John Harrison never solves longitude problem

This POD is based on Dava Sobel's "Longitude" book.

John Harrison, who develops a marine chronometer to determine longitude in the 18th century, has trouble developing H-1 (his first attempt at a longitude clock) and is unable to convince Edmund Halley to present his device to the Board of Longitude. He is passed off as a quack.

Nevil Maskelyne develops a scheme to measure longitude using the lunar distance method. However, this method requires that the moon be visible and that the weather be clear. As a result, it will likely be less accurate (at least in the beginning) and less reliable than Harrison's chronometers would have proven to been. It is a bit of an improvement but not reliable enough to win the 20,000 pound prize (it may get the 10K one though).

How does exploration develop? It's likely that marine chronometers will not develop given the preponderance of astronomers on the Board. And note also that the moon is visible to everyone, so once Maskelyne's charts spread anyone can use them.

I wonder if this spurs the development of new star charts, telescopes, and stuff so ship captains can measure the distances between various stars and the moon. For all we know, asteroids are discovered much earlier. You may even get Neptune...

ACG
 
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Anaxagoras

Banned
The concept of, and the mechanics behind, the chronometer were quite well understood by Harrison's time. Had he not succeeded, someone else certainly would have sooner or later. This is not to discount Harrison's unquestioned mechanical genius, but inventing something like the chronometer does not require the great intuative leaps of, say, developing a universal theory of gravitation.

The question mark would be whether the person who eventually develops the chronometer is Engish. Say a Frenchman or a Dutchman is the first to solve the problem, giving those countries a head start on the technology. This being the golden age of merchantilist empires, such a change could result in far-reaching consequences.
 
Interesting idea -- maybe some other country would wind up with a big overseas empire.

If someone else invented the chronometer, though, it would likely come out after the lunar distance method had already been finalized. It would have to convince a lot of captains to trust their longitude to some gizmo after lunar distance had been proven to work.
 

Art

Monthly Donor
Harrison finished his invention years before he got the 25,000 pound prize, which was awarded by special act of parliment. The problem was that the astronomers basically had nearly all the influence at the British court and kept saying that their calculations were the solution, not mechanics. I've seen "longitude" and have read "Carry on Mr. Bowditch" which has in it a person finding out that the standard lunar chart of the day by Moore, and calculated by that idiot Nevil Maskelyne.
 
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