Andrea here, thinking about . . . Time. This month, most of us in the U.S. turn the clock back an hour for Daylight Savings Time (I don’t know about you, but I very much dislike the darkness that settles in around 5 pm in winter.) Now, where does that hour go? Yes, I know that we get it back in Spring, but it seems a cavalier attitude to play games with the ticking of the Universe.
My mulling on this has been amplified because I’ve been thinking of working in marine chronometers in a future Wrexford & Sloane mystery book. I happen to love antique mechanical wristwatches, as I think they’re both beautiful and functional. The intricate inner workings are exquisite works of art—for me it’s very cool when functional objects can also be intrinsically beautiful.
But back to marine chronometers! From the first stirrings of humanity, time is an elemental concept that regulates so many facets of our existence—our age, the cycle of the seasons, how calculate speed and distance . . . The first really precise timepiece was the pendulum clock, invented in 1656 by Christiaan Huygens (shown above), a Dutch scientist who was inspired by Galileo’s experiments with pendulums.
However, they needed stability to function properly, and with the Age of Exploration in full sail, countries were vying to gain an edge on claiming new lands and establishing lucrative trading routes by inventing an accurate timepiece that could withstand the stresses of shipboard life. (Anyone who has sailed on the open oceans will understand what a huge technical challenge that presented.)
What, you might ask, does a clock (or chronometer, which is a the technical name for a timepiece that meets a certain standard of accuracy) have to do with sailing? The answer is that it’s key to navigation. I shall attempt to explain it simply. To know exactly where you are on the Earth, you need to determine latitude and longitude (the degrees that divide the globe horizontally and vertically. Latitude can be determined by measuring the sun’s angle from the horizon at its zenith (noon.)
However, to calculate longitude, you need to know the time of a fixed location somewhere in the world. (Since the British pioneered the chronometer, they chose Greenwich, just outside of London, and to this day Greenwich Mean Time—GMT—is the universal standard for navigation.) This is because the Earth rotates at a fixed rate, and so by comparing the difference between local time and GMT, you can calculate your longitude in relationship to the Greenwich Meridian—which has arbitrarily been assigned to be 0 degrees—by using spherical trigonometry. (This I shall not attempt to explain.)
How to calculate longitude was one of the world’s great scientific challenges. Huygens turned his attention to designing a chronometer during the 1670s (urged on by his patron, Louis XIV of France—for obvious economic reasons!) he came up with the idea of using a balance wheel and a spiral spring instead of a pendulum—which remain the basics of modern chronometers and watchmaking today—but he never got his designs to work.
The great English scientist Robert Hooke took up the challenge at the same time, and although he discovered a law of physics regarding springs, he, too, failed to make a workable marine chronometer. The early 1700s saw further experimentation in Britain by William Derham and Jeremy Thacker, who attempted to use gimbals and a bell jar—which created a vacuum. But still no luck.
In addition to mercantile reason, the British government was keen to have the means of accurate navigation for its navy, as ruling the seas was key to its survival. And so in 1714 it offered a Longitude Prize, ranging from £10,000 to £20,000 (£2 million to £4 million in 2018 terms) depending on accuracy.
Up stepped John Harrison, a self-taught carpenter from Yorkshire, who began to tinker with the concept. He created a series of large, elaborate prototypes—H1 (shown above) through H3 used springs and counter-oscillating beams to counter gravity and the roll of a ship. But they didn’t perform as well as needed. With H4 (very first image) he took a different tack and reduced to the size to a 5-inch mechanism that resembled a pocketwatch. Though refinements and improvements would continue to be made, both by him and French scientists Pierre Le Roy and Ferdinand Berthoud (his chronometer is shown below), Harrison was awarded the £20,000 prize, marking a new era of navigation.
Today most ships rely on fancy high tech gizmos to navigate by GPS (though the nautical world requires many senior officers to know how to navigate with chronometer and sextant. Hey, we all know the tech stuff can glitch!) And in fact, many of our everyday devices, like cellphones, track our every move via a sophisticated array of software and satellites. I recently got a fancy Fitbit that also has a heart rate monitor in order to track my daily exercise. I like the reminder to try for 10,000 steps. But I also began to think about how much I’m wary of all this personal data floating through the ether. I really don’t like the idea that someone can perhaps access the software to see my activities.
What about you? Do you think the convenience of GPS in cars and phones and other personal devices outweighs the concerns over privacy issues? I’m really torn.
