John Harrison
1693 - 1776The name John Harrison is one of the most famous in the history of horology. It was this self-taught clockmaker from Yorkshire who, after a lifetime of work, finally solved one of the greatest problems of his age: determining longitude at sea.
A Short Biography
John Harrison was born in Yorkshire in 1693. He came from a working class family, his father being a carpenter. The family moved to North Lincolshire in 1700.Harrison first learned his father's trade but also became interested in clocks. He combined the two interests and began to build his own clocks often using mainly wood. As a clockmaker he was largely self-taught, which is perhaps one reason he was able to break away from established horological convention and produce new innovations.
In 1728 Harrison moved to London to attempt to win the longitude prize. This was to take up most of the rest of his life. He finally received the award in 1773.
Towards the end of his life John Harrison lived in London's Red Lion Square and devoted his attention towards musical tuning and harmonics.
Longitude
John Harrison is best known for his H4 watch with which he finally won the longitude prize.Accurately determining longitude at sea was an impossible task during Harrison's day. As a result of not knowing their true location, many ships ran aground and lives were lost. In 1714 the British Parliament passed the Longitude Act which set up a Longitude Board to award a prize to the first person to solve the problem.
One way to measure longitude involved keeping accurate time. This was extremely difficult given conditions at sea - bad weather, the ship's movement, temperature variations, etc. So Harrison set out to produce a clock that would keep accurate time at sea.
He produced a series of models, the first being called H1, H2 and H3. Although these were more accurate than anything that had gone before they were still not quite good enough. Finally Harrison abandoned his earlier designs and started again, finally winning the longitude prize with the famous H4 - the world's first true shipboard chronometer.