The Carpenter's Son Who Solved Longitude — and Was Never Given the Prize
In short: John Harrison, a carpenter's son with almost no formal education, spent forty years building the machine the sea demanded: a clock that could carry home-port time across any ocean. His small watch H4 crossed the Atlantic twice and beat the £20,000 longitude standard both times. Parliament eventually paid him more than the prize was worth — yet the famous prize itself, as a prize, was never officially awarded to anyone. He was compensated at eighty. He was never crowned. Fourteen hundred sailors, and one missing number On a foggy night in October 1707, a British fleet returning victorious ran onto the rocks of the Isles of Scilly. Four warships were wrecked and more than 1,400 sailors drowned in a single night. The navigators had latitude — north to south — from the sun and stars. What they had no way of knowing was longitude, their position east to west. In principle the solution was simple: Earth turns 15 degrees an hour, so carry exact home-port time, compare it with...