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Patrick Stanistreet said-

> Will have to investigate measuring the transit
>of the sun as a method for setting a clock.

and Thomas Smith added-

>> I seem to remember dimly that Harrison observed the sun in
>> order to calibrate his clocks, but I don't have a source
>> handy.


That is a poor way to determine the accuracy of a clock. The Sun does not
keep a regular time, it appears to speed up and slow down for two main
reasons, which combine together.

1. The eccentricity of the Earth's orbit around the Sun.

2. The tilt of the Earth's Equator with respect to the plane of its orbit
around the Sun

The result is a complex double-humped curve of the error compared with the
steadily changing time that an accurate clock could measure; the difference
is confusingly known as the Equation of Time. There is no way of making an
irregular clock that could follow the variations of Sun time, which can
amount over the year to about 15 minutes error each way.

Even the Greeks, I think, were aware of the irregular timekeeping of the
Sun (though I can't quote references), but it was accurately measured by a
Dutchman, Huygens, who invented the first accurate pendulum clock in 1657,
intended for use by astronomers. He also tried to adapt pendulum clocks for
use at sea, which all failed. He published a rather accurate table of the
equation of time.

Any subsequent use of the Sun to determine GMT relies on the precision of
previous determinations of the equation of time.

Star time, however, is constant, to a very close approximation: varying
only slightly as the earth's rotation gradually slows. As discussed in this
thread, it was what Harrison used to adjust his master-clock (his
"regulator") against which other timepieces could be compared. A star
crosses a pair of vertical markers indicating a particular azimuth, at
intervals of precisely one sidereal day. And the disappearance of a star
behind even an improvised azimuth, such as the Harrison chimney, is an
instantaneous event: not so for the Sun. So, although Thomas Schmidt
suggests that Harrison used Sun transits, I think it's probable that he
relied entirely on stars.

Patrick Stanistreet asked-

>Assuming timing of a star one ends up with a sidereal
>clock but when did land based clocks achieve sufficient
>accuracy to time a star over 24 or more hours so as
>to differentiate between sidereal and solar time?

Well, the ratio between sidereal day and mean-solar day could have been
known to quite high accuracy by the Greeks (and before them, the
Egyptians), though they would not have used those terms. It doesn't need a
clock to measure it, because it falls out immediately from the number of
days (N) in the year. The ratio of the length of the sidereal day to the
mean solar day is N / (N+1). Various references can be found in "Astronomy
before the Telescope", ed. C.Walker, BCA, 1996. It followed from the
realisation that the Sun took a path between the stars over a year, which
was complicated by the fact that the Sun and the stars were never visible
together.

Patrick asked-

>Was the land based authority setting GMT associated
>with the Almanac office?

and Thomas Schmidt replied-

>> At Harrison's time (17xx) there was no GMT (at least not
>> in the sense of a zone or even universal time) and no
>> associated authority.

To start with, it must have been a private arrangement between
observatories, which developed into consensus. Huygens' original table for
equation of time did not give mean time from apparent time, but by an
amount between 0 and 33 minutes, which always had to be ADDED to Apparent
(i.e. sundial) Time to give a regular, constant (but not mean) solar time.
This was later superseded in favour of Mean Time. And the French (of
course) continued to use Paris Mean Time for many years.

Until 1834, the Nautical Almanac continued to use Greenwich Apparent Time
(Sundial Time) as its "argument" (that is, the time-scale on which its
tables were based). The Equation of Time was tabulated so that
chronometers, which insist on Mean Time, could be used. The change was made
to using Mean time as the argument in 1834, in deference to the increasing
number of chronometer-users.

But that was for mariners, and astronomers, and didn't make GMT the legal
basis of civil time in Britain. Different towns in Britain used a wide
range of different times to suit themselves, some Local Apparent Time, some
Local Mean Time, some Greenwich Apparent Time. Chaos.

As the railways spread, so did "railway time", which was effectively GMT,
and one by one, usually under protest, the towns along the lines would
adopt it. But GMT didn't get legal sanction as the official time in the UK
until 1880.

and-
>Any book recommendations that cover this topic in detail?

Yes.

Derek Howse's "Greenwich Time and the Longitude", 1997, pub Philip Nelson.
This is recommended over the 1980 ed., which was titled "Greenwich Time and
the discovery of the Longitude".

And a volume that I keep plugging on this list, "The Quest for Longitude",
ed William J H Andrewes, Harvard, 1996. This is the proceedings of a
symposium in 1993. Such proceedings are often boring, but this one is NOT.
Lots of detailed and interesting stuff about lunars, timekeeping, Harrison,
beautifully produced and illustrated. A real pleasure to own, or borrow. My
perceptive wife presented me with it as a birthday present soon after it
appeared. Very highly recommended, but probably expensive.

Brooke Clarke said-

>A pendulum clock could be compared to astronomical events and it's rate
>determined.  This rate would apply after the clock was moved to some
>other location as long as the temperature was the same as when it was
>calibrated.

Not so. A pendulum clock depends on gravity, which varies from place to
place, because of the rotation of the Earth and its ellipsoidal shape,
among other reasons.

Patrick asked-
> Could it be that each clockmaker
>independently set their own clocks and that any ship's
>clock was somewhat relative in time.  I would guess not
>as to take sights one would need to use a astronomical
>almanac using some time standard of the era.

Setting the chronometer to read Greenwich Time was not normally done until
departure from the port of embarkation, and was the navigator's
responsibility, not the clockmaker's. He would usually have been handed the
clock in a stopped state. It involved timing transits (ideally of stars)
over several nights, from on-land, to establish the rate. Then its
indicated time was compared with a standard clock at a local observatory
(if such existed), which itself had been set by a transit instrument, or by
a set of "time-sights, perhaps on board. Note that the chronometer would
not necessarily be set to show GMT exactly: it was sufficient to note the
time-error, and the rate. In many cases, the biggest unknown was the exact
longitude, with respect to Greenwich, of the local observatory. Later on,
the job would be made much easier by the introduction of a dropping
time-ball or the one o'clock gun. Some of the stuff in this paragraph was
later practice, before the days of the sea-testing  of the Harrison clocks.

In the trial of Harrison's No 4, to Jamaica via Madeira, in 1761, his son
William had determined its rate at Portsmouth, before departure, after 9
days of equal-altitude observations, to be two and two-thirds seconds per
day. (see Rupert Gould, "The Marine Chronometer", (1923 and many later
reprints), page 56, footnote).

George.


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