Is tte new meridian east or west? 😀

@@Drachinifel I think the true meridian is east: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fjjeG_YAGsA.html

I didn't expect to see Scott Manley here

How ca it be wrog when it is the origial iducial reference logitude?

OK, but if it's the standard, then even if it's off from the initially assumed location by 300 feet, wouldn't it still be the standard?

That could have been an intersting occourance...isn't the monarch forbidden from entering the Commons on pain of death?

@@draco84oz The ruling monarch can "request" the presence of the House of Commons to join him in the House of Lords.

@@dcbanacek2 Alternatively the threat of him coming to the Commons in spite of that law over them acting like a bunch of twatwaffles over a timepiece might of jolted them a bit.

​@@draco84oz Who's supposed to carry that sentence out? Highly doubt it ever would be lol.

@@KetsaKunta In the Magna Carta it was the Barons privilege and Duty to chastise a King that exceeded the limits of his power. Anyone with a range weapon that he can use from concealment.

Also the BBC miniseries based to the book, it's very well acted and has the production values expected from the BBC.

It’s a great book

Yep, i read it in german. Really good book!

I'd listen to a Drach rendition of that.. 100%

Read it back in '98 and yes it is that good. Still on the bookshelf.

The thing was they could make duplicates - the Kendall versions of the H-4 Chronometer duplicated the functionality the next year. It was the what to make not the manufacturing technology that eluded them.

@@allangibson8494 Omega make a watch with the Daniel's 'coaxial' escapement that exceeds marine chronometer accuracy by an order of magnitude and almost meets that of a £10 casio quartz, still beats a Rolex though.

I mean the jump from regular clocks to H1 was just as massive. And let's not forget he casually INVENTED CAGED ROLLER BEARINGS for H3. like, that's about as important to modern mechanical engineering as the bolt, or the gear itself for that matter

What Harrison did was to show that the technology is possible. The technology in H1 through 3 was a dead end, Harrison saw that, which is why he abandoned that route and went to H4. But even H4 was a technological dead end Kendal knew that. No matter, LeRoy in France and Earnshaw and Arnold in the UK invented (I am not going to argue about who got there first, an invention in a time of need occurs in multiple minds.) the detent escapement, which led to the marine chronometer as we know it that lasted over 200 years. Without Harrison to show it was possible, they would not have had the spur and the confidence to innovate.

Aye

Just like how in his day Harrison was some random woodworker

I'm curious how the clock was set at the time. Direct radio clock or did somebody have to be on the horn with an installation with a known correct clock and then calling down to some airman on a ladder fiddling the second dial? Or was it sufficiently precise that the loss over time was known exactly enough to say "it has been 24 days, 12 hours set the clock forward 1 second". It's fine if you don't know, but I'm a huge precision nerd so I'm always curious.

@@darthrex354 Probably using the phone and the Speaking Clock.

@@darthrex354 A well regulated master clock, usually synchronome or Gents' will perform to within a second a day usually better. The talking clock by telephone was started in '36 and dedicated landlines carrying time signals had been in use since the early '20s. But of course master clocks of that type don't usually have a seconds hand and only indicate to the nearest 30 seconds, you have to take your timings from when the hand jumps.

That is remarkably accurate, given the tools available to them.

Yet Bradley, the villain of this story, came up with another way to measure the speed of light, known as stellar aberration (Drach briefly refers to this). Bradley's estimate was better than Roemer's, about 295,000 km/sec, but this might have been from a better number for the Earth's orbital radius.

@@pwmiles56 Both numbers were accurate enough to earn a lot of scepticism and disbelief😂

Jupiter and its moons probed very useful to Capt Cooke. If one's chronometers were off on the other side of the world (It did happen), a particularly mathematical skipper with a sextant, or better yet, an island and a transit. Of course, the Island would be on a chart, in all likelihood, but islands were often found to be in the wrong place, like Pitcairn's. Very lucky for the Bounty's crew.

@@georgesoros6415 Fascinatingly the Bounty had a chronometer, one of Kendall's, known as K2. With this the mutineers determined the longitude of Pitcairn Island and concluded it had been wrongly charted, and they would escape discovery. K2 had an adventurous history after that but is now also in the National Maritime Museum. Search "The Story of the Bounty Chronometer"

Hey seriously, this one truly, truly does. What a fantastic video and a fascinating subject. Drach killed it.

Those are some cool lyrics. What's the name of the song?

@@neurofiedyamato8763 John Harrison's Hands. I'm not sure who did the original, but Show of Hands have covered it.

You know someone is done dirty when Americans and George III are in agreement on the matter.

Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day. 🤣

@@rembrandt972ify Aaaaaaaayyyyyy!

@rembrandt972ify A stopped clock is right twice a day. A broken clock can be wrong all day

@@justintaylor1713 In the context of mechanical timepieces, a broken clock is stopped. A clock that is running fast or slow can still be used to tell time if you make adjustments.

Yes, but that is incorrect. The "dead" in dead reckoning comes from the shortening of the word "deduced," as in the former description, "deduced reckoning."

@@frankmiller95 Dead is an awfully odd word to come up with when shortening deduced.

I’m not sure if he ever really said it, but there is a line in the movie “Spirit of St. Louis” where Charles Lindberg says, “There’s nothing wrong with dead reckoning, except maybe the name.”

@@eknapp49 We just heard several demonstrations the problem with dead reckoning.

​@@frankmiller95 That is probably not the case as recorded usage of "dead reckoning" long pre-dates any record of "deduced reckoning"

I half expected a musical review of Wreck of the Hesperus.

in maritime circles , he is up there (together with Keppler, among others)... as soon as I saw the name I had to watch this episode. Thank you from a former merchant navy cadet.

I think it was John Harrison. A bit before George’s time…

@@georgiathai4961 Doh! I looked him up and double checked too. I just presumed he had preferred George!

@@timgodderis1918 I'm glad he is understandably revered in maritime circles.

Mad George had his good points. And I am one of a great number of beneficiaries of his forcing a colonial Rebellion. But as the rebels being of all European extraction calling it a revolution isn't entirely wrong.

Instead we get idiots watching other idiots on Tik Tok. Sad state of affairs.

as always God bless the Men tinkering in Sheds

Two Presidents of the U. S.A. had the surname, "Harrison": 1) William Henry Harrison 2) Benjamin Harrison

I am sure that's how its recorded but to me it sounds like a sabotage attempt where they may have paid a cleaner or something to switch items around.

Enrico Femi discovered neutron slowing by hyrdogen atoms in parrafin because of some candles near an experiment I understand.

I hate the way that people try to be pedantic with discover. There are lots of meanings of the term. This ranges from "a toddler discovering that they have feet" to "the awful bastard of a human Columbus was the first European to discover the Americas and record their existence in a manner that was well disseminated throughout much of the world".

That counts as a discovery. Halley may not have discovered the comet itself, per se, but he did "connect the dots", figured out that several large comets seen earlier were in fact a single comet, and predicted its next apparition.

And there's a thin line between discovery and invention. Newton's "discovery" of gravity could be just as well described as his inventing the procedure of singling out/ objectifying gravity as a distinct entity from matter, as opposed to treating it as a property of matter. He did refer to gravity alternately as "a force" and "a property of matter" (i.e. inherent in matter, and inseparable from it), but he singled it out/ objectified it provisionally, in order to enable him to mathematize it. -- (I say "provisionally" because in the 17th and early 18th centuries, there was a trend to treat the world as either simply/unambiguously as a collection of distinct, countable entities or as a collection of distinct, countable entities in a less absolute way, but still in an over-emphasized way. Leibniz and Hume were quite extreme in this, Leibniz concluding that there was no such thing as causation between objects, and Hume concluding that the connections that we perceive in the world were merely products of "mental associations." Newton was not a scientist. He was a practitioner in Natural Philosophy, which was at the time still trying to figure out the best way to understand natural phenomena, and Newton could be said to have been the most-important in a bunch of people who invented modern science. Galileo had earlier seen the importance of mathematizing reality in order to render it more predictable and manipulable, but Newton got it over the hump in that regard. To mathematize is to objectify, or rather, mathematizing reality assumes that one is treating reality as a collection of distinct, countable objects. Treating reality as simply, unambiguously, absolutely a collection of distinct, countable objects negates any connections between them, because "distinct" and "connected" are direct antonyms. If something is absolutely distinct, it cannot be connected to anything else, and that negates causation and other forms of connection. And Newton wasn't invested in this kind of metaphysical absolutism, and his argument in the Principia was that it would be fruitful to mathematize physical phenomena, but he didn't insist on the extreme implications of pluralism as a metaphysical doctrine.) -- Newton was one of the inventors of the technique of analyzing physical phenomena down to mathematical formulae, and of singling out and isolating variables to the point of being able to mathematize them.

Seems like discovered to me.

@@xuthnet And Columbus didn’t disseminate the discovery to the world - that’s why it is called America not Columbia (or Christopher). It was Amerigo Vespucci who spread the news to the Netherlands…

The only question I still have relates to "noon", which was a different time everywhere. A navigator would have to calculate speed accurately in order to measure the clock's performance against "noon".

Groan.

Punny, very punny. 😆

Read Longitude years ago, and went to Greenich to see the clocks. Missed H4, still learning. They should have a replica there for folks to see when original is cleaned. Amazing Cook see why he preferred the smallest one even though he could do the lunar tables. A brilliant man on his own. Think he also contributed to the solution to scurvy.

Yea, basically the perfect TL;DW option compared to this video

Map men, map men, map, map, map, map men.

Its where the modern Scientific method was greatly defined and honed. Really what we scientists do today, and how we do it was mostly invented by those early giants. Sure we have refined some things, invented some new measurements as well as some new methods of observing things, but the procedure is the same. They laid the foundation upon which we continue to build. Without them modern science would not be possible.

@@alganhar1 They also "laid the foundation" for how science could be perverted or corrupted for personal gain or preference. They wanted the "lunar method" to succeed so badly they impeded a much easier and more precise method for decades. Even George III recognized their perfidity.

Not quite. Drach mentions that he worked with his brother to actually build H1, after consultation with Halley and Graham. In H2, many of the parts Drach mentions were subcontracted out to London watch and clock makers, and the same was true of H3, and on H4, Harrison's son helped him.

This time next year we’ll be millionaires…

I was trying to show the relative position of where they actually were to where they ended up :)

@@Drachinifel In your commentary you say that they believed they were 200m miles WSW of the Scilly Isles, which is the position shown on the map.

Coming in September :)

@@Drachinifel I’ll be having a birthday then. Please reach out. A great deal of San Francisco’s maritime history is buried beneath the streets. Ships are part of our very bones.

Me too