Chaptier 9
This eighteenth‑century longitude method required up to seven repeated observations, logarithm tables prepared by human computers, and four hours of calculation—assuming clouds did not “hide the clock.”
What is the lunar distance method?
This longitude timekeeper consumed nineteen years of its maker’s life, contained 753 parts, and ultimately taught him lessons he later deemed “worth all the money and time it cost.”
What is H‑3?
This artist painted the formal oil portrait of John Harrison between October 1765 and May 1766, now hanging at the Old Royal Observatory.
Who is Thomas King?
Captain James Cook credited this fermented dish with eliminating scurvy on his second voyage beginning in 1772.
What is sauerkraut?
At Greenwich after dark, this modern feature projects the prime meridian’s path roughly ten miles across the valley toward Essex.
What is a green laser?
Nicknamed “the southern Tycho,” this astronomer cataloged 341 stars from a hazy island in the South Atlantic before later becoming Astronomer Royal.
Who is Edmond Halley?
This five‑inch‑wide timekeeper shocked observers by resembling a pocket watch rather than a sea clock and ultimately succeeded where its bulky predecessors failed.
What is H‑4?
Unlike the later engraving, this finished timekeeper is conspicuously absent from Harrison’s oil portrait because it was not in his possession at the sittings.
What is H‑4?
After H‑4 failed its land trial, the Board hired this former apprentice to build a faithful duplicate known as K‑1.
Who is Larcum Kendall?
This building houses the atomic clock whose display changes too quickly for the human eye, defining Greenwich Mean Time to millionths of a second.
What is the Meridian House?
British sailors favored this name for the reflecting instrument invented independently in 1731 by an English country squire and a Philadelphia glazier—despite its scale actually spanning only one‑eighth of a circle.
What is Hadley’s quadrant?
This eighteenth‑century “antihero,” known as the “seaman’s astronomer,” kept exhaustive records, wrote his autobiography in the third person, and championed lunars against Harrison.
Who is Nevil Maskelyne?
After the second trial of H‑4, the Board of Longitude delayed payment while mathematicians reconciled timekeeper data with observations from these two ports.
What are Portsmouth and Barbados?
This Greenwich institution supplied the elderly ex‑sailors Harrison accused of rubber‑stamping Maskelyne’s reports.
What is the Royal Greenwich Hospital?
Armed with only a hat brush and no horological training, this Royal Navy officer removed two ounces of verdigris from H‑1 in 1920.
Who is Rupert T. Gould?
Identified by James Bradley while attempting to measure stellar distances, this phenomenon proved both that Earth moves through space and helped refine the true speed of light.
What is stellar aberration?
Inside H‑4, these replaced mechanical antifriction devices, though Harrison never explained how he fashioned them for the task.
What are diamonds?
During the August 1765 tribunal at Red Lion Square, Harrison disparaged these two Cambridge clerics as “Priests” or “Parsons.”
Who are John Michell and William Ludlam?
According to contemporary accounts, the Hawaiians initially believed Captain Cook to be this deity.
Who is Lono?
This precise daily ritual—unchanged since 1833—allowed mariners on the Thames to set their chronometers at exactly 13:00 hours.
What is the dropping of the Greenwich time ball?
Named by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille and honoring contemporary scientific instruments rather than mythic beasts, this southern constellation memorializes the very device that superseded Hadley’s quadrant.
What is Sextans?
This London clockmaker secretly signed his name—alone—on a pocket watch built to Harrison’s specifications that many consider the first true precision watch.
Who is John Jefferys?
This French horologist failed to secure access to H‑4 directly, but later learned its secrets secondhand over dinner in Fleet Street.
Who is Ferdinand Berthoud?
While serving as sailing master under Cook and later governor of New South Wales, this officer was overthrown during the Rum Rebellion.
Who is William Bligh?
Although other nations voted in 1884 to adopt Greenwich, this was the alternative wording the French preferred to avoid naming it directly.
What is “Paris Mean Time, retarded by nine minutes twenty‑one seconds”?