Last year I had the pleasure of visiting the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, UK and learning about the history of "marine chronometers", an invention that profoundly changed nautical navigation. Definitely worth a visit if you're ever in London.
Full write-up:
blog.arribasail.com/2023/07/john-harrisons-marine-chronometers.html
Before Harrison ( and I would take nothing away from his dogged genius) was an unknown Greek horologist who made the Antikythera mechanism.
An Aussie named (Chris) Clickspring recreated this masterpiece using (some of the known) technology from 2100 years ago. Amazing.
How come only one was made?
I highly recommend Dava Sobel's biography, and a visit to the Royal Observatory, if ever you have the opportunity. I visited it only in June this year. Harrison's first three clocks are bizarre and beautiful, his fourth looks like an oversized pocket-watch, but is described by the Observatory as the most important machine ever made. I could easily adopt Harrison as a personal hero; he seems socially awkward, always rambling on for longer than any TED talk would allow, useless at branding, marketing and spin, fastidious on detail and obsessed with getting it right. He was a clock-maker whom the Royal Society refused to take seriously, but he did, actually, solve the greatest scientific problem of his time. There is plenty to see at Greenwich, including the Cutty Sark, built around 1890 about 30 years' after the Ida Zeigler that my great-great-grandfather sailed on. The Cutty Sark resembles the Ida Zeigler in many ways, although it uses iron to replace timber spars and knees. Another highlight for me was the Sung Evensong at the Wren Chapel, by Thomas Tallis I think, the choir presumably made up of the marvellously talented singers from the Conservatorium that now occupies a wing of the old hospital, and it didn't cost a penny.
