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...and you thought lutherie was difficult?
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3432
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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 RE: ...and you thought lutherie was ... (in reply to keith)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: keith
of historical note, john harrison who built the first chronometer to be used to calculate longitude was a carpenter who built clocks out of wood. the chronometers that made him famous (H1 - H4) were metal given humidity issues at sea. for those interested about mr. harrison there was an interesting book published a few years back about the chase to find a reliable procedure for calculating longitude.
One such book is Dava Sobel's "Longitude".
I'm old enough to have begun sailing long before GPS, or any other satellite navigation system was in place. The LORAN system, with land based transmitters, was operational from the early 1940s, but its coverage of the globe was incomplete, and it required an expensive receiver, so we learned celestial navigation. You have to have a good chronometer to do celestial the normal way.
Actually, there was a way of finding the time before the chronometer became reliable. It is called the lunar method. With a sextant you measure the motion of the moon among the stars. Time can be determined accurately enough to navigate.
But the lunar method was complex and difficult, deemed to be beyond the capacity of the average mariner, so it was not widely used, perhaps not even widely known.
Joshua Slocum, the great American sailing captain, was the first to sail single handed around the world. The end of the era of the great sailing ships came during Slocum's career. He was left unemployed. Someone gave him the hulk of a sloop, which Slocum rebuilt from the keel up. After failing at fishing, he hit upon the scheme of sailing alone around the world, writing paid articles for newspapers, to repair his fortunes.
Slocum couldn't afford to have his chronometer refurbished, so he navigated by the "lunars". He had a wry sense of humor, and kept onboard an old tin alarm clock which he showed to newspaper reporters at various ports around the world, claiming that he navigated with it. At one point he claimed that his alarm clock had stopped, but functioned perfectly after he boiled it.
"The want of a chronometer for the voyage was all that now worried me. In our newfangled notions of navigation it is supposed that a mariner cannot find his way without one; and I had myself drifted into this way of thinking. My old chronometer, a good one, had been long in disuse. It would cost fifteen dollars to clean and rate it. Fifteen dollars! For sufficient reasons I left that timepiece at home, where the Dutchman left his anchor."
"At Yarmouth, too, I got my famous tin clock, the only timepiece I carried on the whole voyage. The price of it was a dollar and a half, but on account of the face being smashed the merchant let me have it for a dollar."
"Sailing Alone Around the World" by Joshua Slocum
I don't recall Slocum mentioning the lunar method in his book, though it was reliably reported that he used it on his epoch-making voyage.
RNJ
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date May 22 2013 21:44:27
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3432
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: ...and you thought lutherie was ... (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
Dava Sobel's "Longitude" is a superb history of the attempts to determine longitude. And it is a fine account of John Harrison's efforts to develop the marine chronometer. I had the great good fortune to see John Harrison's marine chronometers (H-1 to H-4) on a visit to England in 2004. they are on display at the National Maritime Museum at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, about 1 1/2 hours from London by boat on the Thames. Well worth the visit. Also on display, among other nautical items, is the uniform Lord Nelson was wearing when a French sniper shot and mortally wounded him at the Battle of Trafalgar. But the highlight are Harrison's marine chronometers. You can also straddle the Prime Meridian.
Cheers,
Bill
Once in a while, taking a taxi from Heathrow downtown, I would get a true Cockney cab driver. He would speak in an utterly incomprehensible dialect, and glance in the mirror, as though expecting a reply. At last he would relent and revert to more or less standard English, with an impish grin.
My favorite Cockney episode was on one of those excursion boats from Westminster Stairs down to Greenwich. It was a favorite sightseeing trip for new people on our British jobs. Besides Greenwich, you get to see the whole historic part of London from the river. In this case the announcer on the P.A. system began by saying he was a true Cockney "born underneath the sound of Bow bells."
On the way downriver he recited the famous poem that begins,
"The noble Juke of Wellington
was almost rejuced to a skellington..."
But best of all was when he announced, "Lydies 'n Jint' lemen, on yer lef' han' side izza Billingyte Fish Market, ve on'iest plyce onna fyce of ve Earf where the Inglish langwidge is correc'ly spoke."
"Billingsgate" entered the language long ago as a reference to the raucously profane, obscenely abusive speech of the fishmongers, who sell fish at the famous market on the Isle of Dogs in East London.
Also at Greenwich are Cutty Sark, the fastest of all the great clipper ships, Gypsy Moth, the little sailboat of Sir Francis Chichester's solo circumnavigation, and the noble Christopher Wren buildings of the the Royal Naval College.
Well worth the trip.
RNJ
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date May 24 2013 18:13:48
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