Accurate Timekeeping At Sea - 2349 Words

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries clock making was a vital European technology, and London was at its cutting edge. As a maritime nation, the British were concerned with one problem in particular: they could make clocks that kept very good time as long as they stayed perfectly still but not when they were shaken about, and particularly not on board a rolling ship. If you wanted to sail, it was impossible to keep a precise record of time. And at sea, if you can’t tell the time, you don’t how far east or west you are. It is relatively easy to calculate latitude – your distance north or south of the equator – by measuring the height of the Sun above the horizon at noon; but this won’t let you calculate longitude – your position east or west. The problem of accurate timekeeping at sea was finally fixed in the middle of the eighteenth century by John Harrison. He invented a marine chronometer which could go on accurately telling the time in spite of the changes in temperature and humidity and the constant movement of a ship. This made it possible for ships anywhere to establish their longitude. Before a ship set sail, its chronometer would be set to the local time in harbor – for the British this was usually Greenwich. You would then compare the time at Greenwich with the time of noon on the ship, which you fixed by the Sun. The difference between the two times gave you your longitude. For the twenty-four hours in the day, every hour the Sun ‘moves’ across the sky thatShow MoreRelatedMarine Chronometer and Longitude Essays889 Words   |  4 Pageseighteenth century that Galileo and Newton were not able to resolve. The principal inspiration behind the invention completed in this book is that many sailors were lost at seas as a result of their ignorance regarding longitude. 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