Lessons From the Past: Longitude and the BP Oil Spill (part 2)
NOTICE: Written before the new cap was placed over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many great thinkers, as early as the 16th century, were aware that the answer to the “longitude problem” was likely to be found in a mechanical timekeeper. In 1530, the Flemish astronomer Gemma Frisius stated, most assuredly, that the mechanical clock was a true player in the effort to find longitude. However, as stated previously, building a watch that could withstand the elements and the motion aboard a vessel was something that would not be possible until centuries later with the advent of John Harrison’s H1.
John Harrison was a carpenter in his youth. The story goes that, at the age of six, he was stricken with smallpox and confined to his bed for a period. His father gave him a pocket watch with which to amuse himself while bedridden, and John was immediately captivated by the timepiece. He spent hours disassembling and reassembling it and studying its moving parts. So began his fascination with clocks. He built his first working pendulum clock in 1713 at the age of 20. Though this was a great feat, it was particularly fascinating for one other reason: the clock is constructed almost entirely of wood, innards and all.
His gift with craftsmanship of timepieces would be further tested as he began his quest to discover a means to answer the question of how to properly measure longitude. He was hardly unique in this respect towards the end of the 17th century. Everyone was setting about trying to win fame and fortune by solving the longitude problem. One of the most “colorful” of solutions came in 1687, in the form of a substance called the “powder of sympathy,” presented by Sir Kenelm Digby. This powder was said to be able to heal any wound, and from any distance. All a person had to do to unleash its powers was to apply the powder to an article of the afflicted’s clothing, and they would miraculously be cured of all ailments. The cure was not painless though, and would thus cause a significant level of pain in the injured subject when the powder was used. This was of course nothing but quackery. You might be wondering how on Earth this could be related to measuring longitude. The idea was to bring a wounded dog aboard a ship setting sail for whatever destination, and to have someone apply the powder to the wounded dog’s bandage at home port when the sun was upon the Meridian in London. The crew could then deduce their longitude by measuring the time at their current position and adjust it to find the difference. Yes, this was indeed an actual idea of the time, and that is without saying anything about inhumane treatment of animals.
Another albeit equally ridiculous (though possibly more humane) idea that sprouted up was from a pair of mathematicians, William Whiston and Humphrey Ditton. The pair often engaged in discussion and debate. One of their discussions led them to the thought that sounds could be used as predetermined time signals by which sailors at sea could deduce their longitude by measuring the difference in time aboard their ship as compared to the time the sound was supposed to occur. These “sounds” came in the form of signal ships, stationed at specific intervals, whose sole purpose was to fire their cannons at a specified time. As you might imagine, this idea would call for a rather large number of ships, all of which would need to manned by a crew, and unlike most ships of the time, would be completely stationary. How would the health of the crew aboard these ships be maintained? How would they be fed? Paid? These were trivial details to the two mathematicians. Apart from that, there is the matter of how uncertain the seas can be. Weather conditions might cause the ships cannon to go unheard, or to possibly sink a ship without anyone knowing for some time. And the very fact that they must remain stationary was a cause for disbelief. The Atlantic has an average depth of 2000 fathoms, and with a fathom being 6 feet in length, this would necessitate some very, very long anchors. There were just too many variables to make this a practicable idea. It, of course, did not get very far.
John Harrison completed his first sea clock, H-1, in 1735. It was a monstrous thing, though exceptionally elegant in its complexity. As Sobel writes, “Built of brightly shining brass, with rods and balances sticking at odd angles, its broad bottom and tall projections recall some ancient vessel that never existed. It looks like a cross between a galley and a galleon, with a high, ornate stern facing forward, two towering masts that carry no sails, and knobbed brass oars to be manned by tiers of unseen rowers. It is a model ship, escaped from its bottle, afloat on the sea of time.” Despite its accuracy in sea trials, and its apparently warm reception by the Board of Longitude (the committee overseeing all bids to solve the riddle of measuring longitude) in 1737, Harrison still felt that he could do better. He asked for another two years of funding to complete a clock that he believed would be both smaller and more accurate (the clock has not erred more than a few seconds in a 24 hour period; a miracle by the standards of the time). He was granted his wish and began work on H-2.
Harrison’s presentation of H-2 to the Board in 1741 was somewhat of a repeat performance from the years previous. He was an absolute perfectionist, and it showed. He pointed only to the clock’s foibles and highlighted none of its improvements from the previous iteration. His goal, as he put it, was merely to receive the blessing of the board to try again. He set out to make H-2 smaller than the previous timekeeper, and did so. However, it was still quite large, weighing in at 86 pounds, however, it did sport a number of improvements over H-1. It had a device within which allowed a much greater acclimation to changes in temperature, passing all of the tests (heating and cooling) with flying colors. They even subjected it to violent shaking, much more than what might be seen on an oceangoing vessel, and yet it reliably ticked on. Despite these achievements, Harrison’s inner perfectionist would not allow him to give up at this point. He retired again to his workshop to begin work on H-3; a project that would take him nearly 20 years to complete. Meanwhile, his first clock, H-1 drew the attention of people from all around the world. The English artist, William Hogarth described it as “one of the most exquisite movements ever made,” in his Analysis of Beauty published in 1753.
As Harrison began work on his third device, H-3, his son William joined his father in the workshop and eventually took up the cause of creating the timepiece along with his father. William grew with the clock; passing through his teens and twenties while working on it, and continuing work on the next iteration, H-4, until he was 45 years old. Harrison introduced a device in H-3 known as the bi-metallic strip. This strip can rapidly compensate for any changes in temperature that might affect the rate of the clock. This device, though created well over 200 years ago, is still present in some thermostats. H-3 was also the leanest of the sea clocks, with a weight of around 60 pounds. Harrison’s other goal with H-3 was to reduce the friction inherent in the inner workings of a timepiece. To reduce this factor, he introduced the idea of cages ball-bearings, a component in most every machine with moving parts to this day. Though more satisfied with H-3 than his previous sea clocks, he had a revelation upon seeing the watch created by John Jefferys. It was within this watch that he saw what he must accomplish with his fourth and final iteration of a sea clock, and as such began work on his first truly portable timekeeper.
Work was completed on the watch in 1759. As Sobel writes, “Coming at the end of that big brass lineage, H-4 is as surprising as a rabbit pulled out of a hat. Though large for a pocket watch, at five inches in diameter, it is minuscule for a sea clock, and weighs only three pounds. Within its paired silver cases, a genteel white face shows off four fanciful repeats of a fruit-and-foliage motif drawn in black. These patterns ring the dial of Roman numeral hours and Arabic seconds, where three blued-steel hands point unerringly to the correct time. The Watch, as it soon came to be known, embodied the essence of elegance and exactitude.” (Sobel, page 106) Harrison was infatuated with this watch and expressed more satisfaction with it than any of the previous timekeepers combined. This watch was an absolute marvel, and a true masterpiece. Harrison’s H-4 did eventually win the Longitude Prize, however, not without much hardship and heartbreak. You see, there was another, stronger, and more influential faction proposing a much different (and less practicable) way of measuring longitude: the lunar distance method.
Several astronomers proposed this method as the key by which they might unlock the secret of measuring longitude accurately. If one can measure the distance between the moon and some other visible celestial body, this measurement, along with a nautical almanac, can then be used to calculate Greenwich Mean Time. A separate calculation is used to determine the apparent local time, leading to the determination of longitude without necessitating a chronometer. As one might imagine, this sect of astronomers was vehemently opposed to the idea of a clock being the most accurate means of measuring a ship’s longitude. They also held positions of status within the Board of Longitude, and one in particular, a Reverend Nevil Maskelyne, seemed to resent Harrison’s creation more than the rest. He forced Harrison’s timepieces to go through a variety of grueling sea trials, above and beyond what was necessary to determine their reliability. Despite these unfair tests, the sea clocks came out on top, however, not without much aging and accrued weariness on the part of John Harrison. The antagonistic relationship between Harrison and Maskelyne deserves a post of its own someday.
So what is my point? Well, with this somewhat long-winded story, I was hoping to illuminate a simple idea. And that is that despite the most brilliant minds and affluent wallets put to task in order to devise a method to determine longitude, it was a self-educated clockmaker who came up with the (eventually) winning idea. We can now fast-forward to present day, and view the BP oil spill within the same framework. BP, up until extremely recently (and hopefully this second cap will hold) was unable to devise a secure and workable method of sealing the oil geyser. Had they turned to the population in earnest, without the PR games and masked truths, might they have had more rapid success? Could they have found their John Harrison? I do not know, however, I often think that it is the most practical amongst us who often have the solutions that might have been so obvious as to escape those who are highly specialized and inundated within the field of interest (i.e. those who are so focused on their specialized skills as to miss a solution which was staring them in the face but required looking at the problem from a different, unique angle). It is an interesting thought, and with the second cap now in place, experts must now turn towards the actual Gulf itself, and devise a method of actually cleaning up all that oil without further damaging the ecosystem and wildlife. Perhaps they have a very good plan in mind (something in me doubts it) and are already underway with the planning stages, however, if they do not, perhaps they still have reason to reach out to the populace and find a solution that is far more workable than anything they have come up with as of yet.
