![]() The act came seven years after 1,550 sailors died when four British warships wrecked in the Scilly naval disaster of 1707. In 1714, the British Parliament passed the Longitude Act, an effort to solve the problem sailors faced in calculating longitude at sea. Today is the anniversary of the birth, at Foulby near Wakefield in the West Riding of Yorkshire on, and of the death, in London on, of the English carpenter and clock designer and maker John Harrison, best remembered for inventing the marine chronometer. He Invented a Marine Chronometer That Solved the Problem of Calculating Longitude at Sea, an Instrument That Britain Offered a £20,000 Prize for After 1,550 Sailors Died & 4 Warships Wrecked in 1707 As a result, Harrison’s regulators from this period achieved an accuracy of one second in a month, a performance far exceeding the best London clocks of the day.ģ. By inventing a pendulum rod made of alternate wires of brass and steel, Harrison eliminated the problem of the pendulum’s effective length increasing in warmer weather, slowing the clock. It was radical thinking of this sort that would be important later on, when he tackled the problem of designing a marine timekeeper.ĭuring the mid-1720s, John and James designed a series of remarkable precision longcase clocks, to see how far they could push the capabilities of the design. Rather than concentrating on improvements to the oil, Harrison designed a clock which didn’t need it. 18th century clock oils were uniformly poor and one of the major causes of failure in clocks of the period. The clock was revolutionary because it required no lubrication. Their first major project was a revolutionary turret clock for the stables at Brocklesby Park, seat of the Pelham family. He worked often with his younger brother, James, according to Gettysburg University:ĭuring the latter part of his early career, he worked with his younger brother James. As he grew older, Harrison combined his interest in woodworking and timepieces to begin building clocks and completed his first longcase clock, more commonly called a grandfather clock, in 1713 at the age of 20,” according to. “Although a carpenter by trade, Harrison’s father occasionally repaired clocks, and young John assisted his father in his work as soon as he was old enough. He was only 20 when he built his first longcase clock. ![]() Harrison learned the carpentry trade from his father, but was a mostly self-taught clockmaker, according to The Guardian. Plans are in place to display it as part of an interpretive display at Leeds… T10:13:14.000Z ![]() The clock was made in 1727 with an amazing fully working wooden mechanism. The Clock That Changed the World (BBC History of the World) Of international scientific importance, the Harrison Clock is only one of only three precision pendulum clocks made by John Harrison and instrumental in solving the Longitude problem.
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