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kaberettShips, Clocks & Stars//Longitude Punk'd
worldcon14 as discount code for attending Ships, Clocks & Stars
[lots of really charming anecdotes]
Latitude easy; longitude's hard.
aHA now I know what "knots" in speed is! "There's lots of problems with compasses, but that's a whole other talk".
The traditional way is to use direction & distance travelled to get latitude + longitude.
Latitude can also be got from using misc tools, via astronomy.
But there is a problem!!! Errors in reckoning --> death & maritime disaster. Centuries of attempts to address the longitude problem; observatories various set up; but people began to think there'd never be a thing fixed. So the 1714 Longitude Act passed by Parliament! "Nothing is so much wanted and desired at Sea, as the Discovery of the Longitude, for the Safety and Quickness of Voyages, the Preservation of ships, and the Lives of Men" (An Act for providing a Public Reward for such PErson or Persons as shall discover the Longitude at Sea)
Already 4-5 methods available at the time the act was passed, but they're not great...
- the difference between two places = the difference between their local times...
- if you know the time in London, and you know the time where you are (via solar position), then you know the longitude difference in time (and the Earth rotates 360deg in 24hrs, so can convert time to degrees of longitude...) -- which is of course why they're measured in minutes & seconds, and how to convert between time & degrees!!!
Question: how do you know what the time is somewhere else? Well, that's easy enough... IF you have an accurate clock at sea (ships rock and change temperatures etc etc).
- lunar distance method - angle between Moon & known star, and if you have a table predicting what time that means it is at your reference location... but this is an absolute nuisance to calculate
- or use a planet - something like Jupiter - with its predictable 4-moon orbit (create tables years in advance for when the moons would be eclipsed by longitude - Galileo had already thought of this)
- compare true North (from the sun) with magnetic north (from the compass) and compare with a chart of N at latitudes... but. Magnetic north wanders, as we know!
- put a ship at known location, send up signal at known time, measure difference between noise and light visible. (How do you keep ships moored & supplied at sea in the 18th century? IT IS DIFFICULT)
The Act --> lots and LOTS of publications. Who was doing the research?
- a formal group (commissioners): John Flamsteed, Sir Thomas Hanmer, Sir ISaac Newton, Edward Russell
-- ... PERPETUAL-MOTION MACHINES FOR FINDING LONGITUDE. :D :D :D (if you perfect a perpetual motion machine, you'll be able to drive a clock constantly & accurately...)
- un- or less-official sphere of adjudication for schemes - "the coffee-house politicnas", when coffee houses are where business gets done.
-- culture of "projecting" or "bubbling" - if you have a scheme, a project, then you are a "projector" and you are "projecting", trying to get it to happen. A "bubble" is a more perjorative term! Appear to be substantial, but aren't (burst into nothing!)
-- ... another beautiful set of quotations about impossible schemes, "15 methods for the something of fish" :D :D
William Hobbs designs a scheme for a "horologe" in 1714. Alas we know nothing about it except that Flamsteed didn't like it! But by and large, lots of schemes and not much happening on the quest for longitude; people became increasingly jaded on the topic and began to be wary; Swift satirises it ahahahaha. A Rake's Progress has a plate in a madhouse in which someone's carving longitude schemes into the wall! "Longitude" starts featuring in poetry and plays, including DICK JOKES. DICK JOKES ABOUT LONGITUDE AHAHAHA
Whiston & Ditton, /A New Method for Discovering the Longitude/ (London 1714). Their scheme is the rocket-ships scheme (moor at known locations etc). Satirical responses include actual nasty songs!
Jeremy Thacker, /The Longitudes Examin'd/ (1714): still arguments about whether it's a satire or not! Because the horology is fairly good...
AHAHAHA MAPS ARGUMENT in 1722 BETWEEN WILSON AND HASELDEN!!!! MERCATOR VERSUS GLOBULAR CHART!!!! PISSING MATCH IN NEWSPAPERS AND PAMPHLETS!
"Going to treat this bit quite quickly, it's the famous part that the exhibition's about" - by 1763 three methods have come forward that're worth sea trial.
- John Harrison produced the sea-clock, 1735, the sea-clock/sea-watch. He gets sent to London's leading clock-maker! By 1759 he's moved on to a watch rather than clocks.
- use of Moon as celestial time-keeper - John Hadley was key, and sextants are developed by John Bird by 1758. Tobias Mayer produced tables of the motion of the Moon that were accurate ahead, so it could be used as a celestial time-keeper!
- third method tested was Jupiter's satellites - it works very well on land, but the celestial target is small enough that it's VERY difficult to keep it in your field of view in a telescope at sea... Christopher Irwin was unknown apart from newspaper lobbying! Sept 1759, after some trials in the English Channel, gets lots of coverage... basically invented a marine chair that would keep the viewer static - counterweighting!
All three trialled in the 1760s on a voyage from London to Barbados. Irwin's marine chair is "dead in the water" - found useless. The seawatch was definitely successful, and the lunar tables + new instruments are successful. Harrison ends up with arguments about replication of the single watch, and about the initial Act of 1714... so the commissioners get bored and make there be a new act.
These two methods are tried over longer distances (James Cook), who shows that both work, and you can use them to produce much better charts! Back in the UK we still have the issue of how to mass-produce things that actually work (well enough)...
The judiciary board doesn't fold - it keeps going with the remit to encourage improvements to existing methods, perfection of other methods, etc, with a wider navigationary oversight! "Became the grand national tribunal for difficult and abstruse undertakings"
- measuring a ship's speed more accurately (inertial navigation system...)
- attempts to use the sun to find longitude...
- John Crouch, tiny craft to get troops from ship to shore through surf
They reject a lot out of hand... but stay interested in Jupiter's satellite, which work really well /if you can see them/.
- e.g. George Christie, which eventually gets rejected, but a self-stabilising machine for telescope
- Joseph Senhouse, another marine chair
- Samuel Parlour, shoulder-mounted device for viewing satellites... found to be unsteady in high winds
These go nowhere, but the board takes them seriously! Other people have a go at e.g. insulating compass (attempts to use magnetic variations to find longitude... "using specially treated iron filings" can "insulate" from nearby iron on the ship... er), mercurial log-glass (timer for measuring ship's speed - mercury doesn't get stuck like sand!), ...
Edward Massey made a sounding machine and a mechanical log, both of which became successes...
People started treating the Board's remit (in the early 19th) very broadly - and they got a LOT of perpetual motion schemes... eventually became convinced that perpetual motion was nothing to do with them! George Wolffgang Ulric Wedel (1822) said he could determine longitude by "proving that the Earth is motionless"!!!
... and then Babbage! Because his work on mechanical computing is kind of about longitude? In order to take humans out of the equation when calculating tables like the Nautical Almanac. "One of the most singular advantages we derive from machinery is the inner check against... the knavery of human agents"!
So Longitude Punk'd is a steampunk show that takes the ideas coming *to* the Board of Longitude as an inspiration! C18 inventions! Artists came up with a bunch of designs -- lots of them being projectors!
worldcon14 as discount code for attending Ships, Clocks & Stars
[lots of really charming anecdotes]
Latitude easy; longitude's hard.
aHA now I know what "knots" in speed is! "There's lots of problems with compasses, but that's a whole other talk".
The traditional way is to use direction & distance travelled to get latitude + longitude.
Latitude can also be got from using misc tools, via astronomy.
But there is a problem!!! Errors in reckoning --> death & maritime disaster. Centuries of attempts to address the longitude problem; observatories various set up; but people began to think there'd never be a thing fixed. So the 1714 Longitude Act passed by Parliament! "Nothing is so much wanted and desired at Sea, as the Discovery of the Longitude, for the Safety and Quickness of Voyages, the Preservation of ships, and the Lives of Men" (An Act for providing a Public Reward for such PErson or Persons as shall discover the Longitude at Sea)
Already 4-5 methods available at the time the act was passed, but they're not great...
- the difference between two places = the difference between their local times...
- if you know the time in London, and you know the time where you are (via solar position), then you know the longitude difference in time (and the Earth rotates 360deg in 24hrs, so can convert time to degrees of longitude...) -- which is of course why they're measured in minutes & seconds, and how to convert between time & degrees!!!
Question: how do you know what the time is somewhere else? Well, that's easy enough... IF you have an accurate clock at sea (ships rock and change temperatures etc etc).
- lunar distance method - angle between Moon & known star, and if you have a table predicting what time that means it is at your reference location... but this is an absolute nuisance to calculate
- or use a planet - something like Jupiter - with its predictable 4-moon orbit (create tables years in advance for when the moons would be eclipsed by longitude - Galileo had already thought of this)
- compare true North (from the sun) with magnetic north (from the compass) and compare with a chart of N at latitudes... but. Magnetic north wanders, as we know!
- put a ship at known location, send up signal at known time, measure difference between noise and light visible. (How do you keep ships moored & supplied at sea in the 18th century? IT IS DIFFICULT)
The Act --> lots and LOTS of publications. Who was doing the research?
- a formal group (commissioners): John Flamsteed, Sir Thomas Hanmer, Sir ISaac Newton, Edward Russell
-- ... PERPETUAL-MOTION MACHINES FOR FINDING LONGITUDE. :D :D :D (if you perfect a perpetual motion machine, you'll be able to drive a clock constantly & accurately...)
- un- or less-official sphere of adjudication for schemes - "the coffee-house politicnas", when coffee houses are where business gets done.
-- culture of "projecting" or "bubbling" - if you have a scheme, a project, then you are a "projector" and you are "projecting", trying to get it to happen. A "bubble" is a more perjorative term! Appear to be substantial, but aren't (burst into nothing!)
-- ... another beautiful set of quotations about impossible schemes, "15 methods for the something of fish" :D :D
William Hobbs designs a scheme for a "horologe" in 1714. Alas we know nothing about it except that Flamsteed didn't like it! But by and large, lots of schemes and not much happening on the quest for longitude; people became increasingly jaded on the topic and began to be wary; Swift satirises it ahahahaha. A Rake's Progress has a plate in a madhouse in which someone's carving longitude schemes into the wall! "Longitude" starts featuring in poetry and plays, including DICK JOKES. DICK JOKES ABOUT LONGITUDE AHAHAHA
Whiston & Ditton, /A New Method for Discovering the Longitude/ (London 1714). Their scheme is the rocket-ships scheme (moor at known locations etc). Satirical responses include actual nasty songs!
Jeremy Thacker, /The Longitudes Examin'd/ (1714): still arguments about whether it's a satire or not! Because the horology is fairly good...
AHAHAHA MAPS ARGUMENT in 1722 BETWEEN WILSON AND HASELDEN!!!! MERCATOR VERSUS GLOBULAR CHART!!!! PISSING MATCH IN NEWSPAPERS AND PAMPHLETS!
"Going to treat this bit quite quickly, it's the famous part that the exhibition's about" - by 1763 three methods have come forward that're worth sea trial.
- John Harrison produced the sea-clock, 1735, the sea-clock/sea-watch. He gets sent to London's leading clock-maker! By 1759 he's moved on to a watch rather than clocks.
- use of Moon as celestial time-keeper - John Hadley was key, and sextants are developed by John Bird by 1758. Tobias Mayer produced tables of the motion of the Moon that were accurate ahead, so it could be used as a celestial time-keeper!
- third method tested was Jupiter's satellites - it works very well on land, but the celestial target is small enough that it's VERY difficult to keep it in your field of view in a telescope at sea... Christopher Irwin was unknown apart from newspaper lobbying! Sept 1759, after some trials in the English Channel, gets lots of coverage... basically invented a marine chair that would keep the viewer static - counterweighting!
All three trialled in the 1760s on a voyage from London to Barbados. Irwin's marine chair is "dead in the water" - found useless. The seawatch was definitely successful, and the lunar tables + new instruments are successful. Harrison ends up with arguments about replication of the single watch, and about the initial Act of 1714... so the commissioners get bored and make there be a new act.
These two methods are tried over longer distances (James Cook), who shows that both work, and you can use them to produce much better charts! Back in the UK we still have the issue of how to mass-produce things that actually work (well enough)...
The judiciary board doesn't fold - it keeps going with the remit to encourage improvements to existing methods, perfection of other methods, etc, with a wider navigationary oversight! "Became the grand national tribunal for difficult and abstruse undertakings"
- measuring a ship's speed more accurately (inertial navigation system...)
- attempts to use the sun to find longitude...
- John Crouch, tiny craft to get troops from ship to shore through surf
They reject a lot out of hand... but stay interested in Jupiter's satellite, which work really well /if you can see them/.
- e.g. George Christie, which eventually gets rejected, but a self-stabilising machine for telescope
- Joseph Senhouse, another marine chair
- Samuel Parlour, shoulder-mounted device for viewing satellites... found to be unsteady in high winds
These go nowhere, but the board takes them seriously! Other people have a go at e.g. insulating compass (attempts to use magnetic variations to find longitude... "using specially treated iron filings" can "insulate" from nearby iron on the ship... er), mercurial log-glass (timer for measuring ship's speed - mercury doesn't get stuck like sand!), ...
Edward Massey made a sounding machine and a mechanical log, both of which became successes...
People started treating the Board's remit (in the early 19th) very broadly - and they got a LOT of perpetual motion schemes... eventually became convinced that perpetual motion was nothing to do with them! George Wolffgang Ulric Wedel (1822) said he could determine longitude by "proving that the Earth is motionless"!!!
... and then Babbage! Because his work on mechanical computing is kind of about longitude? In order to take humans out of the equation when calculating tables like the Nautical Almanac. "One of the most singular advantages we derive from machinery is the inner check against... the knavery of human agents"!
So Longitude Punk'd is a steampunk show that takes the ideas coming *to* the Board of Longitude as an inspiration! C18 inventions! Artists came up with a bunch of designs -- lots of them being projectors!
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-22 07:33 pm (UTC)And yes, I had NO IDEA of the Babbage/longitude connection! Small world indeed.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-22 09:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-23 12:21 am (UTC)