The Principles of Mr. Harrison's Time-Keeper | Hacker News Reader

The Principles of Mr. Harrison's Time-Keeper

incoherency.co.uk

62 pointssurprisetalk14 comments

A decent, short book on the historical story behind H4 (and the rest of Mr. Harrison’s time-keepers) is “Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time” by Dava Sobel. It goes into the longitude competition, the people involved, and how Harrison was able to (eventually) win with his timekeepers.

Yes, Sobel's book is a great introductory read that gives a nice overview of the events. "The Marine Chronometer, Its History and Development", by Rupert Gould is a good one to continue reading the technical story of the chronometers themselves, from Harrison's time up through the early 20th century.

> “Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time” by Dava Sobel.

Good two-part mini-series that's based on the book (Jeremy Irons, Michael Gambon):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_(TV_series)

Read it after a previous recommendation on HN, and it's one of the most interesting and effectively-written books I've ever read.

Sobel did a great job in editing down the history to an engrossing tale, even if you're not the type of person who would normally be interested in marine chronography.

Made me appreciate the differences between the before-clock and after-clock worlds.

Another related set of differences to appreciate is between before-GMT and after-GMT worlds.

Before standardized time, it was very difficult to coordinate. Most US towns would have their own local time (think church steeples ringing out the hours), and there were 80+ different time standards across the country. In Massachusetts, for example, there were differences between Boston time and Worcester time, two cities that are ~45 miles apart.

Trains had trouble coordinating: if you're using the same sets of tracks, it's essential that you have a very good idea of where trains are going to be. Unfortunately, there were many collisions between trains as a result of mismatched times between the conductors and stations. [1]

In 1849, William Bond (owner of William Bond & Sons’ Boston) partnered with Harvard to offer the first standardized time from Harvard College Observatory. Time standardization between railroads, which started as a voluntary agreement, became mandatory after the Valley Falls collision. [2] As use of the telegraph spread, time standardization began to spread as well.

The idea of a train conductor holding a pocket watch has become quaint now, but it used to be the difference between life and death for passengers. Part of the cause of the Valley Falls collision (and several others) was a train conductor with a faulty pocket watch.

Another interesting rabbit hole to go down is the standardization of the prime meridian, why Greenwich was chosen [3] (hence Greenwich Mean Time [4]), and why the French were so upset about this (part of the reason time today is called UTC). Part of the reason GMT is the standard has to do with what Sobel discusses at the end of the book [5]: Nevil Maskelyne, the primary antagonist, published The Nautical Almanac, which was for many years the primary reference of sailors across the globe when determining time. All measurements for that book were taken from Greenwich; hence, when governments went to standardize a prime meridian, Greenwich was the obvious choice.

Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments has a fun collection of clocks that illustrate the challenges related to this. [6] It's a small but underrated museum when looking at places to go in Cambridge.

[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/11/americas-firs...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_Falls_train_collision

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_meridian#Prime_meridian_...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Mean_Time

[5] I don't remember if Sobel discussed this or not in the book

[6] https://chsi.harvard.edu/

Uni. prof here/shameless plug: I developed a general education class for college students about the 'history of navigation' which includes the science behind navigation and why clocks and (accurate) timekeeping are needed for navigation. I wrote a book about it all I use for the class, if anyone's interested: https://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Time-Navigation-Tom-Bensky-.... I was inspired by Sobel's book, but I needed more math and science in the discussions.

Also, if you can find the book by Williams called "From Sails to Satellites: The Origin and Development of Navigational Science" you'll laugh out loud at his wit about navigation throughout the book.

Also cool from the same site: https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/diaphragm-piston-air-...

If you haven’t seen it, here’s a great and funny video from Map Men about the Longitude problem and Harrison’s timekeepers: https://youtu.be/3mHC-Pf8-dU?si=OK684LLRseJETrz_

One of the interesting things, as I understand it, is that while Harrison's chronometer certainly worked well it wasn't widely deployed because of its cost. It was mostly after much cheaper chronometers were developed that they became more or less universally used.

Another example of "wasn't widely deployed because of its cost" is the Kalthoff 30-Shot Flintlock from 1659. Here is a video from Forgotten Weapons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghKrbNpqQoY

I'm starting to see Henry Maudslay's screw cutting lathe (1800) as a turning point. Before it, inventors could invent really cool devices, and carefully hand make one or a few, but they would be too expensive. Then machine tools made shaping metal cheaper. That included shaping metal to make machine tools. So costs fell and fell, and eventually all sorts of things became cheap enough for wide deployment.

That is scary, because the "right time" to invent something depends on the capabilities of production machinery setting the production cost. As an inventor, one likes to think of success of the inventing lying in ones own hands, but there is an ecosystem of production machinery that has an out sized say in how much your invention will cost to mass produce. It can even veto an excellent invention by saying "Not yet!".

A lot of Maudslay's (and Brunel's) innovation came down to process even through the idea of standardized parts probably dated back to the French General Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval a number of decades earlier.

As you say, this subsequently applied in the case of flintlocks.

But, yeah, everything exists as part of an ecosystem and if you're not at the right time, your brilliant idea probably won't fly. I've been an IT analyst off and on for many years and I've seen this happen often.

It's really difficult to imagine in 2024 just how much H4 changed the world...and Harrison was a carpenter from the country who taught himself everything about clock and watch-making! Blows me away.

I took a chair making class with Peter Galbert and I can say he is probably the most outright brilliant person I've ever met. It shows in both his approach to solving problems and the clarity with which he explains his work.

For context: I know a number of PhD's, MD's, and notable programmers.

That site loads incredibly fast. Wonder whether it’s a physical proximity thing (I’m in the uk too)

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