it x Ted “ HARVARD MAGAZINE ras On October 22, 1707, Peete te and two thousand of ee Ce eae eed off the Scillies. Se [enna Py YL22 27 99 104 Haitian children: page 12, (ON THE COVER ‘The first clock to keep litesaver for mariners and brought its maker fame and, belatedly, ft reward, Ie’sall part of the astonishingly rich story of Tongitude. The phosogeaph appears courtesy ofthe National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England, Departments LETTERS Floundering mediocrity. Cosmic cartographers, Screen violence. Curricula ‘concepts. Two-career families. Cguiles, JOHN TRAIN. Crazy salad, EDITORIALS ‘Trouble in the greenhouse A settlement that doesn't setie much, THEBROWSER Boys, gils, Jefferson, Reagan, trees, and robber batons. Richard Marius ‘THE COLLEGE PUMP Upae The truth about Veritas, “Pair Harvard." Primus IV Poetry Linda Pastan, Chard deNiord, Susan Lier Joyce Peerff. 24,33 HARVARD SPRING EVENTS 244 CLASSIFIEDS 9) (OFF THE SHELF 700 CHAPTER AND VERSE 07 ENDPAPERS /02 PUZZLE 10:3 Piancer- page 28 HARVARD SE \ACAZ/\ Ee March-April 1994 Volume 96, Number 4 12 Right Now TE PARADOX OF THE HAIT EMBARGO: A boomerang THE DIITAL NEWSSTAND: Cyersucuration MUMANIZING MEDIA: Oferngnsghc nw the human condition READING BOOKS BY THEIR COVERS: Inlecul aris, inTuaL sroRes: BEEPER ENSLAVEMENT: Anothcr form of eectone bondage Sonsumers stroll the pixel aisles Articles: 28 HOW TO STUDY THE ENVIRONMENT? Harvard’s new environmental studies initiative explores uncharted territory. Kitty Beer Mattes 34 VIVALTATTI A visi co Bernard Berenson’s Tuscan villa—now “a lay ‘monastery” for Renaissance scholars. Janet Tassel, 42. VITA: CHAUNCEY WRIGHT Brief life of an eccentric philosopher. Robert O'Hara 44 LONGITUDE: HOW THE MYSTERY WAS CRACK’D A diverse band gathers at Harvard to honor John Hatison, the eighteenth-cencury inventor who single-handedly revolutionized the science of timekeeping. Dava Sobel 53. VERY TRULY YOUR FRIEND, A. LINCOLN AA presidential candidace writes a moving and revealing leteer caa disappointed Harvard applicant. 55 John Harvard’s Journal endowment --- Hospital mega-merter.... Seniors and tei thesesa love-hate relationship. -- Harvard's woman in “Blue”... Candidates for Overseer and HAA director BB.’ place: page 34 Cop: page 65.Would you care to attend a three-day international symposium on... LONGITU by DAVA SOBEL, r he vast majority of the human race has absolutely } no idea that your specialty even exist,” Alistair Cooke chides the five hundred banquet guests assembled in Memorial Hall. In fact, confesses the widely loved author and television hos, his ‘own close friends had blinked incredulously and mocked his, plans to attend tonights engagement: “You're speaking ata symposium on longicude?” Cooke lets the word Iunge off the end of his tongue with a soft g. LON-j-sood, Then he holds ic atthe back of his throat with a hard s—LAWN-ga-to0d—as though even the name of the discipline were fodder for intellectual dispute. He chuckles, at the memory of his acquaintances’ stated faces, and the au- dence laughs with him, Cooke has them all set up for his, punch line “Te was so ludicrous that of course T accepted the invitation.” Cooke pretends for a moment that the only thing he knows about longitude comes from having recently looked up the ‘word in the Euqclopedia Britannica, and he quotes the full cenury by heart “Longitude. Sec latitude. Louder laughter greets what must be the ultimate in-joke for this crowd. Participants in the longitude symposium con- ccem themselves only marginally with latiuude—those concen- trie rings thae girdle the globe from the equator to che poles. Afterall, any mariners worth their salt can gauge latitude readi- ly enough by the length of the day, or the height of the sun, oF stars above the horizon. For this reason certain parallel lines of latiuude have served as worn pathvays across the oceans since ancient times. Christopher Columbus “sailed the parallel” on his 1492 journey, and the technique would doubtless have car ried him to che Indies had nor the Americas intervened. Longicude is by far the meatier subject. Longitude, mea- sured in meridians and tempered by time, defied accurate de- termination throughout most of history. To find one’s longitude Right: Landfall, Before the invention of a reliable way for to find their longitude at sea, they were in danger ‘This painting by Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen depicts the wreck of the Dutch ship Amsterdam. 4 Hymn MacwasePolitical intrigue, academic backbiting, scientific revolution, economic upheaval, and a mechanical genius who devotes his life to a quest. All these threads, and more, ® ine in the lines of longitude. Mascara oy 45LONGITUDE continued atsea, one needs precise knowledge of the relative positions of the heavenly bodies, ofa elock thae ean model the motions of the clockwork universe and Keep on ticking through violent storms and temperature changes. Neither of chese prerequ sites existed until well into the eighteenth century. For lack of 4 practical method of determining longitude, untold thousands ‘of silors died when their destinations suddenly loomed out of the ocean and took them by surprise, Ir was just such an aeci- ddent—on October 22, 1707, off the Scilly Isles, where four homebound British warships ran aground and nearly wo thou- sand men were lost—thac prompted Parliament to offer an enormous purse oughly $12 milion in today’s curreney) for a solution to the longitude problem, English clockmaker John Harrison, the mechanical genius who devored his life to this quest, ultimately claimed the prize ‘money as his rightful re~ ward—in a climate of polit- ical intrigue, academic backbiting, scientific revo- lution, and economic up- heaval. All these threads, and more, entwine in the lines of longitude “The encyclopedia,” Cooke continues to his en- thralled audience, “says thae John Harrison solved the problem promptly.” Harrison wooden clock and spent one day a week over a three- year period completing the task. He has a natural affinity for ‘Harrison, a man deseribed over the course ofthe symposium as brilliant, industrious, sough, dogged, possessed, passionate, a= gumentative, sober, modest, grossly puritanical, and an ou fnd-out workaholie—a man of simple birth and high intelli ‘gence who single-handedly revolutionized the science of timekeeping. ‘Bue unlike Harsison, who shunned people, Andrewes greets them on a forward tilt, eager to shake hands or grasp their shoulders and kiss them on both cheeks. His own intemal ‘lock appears to run a few minutes fast as though a trifle ov ‘wound by energetic enthusiasm. The combination of his good Jooks and ready charm probably helps Andrewes effect plans that might be considered overambitious, or even hare- brained—as when he began campaigning to bring together three o¢ four hundred interested parties for an international conference on longitude AAs it urns our, more than five hundred participants from 36 states and seventeen countries have shown up, including four foreign students (three Russian and one Czech), whose travel ‘expenses are ccvered by a grant that Andrewes secured from, fiends and from the family of his Harvard predecessor and late benefactor, David Wheatland "22 "The conference atiendees cannot be categorized. Many af them belong to the Nacional Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, « 35,000-member body of hobbyists whose profes sional lives fill niches in medicine, business, education, and in- Alistair Cooke makes a point about longitude during the Memorial Hall banquet concluding the symposium. He told his audience that he had agreed to ‘make formal remarks on the occasion because the topic was so ludicrous. He muses for a moment, chewing on the adverb. “He found the answer promptly after 45 years. The British government dustry. Some number af sympesitin participants are bona fide horologists—professional or amatcur specialists in the science of timekeeping, Ochers own sailboats and live a weekend life as navigators, Astronomers, mathematicians, materials scien- tists, geographers, and historians of science round out the ros- dealers, museum curators, and give him the prize money promptly fourteen years ltes. And now we celebrate his bist day promptly three hundred years after the fat ‘As Cooke’ flip summary suggests, the cracking of the longi- tude mystery was a complex affair, and the tercentenary of John Harison’s birth (in 1693) provides the perfect occasion for reopening the case and reexamining the man. 1 it seemed to William J. H. Andrewes, the dashing Wheatland curator of Harvard's collec- on of historical scientific instruments, who co ceived and choreographed the longitude sympo- sium, held at the University November 4-6, 1993, and who invited Alistair Cooke co be its quest of honor. ‘The symposium continues the celebration that Andrewes, began on John Harrison’s actual three-hundredth birthday, last March 24, when he baked a cake in the shape and design of the prizewinning marine timekeeper and served it co the ff teen students in his history of science class, called “Instru- ments of Time and Space.” Andrewes—like John Harrison, his idol—is an Englishman with the soul of a clockmaker. Before coming to the United States in 1977, he looked after the clocks ar the Old Royal Ob- servatory and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. He then served as curator of the Time Museum in Rockford, Illinois, for ren years, until he accepted an appoinement at Flar- vatd in 1987 and subsequently became a preceptor in the his tory of science department. Andrewes once won the honor of restoring an early John 46 Hwan Macrae ter, along with a few ancqy rare-book sellers. Walking among them, one sees a woman in dangling ear- rings composed of miniature watch parts talking to a man with «Salvador Dali clock melting down the front of his te. JP he longitude sympesium, as Andrewes has lid it F 1) ou, considers four major themes: * the early history of navigation at sea, when seat voyages of discovery gor t some destina- tion willy-nilly inthe absence of any means for ascerttining longitude, and when a landfall often took the form of ashipwreck; © the early attempes to ind longitude, including promising but painstaking effors based on astronomy, as well as daft ap- proaches involving the likes of wounded dogs, explosives, oats and magi ® the eiumphs and tribulacons of John FErison himself, fom the low-msintenance tower clock he builtin the early 1720s that sill keeps accurate time today, to the vindetive deseera- ion of his prizewinning marine chronometers by jealous pa- and ® the perfection of marine timekeeping in the decades follow ing Harrison’s great advances. “The program lists the lecture offerings in miliary time, and ‘every session starts precisely on the scheduled stroke of the hhour. ‘The strice punctuality has the quality of an ethnic joke about horologiss, but no one laughs at it. Nor does anyone seem surprised or put out when the session chairs refuse 0nd elockmakers luseum exhibition ‘chest, Parti indrew James, of ste of Man, r of Le Mesnil-Le Roy Dresden, Germany: Viscount Midleton, of Suffolk, England who hay borrowed the monocular of ..- Peter Schweitzer °S1, of Cambridge, Massach i Will Andrewes, tor of the collection of histo wait for latecomers to straggle in. A lecture set for Thursday J restoration and design—including an M.B.E. awarded by evening at 19:15 in the Charles Hotel begins with a pro- | Queen Elizabeth I—Daniels says the only things he likes as nouncement: “Ic is 7:15 by George Daniels's watch, much as watches are vintage ears, fast mocoreycles, opera, and Forget Big Ben, People who know clocks know that George | Scotch whiskey Daniels, former Master of the Worshipful Company of Clock- | Daniels’: dapper three-piece suit serves as gray background ‘makers, sets a standard in long-term precision mechanical | for the gold watch chain festooned across his waistcoat I holds imekeeping, Aft Writing half a dozen books about watches, | the one-of-a-kind pocket watch that took him four thousand and collecting as many gold medals for his efforts in watch | hours to build by hand, in honor of the Apollo landing on the MancreAra 1994 4LONGITUDE continued ‘moon. Working as he does at che furthese possible remove from ‘mass production, Daniels has completed 25 timepieces in his 45 years asa watchmaker. A second of his singular creations is, Strapped around his eft wrist, Daniels will show you the pocket watch if you ask to see it You can even hold it in your hands, the better to appreciate its exquisite detail, with separate dials for solar time, mean time, sidereal time, and phase of the moon, plus two subsidiary sec- Conds dials (one for solar, one for sidereal) and center second chronograph, ‘Telling time on such an instrument is no quick. slunce for keeping to schedule but a serious consideration of time as a universal dimension. Einstein should have had a watch like this. Only George Daniels, however, can really study his watch at leisure. Anyone else is conscious of being, just three inches from his vest pocket, where he keeps it se= ccurely tethered. Beyond the gold chain, some invisible umbili- cal may attach itil more firmly this person. ‘Aca convention of watchmakers and watch collectors, the ‘cognoscenti favor mechanical watches, pocket or wrist, and the ‘alder the better. Mast collectors consider quarts a ditty word, since accuracy without artistry is nothing devoutly to be wished. The best watch is che one you purchase at a bargain, because of pieces missing, then restote to accurate function by yourself. That's how Fred Powell °44, a reciced mathematician from Vermont, eame by his 1790 James Peto pocket chranome- ter In contrast to Daniels, Powell unhooks the treasure from is lapel chain at every inquiry, slips off its leather pouch, and passes ic around to admiring sighs. David B. Searles, of Cambridge, Massachusexts, a worldwide ‘marketer of fine timepieces as well asa supporter and exhibitor at the symposium, wears what he calls “a garden-variety Roles,” with sapphire crystal and jumping hour hand chat lets jecsetters adjust to new time zones without topping the watch. Will Andrewes sports a character watch with the French eat- toon hero Tintin and his dog, Snowy, running across its face. ‘Quartz! But chen, Andrewes spends his days among the ivory diptych sundials and nineteench-century regulators that grace his basement exhibit hall in the Science Center, and can afford ssuch a departure from form, ‘The illustrations at the bottom of this an the following ‘pages mark significant events in the finding of longitude at ‘ea, culminating in the work of John Harrison. ‘ow, a he prepares vo open the Friday mocning sessions with Jeremy Knowles, dean ofthe Fac- uly of Arts and Sciences, Andrewes thanks his J 00d fortune that all the people he admires most in the fied relating o longitude have re- sponded so positively to his invitations to teach and lear a the symposium. The east includes eighteen of che world’s leading historians of navigation, astronomy, eacography, and horolog. Firs up is David Landes, che Coolidge professor of history and professor of economics at Harvaed. Landes looks around the packed auditorium, pleasantly sue prised to find so many people ready to listen to letutes at 8 “By the mid-sixteenth century, scientists knew the nature of the longitude problem; they just lacked the means to solve it.” AM. Universi classes schethiled at the same hour, he says, suffer from “severely limited attendance.” ‘Turning to his pre- pared remarks, Landes offers the group his historic-economic perspective on the costs of being literally “at sea” in the Bif= teenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, with no practical means for determining longitude, “Too many were the ships thet thrashed aimlessly and fruit- lessly about,” Landes laments, “too far this way, too near tha, until scuryy and thirst killed off or incapacitated so many hands that the crew could no longer man the rigging and direct the ves- sel. And then the ship would float helpless, with its populations of skeletons and ghosts—another Flying Dutchman, ro fecch up ‘one day on reef or sand and provide the stuff of legend.” As naval and merchant fleets grew in size and burgeoning, trade spawned international competition, Landes explains, wat ships and trade ships fell easy prey eo pirate ships, since all ships were confined to conventional lanes by limited naviga- tional skills. Seafaring nations panted after a way to find th beatings on the open acean. jo much for the demand side.” Landes continues. “On the supply side, scientific knowledge and capabilities were coming together to render possible what had long been visionary. By the mid-sixteenth century, scientists knew the nature of the longitude problem; they just lacked the means to solve it. The essence of the problem was to ind a way 10 leaen the time in the place eee r if 4% Hawn Mscaane vee errand Sere reneJohn Harrison, cirea 1767, in a portrait by Thomas King. Harrison holds his fourth marine timekeeper. Behind him is the very much larger number tw where you were—in siru-—and the simultaneous time at some ‘other place of known longitude. And then you could convert, the difference in time into the distance in between.” (A com- plete 360-degree revolution of the earth takes 24 hours, Thus, a time difference of one hour between two locations equals a change in longitude of fiteen degrees.) The key to the conundrum lay in this matte iy” Landes reminds the gathering, “You have to know your local time and the time at some distane place atthe same mo- | ment.” There were two ways to calculate the time ae that refer fence point—the clock method and the astronomical method. However, no clock of the day was up to the tsk of putting the clock method ineo practice, While ie was possible to keep accurate local ‘ime with sundial, no elock could beat true to the home-port time for the duration of an ocean voyage. A simple matter of a change in tem- perature would make the clock ran faster or lower, ‘The astronomical method made heavy demands, t00—not Toren diseusses the concept of a pene on timekeeper with his eee the least of which were clear skies and a reasonably steady deck for aking observations. The navigator had to determine local time by the Sun—watching its apparent motion to estab- lish the exact moment of noon—and Keep track of time from day to day; then he had to observe some predicted celestial ‘event and compare the local time ofits occurrence with the time thar this same event was to appear in the sky over a place Of known longitude, Intermittent heavenly events such as Junarand solar eclipses were too infrequent to fill he bill. Nav ‘gators nceded predicrable events that happened often enough for them to use at will for taking longitude readings. And so they pressed the moon into service asa longitude indicator. By micasuting the position of the moon vis-a-vis certain fixed stats, ‘good astronomer could make the nevessary longitude calcula tions in about four hours. (The Royal Observatory was founded at Greenwich in 1675 to make the detailed observations of the night sky chat navigators needed as a basis of comparison for their shipboard observations) By the 1760s, says Landes, the lunar technique yielded fairly accurate results, bu it remeined so complex and time-consuming that only a small elite of spe- cialists armed withthe sextant, employed Royal navies could train such people,” Landes concedes, “but you couldn’s expect an ordinary merchant ship to have them on board.” ‘Thus the technique, chough taught and used, ‘was obsolete from the outsét. “Ir gave way eventually to sea clocks, because these were bargains in performance and time-saving,” he points out, hint ing at subjects o be covered by others in greater detail. “So it is the invention ofthese clocks that we are celebrating here. “Today,” he concludes, “thanks to satelie signals and trian- ulation, 2 properly equipped ship ean know is location within & matter of yards, or even feet. Many mote marine chronome- ters exist in museums and collections than on the high seas Science, which has a way of junking the things it no longer uses, has long since left these elocks behind, But thee is why ‘we need history—to remind us of our debt.” More debt service follows quickly, in talks that flesh out Landes’ overview. Historian Albert van Helden, of Rice Uni- versity, for one, explores the use of Jupiter's moons as a device for finding longitude, Galileo discovered these Jovian satellites in 1610 and noted how their regular circuits ofthe planet made them disappear and then reappear according to a precise and predictable schedule, Galileo was well aware ofthe longitude prob- lem, too, and had more than @ passing interest in claiming Span- ish and Portuguese prize money being offered, in his day, for a so lution By I611 Galileo had codified the eclipses of Jupiter’s moons, which occurred hundreds of times a year, and provided what Coen petireria Pesan Mawes 199449LONGITUDE continued ‘one contemporary called “the hands of clock” for mariners, Galileo even constructed a special sea-going telescope that consisced of spyglass actached toa helmet, but, unforunatey for him, the decks of ships proved too unstable for accurate ob- servations (Galileo himself conceded that, even on nd, the beat of one's arteries could eause the whole of Jupiter o jump ‘ouvof the telescope’ eld of view) After Galileo, Jean-Dominique Cassini che ealian-bom di rector of the Paris Observatory, continued the tacking of Jupiter’s moons and published more reliable time tables in 1668. Improvements in telescope design at that same time made the Jovian satellites the accepted standard for determi ing longitwde—bur only on land. Mason and Dixon used the technique, Van Helden say, and i spurred @ revolution in car- tography by improving the accuracy of maps, Indeed, Louis XIN, conftonted with a revised map of his domain based on longitude measurements, reportedly complained that he vas losing more tettory to his astionomess chan to hisenemies. At sea, however, the method of determining longieude by the satellites of Jupiter remained useless. John Leopold, assistant keeper of the Brish Museum, els how Dutch astonomer Christiaan Huygens developed a clock Cranks and opportunists swarmed out of the woodwork, filling pamphlets with ideas that were by turns impractical, naive, and outlandishly funny. Jn 1662 that he hoped would help to measure longitude. Even though Huygens made many great astronomical discoveries, including the kugest satellite of Satur, he found nightly ob- serving to be drudgery and pursued other interests. Certainly he preferred clocks to the heavens for the purpose of marine timekeeping. His own shipboard clock failed to work because its pendulum steech- ced out in the heat of the equator, so that it couldn't keep the ssame ime it kept in cold weather. But at least it showed that longitude by time- keeping was not en- tirely out of reach, In the panel dis- ‘cussion thar ends the moming’s talks, one question is addressed to the audience at large: “How many people here have determined their position atsea?” About one hundred hands go up, suggesting thac 20 10 25 percent ofthe group has a visceral appreciation of longitude. fier lunch at local restaurants in Harvard Square, the symposium reconvenes to hear a baker's ddazen of “nutty” solutions to the longitude prob lem from Owen J. Gingerich, senior astronomer athe Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Obser- ‘vatory and professor of astronomy and the history of seience at the University In 1714 the British government, by act of Parliament, of fered a grand prize of £20,000 for a method of determining lon- gitude to within half a degree, Lesser prizes of £15,000 and, $10,000 were proffered for methods that could claim accuracy ‘within two thieds of a degree and one degree, respectively. With these incentives, Gingerich notes, cranks and oppor tunists swarmed out of the woodviork, filing pamphlets sith ideas that were by turns impractical, naive, and outlandishly funny. The Commissioners of Longitude, who reviewed them, included Sir Isaae Newton and astronomer Edmond Halley. Among the first earnest tries was the 1714 proposal from William Whiston and Humphrey Ditton, who wanted station= ary gunships, called fiuls, c© be staggered a roughly sixchun- ‘dred-mile intervals across the oceans. These were to be secure ly fixed in place, if not by anchors, then by weights, et down fiom the hulls chrough the upper currents of very deep oceans into the sil waters below. At local midnight each night, each ship would fire a rocket that could be seen and heard over ‘great distances, enabling ships within 2 hundred-mile radius to determine thei postions. Critics of the Whiston and Ditton approach, Gingerich notes, raised many objections, including the impossibility of fixing the hulls at sea because of the aevion of swells upon the ‘ables; the hard life of the sailors aboard the hulls, who could face starvation or pirates; and, of course, the problem of keep- ing the sailors sober. Although Gingerich restriets his comments to ideas based on | physics, the discussion raises questions about several “biologi cal methods” for determining longitude, such as taking wound- ced dogs along on acean voyages. The injured animal's bandage was to be lefe with trusted person on shore, who would dip it ina mixture of water and “powder of sympathy” every hour on the hour, thereby causing the dog to yelp the correct time at sea. OF, purportedly telepathic goats could be urged co beat time by bleating in unison, one on shore and one on shipboard. On Friday night the whole assemblage repairs to a reception and exhibit fon “The Arc of Time,” fes- turing timepieces from the historical eolleetion, at the ‘Awe Duodeome * Using the eclipses of erent 50 Hwan Mazi pe SNe ee ad rer cornerFogg Museum. Here, ina gescure of supreme thoughtfulness for people who love to take things apart all the clocks have bbcen gutted. Their omate wood and meral cases stand empry, 88 pieces of furniture, while their extracted works \hir and tick forall co see in specially made protective plexi- lass boxes. ‘The thankful audience closes in around the see- through was, scrutinizing the mechanisms, squinting to peer more deeply, squatting fora diferent view. If only they could ‘osmoxe themselves through the barriers, One aficionado is all but lying on top ofa display case, with a small telescope aimed atthe open pocket watch inside it, a seine six inches avy Distracted by a Degas seulpture and several Monet paint ings hung in an adjoining, less crowded gallery two members of the British Horological Institute contingent, Joyce Bolton and N. Geofftey Bolton, awaie the right moment to view the exhibit. Geoffrey Bolton, a Yorkshire native like the great John Harrison before him, now owns the clock shop where he ap- prenticed asa young man, 've spent 55 years working in the same room,” he says without a trace of remorse. His wife, who handles “the bus. ness side” of che enterprise, appears equally proud of his tenure and urges him to talk about unusual clocks he has known, “Someone once brought me a watch that had been dug up around the conceneration camp at Bergen-Belsen,” he recall, “Ics face was cracked and heat-damaged, and of course i didn't run, Ileamed that watches were routinely taken from the pris toners by the guards, who buried chem in @ box. Ar the end of the war, the liberating forees found these watches and kept them, I restored the watch to working orden” he adds, “but 1 left the dial crucked—to show that it had history of suffering.” aturday’s sessions convene in a student-vacated le ‘ure hall in the Science Center, where speakers ad~ dress the heart of the longitude matter, namely, the inner workings of John Harrison’ clocks. Most members of chis audience know intimately the intricacies of clocks’ interlocking wheels within wheels, Others have only a vague feeling fr the challenge of precision timekeeping and couldn't tell the interior of a Timex from a Rolex on a bet. Yer this day's ses- sions sill manage to speak to every- fone, in part because the expert pre sencers remain absolutely avvestruck. by John Harrison’s achievements, ‘There is nothing dry about their re- portage, ‘Not only did “the master,” as some call him, have to compensate for the changes in temperature and barometric pressure that his time- keeper was sure to encounter (not to mention the constant, sometimes vie Poets frst practical mari comers en seers Rese ee ree everen Pra eer olent moon of ship a sea, but he also had wallow forthe troublesome effects of high humid the corrosive sly ai, and even the variations in the eat’ gravity a diferent a tes that would orally eae a clack to gn or lose tine ayrison met these challenges by devising vitally frton- fie elocks tha equited no lubrication and no cleaning, that were made fom materials that would not rst, and that kepe their moving pas peel balanced in relation to one anoeh- er ezurdess of how the world pitched or owed about them. He did avay withthe pendulum, and he combined diferent meas inside his works—in such a way that when one compo nent expanded or contracted with changes in temperate, the oxher counteracted the change and Kept the clock’ fe com Animations of clever clock mechanisms, ereated by John Redfem, of Scriand, do move than illustrat = eral of thes aks. They mesmerize the audi cence with their cartoon-bright colors and Gry comforting noises (not just *ick-ock” but “bong-da-dum, bong-da-dum” and other tec! 5 siz accurate icsimiles). The viewers seem wo say and breathe i chen With the animated movement, and then momentarily lose theie breaths when each seement stops Andrew’ King, a clockmaker from the United Kingdom and an acknowledged ex pert on the life of John Hrsison, describes his hero as “a unique and individual character, fice fom the shackles contemporary though.” ‘This condition was no dub aided by the fact that arrison hid no formal education, He had, instead, an endless fascia tion for his f Sorte felds-music, carpentry, and slockmaking By some accounts, Hartson did nor take on che challenge ofthe lon- tude prize un 1726, some twelve ‘ears afer ie was anounced. By then he had conquered most of the probe lems of timekeeping on lind and 30 ume his effors eo Keeping dime at sea. Here he enjoyed ahead wart be- Cause of his eatly endeavors on some of the intesc problems. For exam Oe ee eee Poh scenery Pee ease eer pounds and stood 25 inches tal Doce arte mtg tT ‘eighed just over three pounds, Manci- Aru. 194 51