I saw part of the program and it brought back memories of seeing Harrison's
clocks at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich about 3 years ago.  I would
recommend reading Dava Sobel's book of the same name on which the A&E
program is based.  She did a *great* job.  There is also a larger, more
recent edition called "Illustrated Longitude" with hundreds of photos and
engravings.

The construction work on the larger clocks is flawless, they are works of
art as well as engineering.  However the most incredible thing was to see
the contrast between the first two or three clocks which were around 3-4
cubic feet in size, and the one which finally won him the prize which was
like an overgrown pocket watch about 5" in diameter and an inch thick.  I
always consider that a reminder not to get too hung up on any one approach
to a problem.

Now back to work on the design of that ocean-going Lehman...

Regards, Ted


barry lotz  on 07/20/2000 08:02:22 PM

Please respond to psn-l@..............

To:   PSN-L Mailing List 
cc:
Subject:  "Longitude"




Hi All
 I don't know how many of you had the opportunity to see the cable
channel "A&E" program called "Longitude". It was a very interesting
program about a 16 th century british gent who was trying to develope a
accurate clock for ocean vessels, and a 20 th century gent who was
trying to restore his  forgotten clocks. Time being important for ship
location at the time. I had to laugh since it had interesting parallels
with seismological instrumentation and it's headaches.
Regards
Barry

__________________________________________________________

Public Seismic Network Mailing List (PSN-L)




__________________________________________________________

Public Seismic Network Mailing List (PSN-L)