The Forgotten Genius

When we returned from our excursion to Westminster Abbey, we grabbed a quick lunch. I was ready to re-visit the Old Naval College, the Maritime Museum, and the Royal Greenwich Observatory. I can’t imagine why Glenda wouldn’t want to see the chronometer that John Harrison developed in the eighteenth century. I mean, it completely changed the world. But I guess there’s no accounting for taste.

Today was a perfect Sunday afternoon with bright sun, a gentle breeze and a high of about seventy degrees. I still lacked a thousand steps to meet my Walkingspree obligation, so I set off for the Old Naval College. It was originally called the Old Sailors’ Hospital, but the word “hospital” has changed meanings since then. A hospital was not primarily tasked with healing illnesses, but with providing a home for the elderly. So old, worn-out sailors who had given their life to the King’s Navy often retired with no home or family to tend them in old age. To meet this need the British government set up hospitals for old sailors, and a similar hospital for old soldiers (which still exists, by the way). When society changed so that almost all sailors did have families or the means to pay for lodging, their facility became the Naval College, something like our Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.

I had to admire its beautiful architecture very quickly because it was already almost four o’clock, and the places I wanted to visit closed at five. I did a quick run-through of the Naval Museum, wondering at the hardships of a life at sea. I didn’t have time to re-visit the Queen’s House, the very first totally neo-classical building in England. (Architect Inigo Jones should be proud.) I walked quickly up a stunningly beautiful hill called Greenwich Park to the Royal Greenwich Observatory, the place where longitude was first officially determined. Finding one’s longitude requires two elements: first, knowledge of the exact time. This can be ascertained by looking at the motion of heavenly bodies such as the sun or the moons of Jupiter. An observatory is a good place to see such things. Secondly, it requires that the ship seeking its longitude to have a clock that is insanely precise. Then the captain compares the time at the ship’s location with some standard (such as the exact time at London, well Greenwich) to calculate his longitude. No clock in the eighteenth century was sufficiently precise to give longitude. The rocking and heeling of ships in storms rendered pendulum clocks useless. However, in an epic struggle taking 31 years, clockmaker John Harrison finally made a timepiece that was sufficiently precise and robust to be used at sea. The British Navy took his double-gimbaled clock and declared it top secret. No other nation in the world had the capability to measure longitude until another generation had passed. The British government did not even acknowledge that they had such an instrument, and therefore, they could never recognize nor compensate Harrison for his genius. His son persisted in his efforts to have his father’s genius recognized, and finally the nation acknowledged Harrison’s accomplishment many years after his death.

Unfortunately, as I approached the Royal Observatory it was about to close, and a guard denied me entry. Still, I have some photos I took on my last visit, and I still have profound respect for John Harrison, the unacknowledged genius.Read more