Harrison's Forty Years
Episode Note
The longitude was the easy part. For a century everyone knew the idea — carry a clock, compare it to local noon, read your position off the difference. Ships kept sinking anyway, because no clock could keep time at sea. The idea was free; the execution was impossible.
John Harrison spent forty years tuning four machines until one lost five seconds crossing an ocean. He subtracted every source of error. He was forced to prove it, trial after hostile trial. And it was tested at sea, not asserted at the bench.
Same idea a child could state. The entire difference was the tuning…
The skinny
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