NAMES IN PHYSICS exactly compensated by the upward expansionof the

brass ones. By this means, the effective length of the

John Harrison pendulum was rendered independent of temperature
and its period of oscillation remained constant. This
invention alone brought about a significant improve-
ment in timekeeping. Other less well known ad-
vancements which Harrison incorporated in his
clocks included an escapement, known as the
‘grasshopper’, in which friction was reduced to a
minimum, and an auxiliary spring arrangement to
ensure that a timepiece maintained a steady rate
G A COX whilst being wound up. It is evident, therefore, that
Department of Physics, University of York Harrison was no ordinary clockmaker.
The achievements, however, for which he is parti-
cularly remembered are those associated with the
development of the first practical marine chrono-
‘Time is the greatest innovator’ meter, an instrument of prime importance for estab-
Francis Bacon lishing the longitude of a ship atsea.
It is a relatively straightforward operation to deter-
It is impossible to tell whether John Harrison was mine the local latitude simply by observing with a
familiar with the abovequotation.If he was, he sextant the angular height of the sunduring the day,
would seem to have believed whole heartedly in it, or certain stars at night. However, to fix accurately
for he devoted his entire life to the advancement of the position of a ship east or west of a given refer-
horology and became one of the most inventive and ence, such asthe Greenwich meridian, posed an
ingenious clockmakers of all time, being responsible extremely difficult problem up to the middle of the
for theinvention of the ‘grid-iron’ pendulum and the eighteenth century, and tobe utterly lost at sea was a
development of the marine chronometer. common experience. For thisreason, many ships
John Harrison was born at Foulby, Yorkshire, in foundered and their crews perished.
1693. His father, Henry Harrison, was a carpenter The Flemish mathematician and astronomer
employed by Sir Rowland Wynn of Nostell Priory Gemma Frisius had suggested in 1530 in his De
and numbered amongst his pastimes the repairing of Principiis Astronomiae et Cosmographiae that if an
clocks. This interest of Henry Harrison would seem accurate clock were carried on boarda ship, then by
to have exerted a strong influence on his eldest son ;omparing local time obtained by observing the sun
John,for,in addition to initially following his with that at the place of departure of the vessel the
father’s trade, he developed an early attraction to- longitude of the ship could be calculated from the
wards mechanical pursuits, anattraction which knowledge that one degree of longitude is equivalent
dominated John’soutlook throughout his whole life. to four minutes of time. Although this method was
It is doubtful whether JohnHarrison received sound in principle, how could one hope to keep a
more than thebarest educationand apparently he did :ontinuous record of the local time at the place of
not serve an apprenticeship in clockmaking, for in ieparture on boarda pitching and rolling ship when
about 1700 the family moved to Barrow-upon- wen land-based clocks were relatively unreliable and,
Humber in Lincolnshire-a town well removed from noreover, relied on the use of a pendulum? The
any clockmaking centre. It is remarkable, therefore, lifficulties appeared to be insuperable.
that by the time John was in his early twenties, he The RoyalObservatory at Greenwich was founded
and his brother James had built several clocks almost n 1675 with a view to discovering an astronomical
entirely of wood-one of which, constructed in1714, bolution to the important problem of ascertaining
may be seen in theScience Museum, South Kensing- :he positionof a ship at sea, while in 1714 the British
ton-and had directed their attentions to the tech- government set up a Board of Longitude empowered
nical improvement of timekeepers. :o award a top prize of E20000 to anyonewho
It was in this context that in 1726 John Harrison :ould demonstrate a practical method for determin-
invented the now well-known ‘grid-iron’ pendulum ng longitude at sea to within half a degree. Smaller
to counteract the effects produced by temperature
changes on the period of oscillation of the more Tigure 1 Portrait of John Harrison by King.
usual clock pendulum. This improved version con- larrison’s marine timekeeper H3 (grossly
sisted of a bob suspended from a series of parallel :xaggerated in size) may just be discerned on the
brass and steel rods, arranged such that the expan- eft, H4 is in his hand (Lent to the Science Museum,
sion of the steel rods in thedownward direction was London, by W H Barton, Esq)

102
awards were available for less precise methods.
By 1728 John Harrison had drafted designs for an
accurate sea clock with which he hoped to claim the
top prize. Followinga meeting with Edmund Halley,
the Astronomer Royal and an ex officio member of
the Board, Harrison was sent to discusshisplans
with George Graham, an eminentLondonclock-
maker, who saw promise in the designs and encour-
aged him to build his sea clock, personally lending
him money for this purpose. The mechanism which
resulted (figure 2), usually referredto as H I , weighed
over 72 Ib, measured approximately3 ft >:,3 ft X 3 ft
and was completed in 1735.
In place of a pendulum H1 has two large balances
(seen at the rear of the machine)which always move
in opposite directionsto oppose the effects produced
by a rolling ship. Theyare controlled by four helical
balance springs, the tension in which is varied by a
bimetallic ‘grid-iron’ arrangement, thus compensat-
ing for changes in temperature. In fact, H1 was the
firstbalancetimekeeper to beprovidedwith
temperature compensator. The escapement is
modified ‘grasshopper’ and throughout the whole
mechanismHarrisontookextremeprecautions
reduce friction.
Although preliminary trials of H 1 on a voyage to
Lisbonprovedencouraging,theywerenever fully
completed, for Harrison hadconstructed an im-
proved version by1739, known as H2, but on the
Figure 2 Harrison’s sea clock H 1. The dials show
days, hours, minutes and seconds (National
Maritime Museurn, London)
104
same grand scaleas its precursor andwhich, in fact,
was never tried at sea. By 1760 H3 was readyfor its
sea trials-it had taken seventeen years to complete
and adjust-followed in sharp succession by Harri-
son’smostfamous‘seawatch‘ or marine chrono-
meter, H4 (figure 3), measuring only in5$ in diameter
and the culminationof some fifteen years of patient
effort. It proved to be the finest of the whole series.
Harrison decided to enter H4 for the longitude
prize and it wastested on board HMS Deptford,
leaving Portsmouth on 18 November 1761 on a
voyage to Jamaica with John Harrison’s son William
accompanying it. Astronomersdeterminedlocal
time at the beginning and end ofthe journey to assess
the timekeeping qualities ofH4. After corrections
for the pre-determined losing rate of 2-66S per day,
the chronometer was found to haveactuallylost
only 5-1 S duringthe 81 day voyage-an error
equivalent to 14- minutes of longitude or a little over
1 nautical mile in the latitude of Jamaica. Although
a H4 was very much smaller than its predecessors it
a had several featuresin common with them including
the all important temperature compensation device
to or ‘curb’ as Harrison calledit. A balance wheel with
a spiral balance spring was incorporated and now an
improvedvergeescapementreplaced the ‘grass-
hopper’.
Despite H4‘s outstanding performance, the Board
of Longituderefused to agree that Harrison was
entitled to the maximum prize, objecting partly on
the grounds that such extreme accuracy might have
been accidental. Reluctantly, however,
he
was
awarded E2500 which was to be deducted from any
further prize money he might receive.
Following further trials of H4 during 1764 on a
voyage to Barbados,theBoardadmitted that
Harrison was entitled to thefullaward,butstill
~ withheld payment. After much wrangling, an Act of
Parliament awarded himhalf the prize money on
condition that he explained the design of H4 to Nevi1
Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, and other
authorities, the outstanding money to be paid when
a duplicate of H4 had been constructed by another
maker to Harrison’s specification. Naturally, Harrison
wasincensed and thoroughlydissatisfiedwiththe
whole affair and he proceeded to issue a series of
pamphlets and broadsheets.
~ It should be mentioned at this point that Maske-
’ lyne favoured a rival method of determining local
longitude, the method of ‘lunars’, based upon ob-
serving the position of the moon in relation to the
sun and stars, but the data necessary to ensure
reliable predictions was not known with sufficient
accuracy at the time.
Larcum Kendall(l721-95) was entrusted with the
making of a copy of H4 which was delivered to the
Boardin1770 and, incidentally, usedby Captain
Figure 3 Front view and back plate of H 4 (Notiorla/ Maritime
Cook on his second and third voyages of discovery
in the Pacific. Cookhad nothing but praise for
Kendall’s chronometer.
Finally in 1773, following the construction of yet
another watch which was subjected to tests in
George 111’s private observatory at Richmond, the
King personally intervened in Harrison’s quarrels
with the Board with the result that the remaining
amount of the E20000 award was duly granted. By
this time Harrison was eighty years of age.
It is of note that the performanceof any of Harri-
son’s four marine chronometers was sufficient to win
one of the prizes offered by the Board-they were in
fact more accurate at sea than was any other clock
on land at that time. All four of Harrison’s marine
timepieces, and Kendall’s copy of H4, are preserved
in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and
all are in going order.
In addition to his accomplishments in horology,
Harrison conducted experiments in acoustics.
Amongst his writings are: ‘A Description concerning
such mechanism as will afford a nice or truemensur-
ation of time, together with some Accounts of the
attempts for the Discovery of thc Longitude by the
Moon’and ‘An Account of the Discovery of the
Scale of Music’.
John Harrison died in 1776 and was buried at
Hampstead. Although he was never a Fellow of the
Royal Society, he was awarded its Copley Medal in
1749.
After his death, Harrison’s ideas were developed
by Kendall andThomas Mudge ( l 7 ! 5-94), but
cheaply produced chronometers foruse in navigation
Mlrscwn, Londor~)
did not become available until the later work of
John Arnold (1736-99) and Thomas Earnshaw
(1 749-1 829)-both renowned English clockmakers-
had solved some of the remaining problems.
Photoelastic stress analysis
The Science Museum is to hold a lecture demonstra-
tion on photoelastic stress analysis, a visual method
of stress determination using plastic models. I t is
intended for 6th form science students and w i l l be
held on 13 March and again o n 14 March 1973. The
lecturer will be K Sharpies, Managing Director of
Sharples Photomechanics.
The lecture. which w i l l be illustrated by practical
demonstrations and slides, will explain the under-
lying phenomena of the technique and will describe
how photoelasticity has been applied in the lecturer’s
laboratory to solve stress problems in the fields of
aircraft, commercial vehicle and structural building
design. In addition, an intercsting medical applica-
tion w i l l bc discussed. Further information is avail-
able from Lecture Service, Science Museum, South
~
Kensington, London SW7 2DD.
105