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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: How Many Chronometers?
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2009 May 7, 21:40 +0100
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2009 May 7, 21:40 +0100
Jim Wison asked: With all of those qualifications, how did John Harrison's creation give England the supremacy of the seas by virtue of having the "Secret of longitude?" =============== No question, that the Briish did maintain "the supremacy of the seas", over more than a century. But Jim's question presupposes that it rested on the invention of the chronometer. I invite him to show us that it did, and tell us over what period he claims that it did so. In my own view the matter has been greatly overblown, especially by Sobel, whose book implied that the lunar distance method for longitude became immediately obsolete from the invention of the chronometer. After Harrison's invention had been approved, there was a period of technical development as new and simpler designs became standardised, production-lines developed, and a chronometer industry built up.Until that happened, possession of a chronometer was rare, though Admiralty vessels sailing to distant waters would get priority. Trading craft, particularly the smaller vessels, would continue using lunar distances, well into the eighteen-hundreds. But Britain's superiority over her local competitors (France and Holland, mostly) depended on dominance of local waters, English Channel, North Sea, Atlantic coast, in which astronomical longitude played only a minor role. The chronometer eventually played a major part in the build-up of trade links with the Colonies, it's true. The French had also developed successful designs of chronometer, particularly by Berthoud, but never realised the sort of mass-production that Arnold and Earnshaw would achieve, in England. For anyone interested in the development of the chronometer, I recommend Rupert Gould's "The Marine Chronometer", first published in 1923, but with many later reprints. This book is now rare, and expensive .I don't recommend my own edition, by the Holland Press, 1978, as its plates are already coming adrift. Also, "The Quest for Longitude", ed. William J H Andrewes, published by Harvard in 1996, the proceedings of a fascinating symposium in 1993, with many authors. Also getting expensive, now. George. contact George Huxtable, at george@hux.me.uk or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222) or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK. George. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---