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(left) One of the earliest sextants ever made was produced c. 1758 by john Bird, a nautical instrument maker in London. (righ t) Captain James Cook's voyages ofexploration were also used to test new methods ofdetermining longitude. All four of Harriso n's timekeepers were handed over to the Admiralty. He then spent six days disassembling H 4 and explaining its mechanism to six experts. One of them, watchmaker Larcum Kendall, was commissioned to build a copy. The board also published a description and drawings that influenced the designs of other watchmakers, some of whom used his ideas to create simpler, easier-to-manufacture marine timekeepers. The continued development of accurate and regularly updated astronomical tables was overseen by Nevil Maskelyne at the Royal Observatory, where he lived and worked for forty-six years as fifth Astronom er Royal from 1765. The results were published as the Nautical A lmanac in 1767 and the Tables Requisite to be used with the Astronomical and Nautical Almanac. Putting the new technology into practice naturally cam e down to the m ariners, who were the ultimate end-users. Captain James Cook was one of the early leaders to test the methods by incorporating them as part of his ship's standard operating procedures . In his first voyage of exploration in 1768-7 1, his crew successfully rested the lunar-distance method with the use of sex-
SEA HISTORY 153, WINTER 2015- 16
rants and the Nautical Almanac. On his second (1 772-75) and third (1776-80) voyages, he brought along Larcum Kendall's copy of H 4, known as Kl. Ir proved successful, and he referred to it as his "trusty friend " and "never-failing guide." Cook not only proved the methods were sound, he added another critical element by showing how the new tools and techniques of determining an accurate geographical position were important in the process of surveying and chart-making on his voyages. Advances in production techniques from the late 1700s made the manufacture of navigational instruments and timekeepers faster, cheaper, and the end-products increasingly accurate. By the early nineteenth century, a standardized marine timekeeper-the chronometer-was widely available to mariners, along with sextants and nautical almanacs. As tronomical and timekeeper methods were used together to find longitude, and wo uld eventually became part of a m ariner's daily routine. Ships, Clocks, & Stars makes the argum ent that the longitude story has a lo t to teach modern society about technology and innovation. The events of the eighteenth century showed how a problem could be
solved with long-term investment and the cooperation of government and private business. Incentives alone were not enough to spur innovation, as several countries had offered rewards before the British. The difference was the environment that encouraged the develo pment of the tools and techniques and was able to transfer it to practical use. "This is true of all scientific progressrhere's a lot of work to be done from realizing that something is possible to making it happen in practice," said Dunn. "Ir's a messier acco unt of how things progress, but is an interesting lesson as we think about tackling some of the major problems facing the world today-in particular, problems we believe science can help us tackle." ,!, Ship's Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longirude will be on display in the R.]. Schaefer BuiUing at Mystic Seaport through 28 March 2016; the exhibition will then travel to the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. Daniel McFadden is the Director of Communications at Mystic Seaport. (Mystic Seaport, 75 Greenmanville Ave. , Mystic, CT; www.mysticseaport.org)
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