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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from house

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Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcomed the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly fry. So. Recently, because

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Speaker 1: I had just spent three weeks researching the Doctor's Riot

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Speaker 1: and then the Battle of Blair Mountains and then the

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Speaker 1: Tulsa Race riot, I asked on Facebook for suggestions of

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Speaker 1: things that were happier talk about. Yeah. Yeah, that's a

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Speaker 1: lot of heavy content to be dealing with. It was,

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Speaker 1: and among the suggestions that we got were down winders,

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Speaker 1: which are the people who lived downwind of the fallout

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Speaker 1: from nuclear weapons tests. Also the Holocaust. Also the ps

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Speaker 1: General Slocum, which burned up and led to the deaths

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Speaker 1: of more than a thousand people. Someone suggested a mass lynching,

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Speaker 1: and someone else suggested the Irish War of Independence, in

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Speaker 1: which more than two thousand people die at including more

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Speaker 1: than seven hundred civilians. So what this tells me is

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Speaker 1: we either have lots of comedians among the listeners or

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Speaker 1: a lot of really dark people in terms of their

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Speaker 1: outlook on life. Well, we are all good ideas, they're

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Speaker 1: just not what I was asking for at all. We

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Speaker 1: did get many that were a little happier, and Randy,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, asked us to talk about longitude,

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Speaker 1: and he followed it with eight exclamation points. And so

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Speaker 1: that story has clocks and science and an inventor and shipwrecks,

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Speaker 1: but mostly preventing the shipwrecks. So that seemed like an

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Speaker 1: awesome place to start in terms of doing something a

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Speaker 1: little happier. Um, of course, as things often go, it's

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Speaker 1: not actually a completely happy story, but it is not

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Speaker 1: so devastating as some of my recent research, and certainly

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Speaker 1: not as devastating as the Holocaust or a mass lynching. No.

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Speaker 1: So uh. Just about everybody probably remembers uh from elementary

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Speaker 1: school that we measure coordinates and locations in longitude and latitude.

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Speaker 1: These concepts have been around at least since Ptolemy's time,

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Speaker 1: and around the year one fifty he created an atlas

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Speaker 1: that used a grid of lines both to mark the

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Speaker 1: maps and to index all of the places in them.

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Speaker 1: People have also known how to find their north south

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Speaker 1: position even before we had the idea of latitude. The

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Speaker 1: Phoenicians were doing it as early as six d BC.

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Speaker 1: Most techniques for doing this involve measuring the height of

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Speaker 1: heavenly bodies from the horizon at a specific time, and

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Speaker 1: we'll link to some step by step instructions on how

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Speaker 1: to do this and show notes for curious people. Rather

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Speaker 1: than trying to explain it to you right now. That

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Speaker 1: would be uh, some knowledge I would like to have. Well,

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Speaker 1: I was originally typing it into these notes and it

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Speaker 1: got extremely long. Yeah, anytime you get into directions on

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Speaker 1: how to do things, it can spiral out of control

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Speaker 1: in a hurry. Additionally, a few seafaring people's had some

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Speaker 1: other tricks for figuring out roughly where they were on

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Speaker 1: the globe, like observing the flights of birds and the

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Speaker 1: patterns of waves. However, is a general rule once people

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Speaker 1: lost sight of land, they didn't really have a reliable

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Speaker 1: way of figuring out how far east or west they'd gone,

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Speaker 1: in other words, how to measure their longitude. It's also

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Speaker 1: applied basically anywhere you could lose sight of familiar landmarks.

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Speaker 1: So even though we're talking about the ocean today, it

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Speaker 1: also that's the same rule applied with deserts or mountain

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Speaker 1: ranges that hadn't been explored. Um uh, and it led

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Speaker 1: to some problems Besides the obvious inability to answer the

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Speaker 1: question where are we? Also unanswerable word do we have

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Speaker 1: enough to eat until we get to where we're going

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Speaker 1: at the rate we're traveling? Uh? And for sea travelers,

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Speaker 1: are we about to run into anything? That last one

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Speaker 1: is especially important. It led to a lot of maritime

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Speaker 1: does masters as ships ran aground on reefs and land

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Speaker 1: masses that people knew were there but didn't know we're

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Speaker 1: right there. We've talked about those in some of our

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Speaker 1: previous episodes, and this problem was particularly the case starting

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Speaker 1: in the late fifteenth century, as more and more ships

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Speaker 1: tried to travel across oceans instead of just sticking along coastlines.

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Speaker 1: You couldn't even rely on your best guests and a map,

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Speaker 1: as people you know, started making maps of all this

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Speaker 1: unexplored area, because most of the maps were wildly inaccurate

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Speaker 1: in terms of their longitudinal measurements. Anyway to put the

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Speaker 1: sea monsters in the wrong place. Yes, Most of the

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Speaker 1: methods that people tried for figuring out how to measure

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Speaker 1: longitude hinged on one question, which was what time is it?

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Speaker 1: So when you're traveling east, local time moves ahead an

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Speaker 1: hour for each fifteen degrees of longitude that you travel,

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Speaker 1: and the opposite is true for every fifteen degrees that

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Speaker 1: you move west. So if you have a reference time

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Speaker 1: that you can use as a starting point, you can

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Speaker 1: figure out what time it is where you are now,

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Speaker 1: usually using the sun, and you can compare the difference

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Speaker 1: between those two times to calculate your longitude. Dutch mathematician

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Speaker 1: Gemma Frigius proposed using a clock to keep an accurate

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Speaker 1: reference time all the way back in fifteen thirty, but

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Speaker 1: no clock at that point was actually accurate enough to

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Speaker 1: do the job, not even a clock that was sitting

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Speaker 1: on land, and at sea clocks were even less accurate

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Speaker 1: because the motion of the ship interacted with the motion

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Speaker 1: of the clock's pendulum, and changes in temperature and humidity

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Speaker 1: could also mess up the inner workings. Galileo got in

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Speaker 1: on the action in sixteen thirteen, and he was using

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Speaker 1: the eclipses of Jupiter's moons as a reference point rather

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Speaker 1: than just starting with an ordinary clock. His big, big

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Speaker 1: idea was to make eclipse charts that sailors could use

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Speaker 1: at sea, but he was never really satisfied with the

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Speaker 1: accuracy of the charts that he put together, and then

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Speaker 1: in sixteen sixty seven, Cassini built on the work of

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Speaker 1: both Galileo and phrasiasts to prove that the basic ideas

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Speaker 1: at least were in fact sound. First, he measured the

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Speaker 1: eclipses of Jupiter's moons from a position in Paris, and

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Speaker 1: then he went to the island of Gory in the

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Speaker 1: West Indies and measured them again, comparing what time they

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Speaker 1: occurred in Gory to what time they were predicted to

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Speaker 1: occur in Paris. And the speciment was pretty accurate, but

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Speaker 1: even so it was not really practical to use it

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Speaker 1: on a ship. The telescopes at the time were too unwieldy.

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Speaker 1: The ship really needed to be perfectly still to be

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Speaker 1: able to observe and measure the eclipses accurately. Plus timing

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Speaker 1: the eclipses themselves still required an accurate clock, like just

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Speaker 1: counting one one thousand was not going to be accurate enough. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and an accurate clock was still a problem. And running

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Speaker 1: parallel to all of this scientific work, nations recognized how

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Speaker 1: important it was to the merchants and their naties to

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Speaker 1: be able to measure longitude, so they started offering incentives

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Speaker 1: for people to solve this problem. Philip the second of

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Speaker 1: Spain offered a prize to whoever could figure it out

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Speaker 1: in fifteen sixty seven, and still up the third did

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Speaker 1: the same. In England and France both started observatories in

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Speaker 1: the late seventeenth century and their goal was to use

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Speaker 1: astronomy to navigate. The use of astronomical charts, sex stints

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Speaker 1: and the position of the Moon to determine longitude became

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Speaker 1: known as lunars um. Although this was really difficult to

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Speaker 1: do and for a long time until astronomers worked out

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Speaker 1: some irregularities with the moon's motion, it was also not accurate.

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Speaker 1: So eventually a maritime disaster really launched England into a

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Speaker 1: bona fide effort to solve this problem. And we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about that after a quick word from our sponsor.

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Speaker 1: Let's do a lot of great minds have been pondering

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Speaker 1: for a very long time about how to solve the

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Speaker 1: launch team problem. And then in October of seventeen o seven,

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Speaker 1: Admiral their cloud Asy shovels fleet was shipwrecked off of Sicily.

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Speaker 1: Four ships were driven into the rocks thanks to high

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Speaker 1: winds because their measurements were off from their actual positions.

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Speaker 1: More than two thousand men were lost, and the quartermaster

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Speaker 1: of one of the ships was the only survivor. This

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Speaker 1: wreck is usually cited as one being mostly due to

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Speaker 1: the longitude problem, and two as being the thing that

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Speaker 1: really got Great Britain to focus on solving it. It

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Speaker 1: was definitely an immense loss of both property and life. However,

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Speaker 1: to some degree it was also a little bit of

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Speaker 1: a scapegoat. The incorrect measurements were actually farther off in

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Speaker 1: terms of latitude than they were in terms of measuring

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Speaker 1: the longitude. An Admiral Shovel was a highly decorated and

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Speaker 1: experienced admiral. Nobody wanted to blame him for the disaster,

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Speaker 1: so longitude really got the thing or of blame, regardless

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Speaker 1: of how much longitude really was responsible for what happened.

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Speaker 1: Parliament passed the Longitude Act in July of seventeen fourteen,

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Speaker 1: which read, in part, whereas it is well known by

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Speaker 1: all that are acquainted with the art of navigation, that

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Speaker 1: nothing is so much wanted and desired at sea as

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Speaker 1: the discovery of the longitude for the safety and quickness

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Speaker 1: of the voyages, the preservation of ships, and the lives

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Speaker 1: of men. And whereas, in the judgment of able mathematicians

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Speaker 1: and navigators. Several methods have already been discovered, true in theory,

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Speaker 1: though very difficult in practice, some of which there is

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Speaker 1: reason to expect, may be capable of improvement, Some already

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Speaker 1: discovered may be proposed to the public, and others may

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Speaker 1: be invented hereafter. So the Longitude Act goes on to

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Speaker 1: say that discovery would be of particular advantage to Great Britain,

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Speaker 1: but that it's also difficult and expensive, and so it

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Speaker 1: names several people as Commissioners of Longitude, and it sets

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Speaker 1: a cash prime is for a practical and exact method.

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Speaker 1: It was ten thousand pounds to within one degree, fifteen

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Speaker 1: thousand pounds UH to two thirds of a degree, and

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Speaker 1: twenty thousand pounds if it could be as exact as

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Speaker 1: within half of a degree. And this method had to

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Speaker 1: be proven out while in a six week voyage to

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Speaker 1: the East Indies. In terms of a clock. To be

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Speaker 1: able to earn this grand prize, the clock could not

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Speaker 1: gain or lose more than three seconds a day, since

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Speaker 1: that would add up to two minutes or half a

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Speaker 1: degree over a six week trip. The Commissioners of Longitude

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Speaker 1: later became the Board of Longitude and this board drew

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Speaker 1: from scholars and military minds. It included three professors of

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Speaker 1: mathematics from Cambridge and Oxford, as well as the Astronomer

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Speaker 1: Royal and the President of the Royal Society. Also included

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Speaker 1: were the First Lord of the Admiralty, the First Commissioner

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Speaker 1: of the Navy Board, and the Speaker of the House

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Speaker 1: of Commons simultaneously. A lot of people really thought this

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Speaker 1: was a fool's errand, and a lot of the suggestions

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Speaker 1: that came in were completely cockamami like. For example, someone

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Speaker 1: suggested that they stationed ships at regular intervals all over

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Speaker 1: the ocean where they could use lights and noise to

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Speaker 1: provide guide points. Um. There was also a really wacky

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Speaker 1: theory that had to do with complete pseudoscience and involved

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Speaker 1: wounded dogs and a bandages. It was really strange um

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Speaker 1: and very silly, and a lot of people started using

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Speaker 1: discovering the longitude as a synonym for doing something completely impossible.

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Speaker 1: Many many clockmakers and scientists had tried to make a

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Speaker 1: clock that could keep accurate time at sea. At this point,

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Speaker 1: they had tried springs, they had tried vacuum sealed chambers,

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Speaker 1: in all manner of other techniques and technology to try

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Speaker 1: to protect the clock from motion and from the elements,

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Speaker 1: and some of them had actually met with limited success.

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Speaker 1: They kept good time in fair weather and relatively smooth seas,

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Speaker 1: but one thing. Once things got wet and rocky, they

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Speaker 1: started to falter in their accuracy. The man who made

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Speaker 1: this all work finally was John Harrison. We know almost

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Speaker 1: nothing about Harrison's childhood or early life, or about his

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Speaker 1: personal life outside of his clockmaking. He was born on

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Speaker 1: March twenty four, sixtee and he was the oldest of

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Speaker 1: five children. In seventeen eighteen, he married a woman named

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Barrell, and they had a son the next summer.

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Speaker 1: She died when the boy was six, and he remarried

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Speaker 1: a woman named Elizabeth Scott. They went on to have

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Speaker 1: two more children, and their marriage lasted for fifty years.

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Speaker 1: Harrison learned to be a woodworker from his father, and

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Speaker 1: he had no formal training making clocks. Most of his

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Speaker 1: other education was self taught with the help of books

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Speaker 1: he borrowed, and he was only twenty when he made

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Speaker 1: his first pendulum clock, almost entirely from wood. It's really

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Speaker 1: unclear how he figured out how to do this, considering

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Speaker 1: that he had no background in work uh and his

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Speaker 1: family wasn't well enough off to a four o'clock, and

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Speaker 1: there were no known clockmakers living anywhere near where he

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Speaker 1: grew up, So it's a little hazy where he got

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Speaker 1: this information and knowledge. It reminds me a little bit

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Speaker 1: of Benjamin Bannaker, who he talked about him making a

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Speaker 1: clock after he took apart a pocket watch that somebody

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Speaker 1: had loaned to him. Harrison built two more wooden clocks

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Speaker 1: over the next few years, and by seventeen twenty he

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Speaker 1: developed a reputation for being really good at making clocks.

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Speaker 1: He had a knack for figuring out ingenious ways to

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Speaker 1: improve on existing technology. He was afraid of rust, so

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Speaker 1: he used brass instead of iron or steel, instead of

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Speaker 1: relying on lubricants. All the clocks at this point really

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Speaker 1: had to be lubricated to make their inner workings go.

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Speaker 1: He tried using woods that secreted their own oil to

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Speaker 1: make the gears out of He also designed his wooden

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Speaker 1: gears so that they used the grain of the wood

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Speaker 1: to make them stronger. And since pendulums expand and contract

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Speaker 1: with changes in temper sure, which makes the clocks inaccurate,

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Speaker 1: he used combinations of metals that expanded and contracted at

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Speaker 1: different rates and canceled each other out ingenious. I know,

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Speaker 1: it's just you love hearing about someone who just has

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Speaker 1: so many insights into ways to solve problems. I'm pretty

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Speaker 1: sure when we put this episode on our Facebook, somebody's

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Speaker 1: gonna put the Aliens guy on the thread. That's fine,

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Speaker 1: I love the Aliens guy. Uh, We're not sure when

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Speaker 1: Harrison heard about the Longitude Prize, but later in life

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Speaker 1: he noted noted that it was on his mind. By

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Speaker 1: sevente he had already tackled some of the obstacles that

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Speaker 1: threw off clocks at sea, most particularly the lubricating oils

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Speaker 1: that got thicker and thinner depending on the weather. So

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Speaker 1: his clocks that ran without it had a leg up already,

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Speaker 1: and he just needed to figure out how to compensate

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Speaker 1: for the motion of the ship. His first attempt became

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Speaker 1: known as H one, and this was a big, heavy,

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Speaker 1: blocky brass thing with four files on the front that

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Speaker 1: showed hours, minutes, seconds, and the day of the month.

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Speaker 1: The whole thing worked without any lubrication, and in place

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Speaker 1: of a pendulum, it used these bar shaped balances that

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Speaker 1: were connected by springs, and they canceled out the motion

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Speaker 1: of the ship. This design drew high praise from Edmund Halley,

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Speaker 1: who was on the Board of Longitude at the time,

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Speaker 1: and it was approved to be sent on a test

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Speaker 1: voyage to the East Indies. The Admiralty didn't send it

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Speaker 1: on the voyage for more than a year, though, and

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Speaker 1: they sent it to Lisbon instead of the East Indies,

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Speaker 1: and on top of that, the captain died shortly after arrival.

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Speaker 1: Even so, the h one proved to be more accurate

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Speaker 1: than the ship's master's reckoning of their position, and soon

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Speaker 1: after Harrison arrived back in England in June seventeen thirty seven,

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Speaker 1: the Board of Longitude convened for the first time since

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Speaker 1: its inception to discuss his invention. So success yea, but

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Speaker 1: instead of jumping at the prize money, Harrison said he

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Speaker 1: wanted to make his invention better. He asked two more

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Speaker 1: years to work on a smaller, improved version, and he

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Speaker 1: also asked for five hundred pounds to subsidize his work.

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Speaker 1: The Board also agreed that on the next test voyage

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Speaker 1: some other qualified person could accompany the clock. Because Harrison

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Speaker 1: had been profoundly sea sick during the Lisbon voyage. That's

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Speaker 1: not fun. That's not a fun way to live. I

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Speaker 1: hate se sickness. I empathize. I don't know anybody that

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Speaker 1: loves it, but when you're really prone to it, my

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Speaker 1: understanding is that it's really quite non delightful. Uh. Harrison

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Speaker 1: presented the H two so his second version in January.

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Speaker 1: It was heavier and bigger, and it used circular balances

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Speaker 1: instead of the bar shaped ones, which compensated for the

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Speaker 1: ship's motion even better than the first version. But Harrison

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Speaker 1: still thought he could improve on it, so he spent

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Speaker 1: the next nineteen years on the H three. When he

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Speaker 1: finally finished, he was really satisfied that it would do

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Speaker 1: the job. Like his old pendulums, the H three used

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Speaker 1: two medals to counteract one another's expansions and contractions. The

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Speaker 1: clock also needed no lubrication, and both of the innovations

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Speaker 1: that he used to achieve this still exists today, the

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Speaker 1: metal in the form of bimetallic strips that are used

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Speaker 1: in thermostats, and the lubrication free workings in the form

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Speaker 1: of caged ball bearings that are still used in all

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Speaker 1: kinds of machines. His resulting clock was also lighter and smaller,

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Speaker 1: but it did have a really really large number of

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Speaker 1: moving parts. And yet there's more. A few years earlier,

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Speaker 1: a watchmaker named John Jeffreys had made Harrison a pocket

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Speaker 1: watch using Harrison's specifications and bimetallic components. Harrison hadn't thought

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Speaker 1: at all about using anything so small and portable to

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Speaker 1: keep time on a ship, but Jeffrey's pocket watch kept

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Speaker 1: time extremely well, so Harrison decided to make another time

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Speaker 1: piece that looked more like a pocket watch. Yeah, at

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Speaker 1: this point, little pocket watches were not They were not

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Speaker 1: very accurate, and they're pretty fiddly, and they had to

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Speaker 1: be wound every day. They had a lot of downsides,

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Speaker 1: and so he had never thought about trying to do

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Speaker 1: it that way, But after getting this gift, he did,

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Speaker 1: and the resulting H four was finished in seventeen fifty nine.

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Speaker 1: It weighed only three pounds and it measured five inches across,

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Speaker 1: so too big and heavy to really be carried in

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Speaker 1: a pocket, but it looked a lot like a pocket watch.

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Speaker 1: It definitely was much much smaller and nimbler than the

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Speaker 1: other versions he had made. This did come with some tradeoffs, though,

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Speaker 1: Unlike the earlier models, it did require lubrication, and it

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Speaker 1: needed to be wound every day, and required some regular

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Speaker 1: maintenance and cleaning to keep it running. But it's portable,

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Speaker 1: and you also read it just like you'd read a

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Speaker 1: regular clock, and as was proved on a voyage, it

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Speaker 1: was more accurate than required for the twenty thousand pound

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Speaker 1: grand prize. However, he did not immediately rebend lots of

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Speaker 1: prize money because there was drama. The Age four went

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Speaker 1: on a test voyage to Jamaica, which, as we referenced

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Speaker 1: before the break, it passed with flying colors, but the

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Speaker 1: trial was thrown out on a technicality. Harrison was supposed

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Speaker 1: to use the eclipses of Jupiter's moons to to confirm

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Speaker 1: the longitude in Jamaica, and he didn't do that. He

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Speaker 1: didn't know that he was supposed to do it. He

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Speaker 1: wound up getting it like a smaller sort of consolation

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Speaker 1: prize that would make me her rumph uh. Meanwhile, to

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Speaker 1: other two astronomers, Neville Mascaline and James Bradley, the latter

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Speaker 1: being the astronomer royal on the Longitude Board, had been

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Speaker 1: in pursuit of the prize through lunar methods. As we

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Speaker 1: talked about earlier. Unlike Harrison, they both had formal standing

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Speaker 1: and a presence in the academic community. They and others

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00:19:54,800 --> 00:19:58,800
Speaker 1: advocated strongly for a lunar solution to the longitude problem,

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Speaker 1: not a mechanical and when Bradley died, his replacement, Nathaniel Bliss,

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Speaker 1: was similarly tied to the lunar idea. This was one

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00:20:07,440 --> 00:20:10,000
Speaker 1: of those weird things where the fact that they both

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00:20:10,000 --> 00:20:13,919
Speaker 1: had formal educations made people believe them more than they

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00:20:13,960 --> 00:20:17,280
Speaker 1: believed someone who was self taught. But then also a

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00:20:17,280 --> 00:20:19,719
Speaker 1: lot of people seem to have this really weird idea

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Speaker 1: that the harder method would be better somehow than one

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00:20:23,320 --> 00:20:27,680
Speaker 1: that was easy. Uh, sometimes I do that in life,

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Speaker 1: so I can't judge them too harshly. Yeah. So Neville

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Speaker 1: Maskeline became Harrison's nemesis. He became the official observer for

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Speaker 1: Harrison's do over of his trial of the Age four,

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Speaker 1: even though Maskelin had a vested interest in his own

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00:20:44,800 --> 00:20:48,760
Speaker 1: work winning the prize. In spite of Maskeline's involvement, the

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00:20:48,880 --> 00:20:51,600
Speaker 1: H four did pass its second test again, once again

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Speaker 1: with flying colors, and after a long delay, the Board

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00:20:55,280 --> 00:20:59,160
Speaker 1: of Longitude granted Harrison half the prize, promising the remainder

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Speaker 1: if he handed over all of his prior work and

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00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:05,840
Speaker 1: built two more models of the H four. But as

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00:21:05,880 --> 00:21:09,080
Speaker 1: time passed, George the Third started adding more requirements to

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Speaker 1: the Longitude Act, which at this point was more than

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Speaker 1: fifty years old, and some of these requirements specifically referred

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Speaker 1: to Harrison and his work. Harrison's relationship with the Board

359
00:21:20,440 --> 00:21:24,720
Speaker 1: became progressively more and more adversarial. The Board kept demanding

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Speaker 1: that he dismantled and reassemble the H four and the

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00:21:27,760 --> 00:21:31,000
Speaker 1: presence of observers, which had never been part of the

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00:21:31,080 --> 00:21:34,280
Speaker 1: requirements and which you know, Harrison was logically afraid that

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Speaker 1: someone was going to steal his idea. Mascalin, who was

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00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:42,720
Speaker 1: still acting as Harrison's taskmaster, also at the same time

365
00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:46,240
Speaker 1: started publishing his own astronomical charts for people to use

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Speaker 1: instead of this clock idea. All of this craziness dragged

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00:21:50,359 --> 00:21:53,280
Speaker 1: on and on, and even though the H four had

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00:21:53,520 --> 00:21:56,520
Speaker 1: been proven to work as it was supposed to, Masculine

369
00:21:56,560 --> 00:22:00,000
Speaker 1: collected it along with all of Harrison's other time pieces

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Speaker 1: to subject it to ten months more of tests, and

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00:22:04,600 --> 00:22:08,520
Speaker 1: which he insisted on conducting himself. And these tests went

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Speaker 1: on from May of seventeen sixty six to March of

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Speaker 1: seventeen sixty seven. And not only did the H four fail,

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Speaker 1: but it also never worked properly after this. Yes, possible

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00:22:19,320 --> 00:22:22,000
Speaker 1: masculine had something to do with that fact. Yeah, he

376
00:22:22,080 --> 00:22:25,959
Speaker 1: also short walk to get there. Yeah. He also handled

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00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:29,800
Speaker 1: all the other clocks really roughly in transporting them, Like

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00:22:29,920 --> 00:22:32,480
Speaker 1: one of them was dropped while loading it onto the

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Speaker 1: cart that was going to take them to London, and

380
00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:38,040
Speaker 1: the cart that took them to London was just inordinately

381
00:22:38,240 --> 00:22:41,800
Speaker 1: bad and very rattily and shaky. He just did not

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Speaker 1: take care with the whole thing. So, finally, after a

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Speaker 1: great deal of angry back and forth, Harrison did actually

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Speaker 1: make two more H four's watchmaker Larkham Kendall made a

385
00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:56,840
Speaker 1: reproduction as well, which he called K one, which took

386
00:22:56,920 --> 00:23:00,320
Speaker 1: him more than two years to complete. K one on

387
00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:04,040
Speaker 1: Captain James Cook's second voyage. He had previously spoken very

388
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Speaker 1: highly of the lunar method. Meanwhile, Harris had moved on

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00:23:07,640 --> 00:23:10,399
Speaker 1: to making yet another watch, which was the H five.

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00:23:11,119 --> 00:23:14,400
Speaker 1: As this was happening, his son William wrote to King

391
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Speaker 1: George the Third, this letter detailing all of his father's

392
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Speaker 1: work and how difficult things had been with the Longitude Board.

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Speaker 1: Um as later reported by William Harrison's son John so

394
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Speaker 1: the John Harrison clockmaker's grandson, King George said, these people

395
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Speaker 1: have been cruelly treated by God. Harrison, I will see

396
00:23:36,320 --> 00:23:40,480
Speaker 1: you righted. King George went to the Prime Minister at

397
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Speaker 1: this point, and the Prime Minister then went to the Board,

398
00:23:43,119 --> 00:23:47,000
Speaker 1: and finally, in April of seventeen seventy three, Harrison was

399
00:23:47,040 --> 00:23:50,439
Speaker 1: granted eight thousand, seven hundred and fifty pounds, which was

400
00:23:50,560 --> 00:23:53,280
Speaker 1: most of the difference between the ten thousand he had

401
00:23:53,280 --> 00:23:55,720
Speaker 1: been given earlier and the twenty thousand that he had

402
00:23:55,760 --> 00:24:00,800
Speaker 1: earned by completing this task. But it's specific quickly was

403
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,000
Speaker 1: not the grand prize. Although the Board of Longitude was

404
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:06,960
Speaker 1: in existence for a hundred and fourteen years and it

405
00:24:07,040 --> 00:24:10,159
Speaker 1: ultimately spent a hundred and one thousand pounds and an

406
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:13,679
Speaker 1: attempts to crack the longitude problem, it never awarded the

407
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:17,520
Speaker 1: twenty thousand pound prize to anyone. One of the arguments

408
00:24:17,560 --> 00:24:20,000
Speaker 1: that was made against Harrison getting it was that the

409
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:23,400
Speaker 1: H four was too expensive and time consuming to mass produce.

410
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:26,920
Speaker 1: I mean it had taken this other watchmaker, Larkham Kendall

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Speaker 1: two years to make up one reproduction of it. Um.

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00:24:32,280 --> 00:24:36,600
Speaker 1: None of this had been part of the original stipulations though. Yeah,

413
00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:39,560
Speaker 1: it does seem a little harassing at that point. Yeah,

414
00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:42,199
Speaker 1: it really starts to feel like the board was just like,

415
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:47,560
Speaker 1: we don't want to part with that money. Yeah. However,

416
00:24:47,760 --> 00:24:50,960
Speaker 1: Captain Cook was absolutely glowing about the K one when

417
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:53,600
Speaker 1: he returned from his journey. He said that it quote

418
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:57,560
Speaker 1: exceeded the expectations of its most zealous advocate and called

419
00:24:57,600 --> 00:25:01,560
Speaker 1: it our faithful guide through all vicissitude and climates. Yeah,

420
00:25:01,560 --> 00:25:05,440
Speaker 1: he pretty much would converted from his previous uh feeling,

421
00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:08,679
Speaker 1: which was that the astronomical charts that had been provided

422
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:13,159
Speaker 1: to him on his first voyage had worked perfectly well uh.

423
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 1: At the end of this whole saga, John Harrison died

424
00:25:17,400 --> 00:25:21,719
Speaker 1: on March seventeen seventy six, only a couple of years

425
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 1: after being awarded this additional eight thousand, seven fifty pounds Larkham.

426
00:25:28,359 --> 00:25:32,840
Speaker 1: Kendall's attempts to mass produce Harrison's designs were really not

427
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: at the quality that Harrison had managed. They were inferior,

428
00:25:36,280 --> 00:25:38,359
Speaker 1: But one of them, known as the K two, was

429
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:41,440
Speaker 1: stolen from Captain Bly during the mutiny on the Bounty,

430
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:45,440
Speaker 1: other watchmakers kept trying to figure out how to mass

431
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:49,480
Speaker 1: produce and build on this original idea, and finally, watchmakers

432
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:53,080
Speaker 1: John Arnold and Thomas Earnshaw each managed to figure out

433
00:25:53,080 --> 00:25:56,160
Speaker 1: ways to mass produce them, although the quality of what

434
00:25:56,240 --> 00:25:59,639
Speaker 1: was put out really varied a whole lot. By the

435
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:02,879
Speaker 1: seven teen eighties, though using a chronometer to take a

436
00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: longitude reading became a common part of ship's logs, many

437
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 1: ships had more than one for the sake of both

438
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: redundancy and accuracy. They would take the same reading with

439
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: lots of different blocks to try to make sure that

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00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:17,639
Speaker 1: they had the most accurate one. The h M. S.

441
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:21,920
Speaker 1: Beagle reportedly had twenty two of them when Charles Darwin

442
00:26:22,040 --> 00:26:26,360
Speaker 1: began his voyages, and most of Harrison's clocks are now

443
00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:29,640
Speaker 1: in London's National Maritime Museum, as well as other museums

444
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:32,880
Speaker 1: throughout the world. It's kind of a side note. There

445
00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:34,560
Speaker 1: was a lot of talk as all of this was

446
00:26:34,600 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 1: going on about, uh, what a great loss of life

447
00:26:38,600 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: would be prevented if the longitude problem were solved. I

448
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: read a really interested interesting paper while doing the research

449
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:50,399
Speaker 1: for this about how scurvy was actually killing way more

450
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: sailors than shipwrecks did, and scurvy was killing more sailors

451
00:26:55,840 --> 00:26:59,440
Speaker 1: even than combat was, and the authors were like, if

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00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:02,040
Speaker 1: they actually we really cared about the loss of life,

453
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:04,680
Speaker 1: there would have been a scurvy board to take care

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00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 1: of that problem, which Captain Cook wound up doing by

455
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 1: his own efforts for his own crew without someone forcing

456
00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:14,240
Speaker 1: him to do it. So I found that to be

457
00:27:14,320 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting aside. So now do you have

458
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:20,679
Speaker 1: some listener mail for us to enjoy? Yes, I do.

459
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:23,639
Speaker 1: This is from Kess, who writes about our episode on

460
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:27,440
Speaker 1: the Battle of Blair Mountain. Kess says, in the episode,

461
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:30,359
Speaker 1: you mentioned my hometown of Fort Thomas, Kentucky, where my

462
00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 1: family has lived for four generations. Although my family loves history,

463
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:37,160
Speaker 1: I somehow missed that the soldiers from the fort once

464
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:40,440
Speaker 1: participated in the national conflict. I've been to the fort

465
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:43,199
Speaker 1: many times because, in addition to still serving as an

466
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:46,639
Speaker 1: army reserve, basis also a local park. As kids, my

467
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:49,160
Speaker 1: brother and I spent many hours at the fort, exploring

468
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 1: the woods, playing tennis, and climbing the jungle gyms. We

469
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: used to mountain bike on the same roads that the

470
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: Army jeeps used for training exercises. My grandmother, who married

471
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:00,399
Speaker 1: into the Fort Thomas side of our family, was the

472
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: daughter of a coal miner. Grandma Eleanor never let us

473
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:05,560
Speaker 1: forget our roots in the coal industry and made sure

474
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: that my brother and I grew up knowing the differences

475
00:28:08,040 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: between bituminous and anthracite coal. Most coal in the United States,

476
00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 1: such as the coal mined at Blair Mountain, as a

477
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 1: bituminous coal, which has a lower carbon content than the

478
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 1: anthracite coal and burns less efficiently. Grandma l grew up

479
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:24,919
Speaker 1: in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania, where her father was

480
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:27,680
Speaker 1: a member of the United Mine Workers Union. My great

481
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 1: grandpa was called Snowball, and he was a child of

482
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:33,800
Speaker 1: Russian and Polish immigrants who came through Ellis Island. Snowball

483
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:36,160
Speaker 1: started working at the mines when he was thirteen, having

484
00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 1: just finished third grade. When he was fifteen, Snowball was

485
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:42,640
Speaker 1: promoted to shovel operator, and during his nearly five decades

486
00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 1: in the coal industry, Snowball learned to operate the steam,

487
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:49,400
Speaker 1: diesel and electrical shovels. Shovel operation was considered a pretty

488
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 1: good job at the time, became because it came with

489
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:54,960
Speaker 1: less health risks than most mining careers. Snowballs worked with

490
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:57,040
Speaker 1: the shovels took place on the surface of the mine,

491
00:28:57,320 --> 00:28:59,640
Speaker 1: so he did not have to regularly enter shafts and

492
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:02,040
Speaker 1: was not exposed to the same amounts of carbon dust

493
00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 1: as other miners. Snowball outlived many of his mining colleagues,

494
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:08,280
Speaker 1: but was able to meet some of his great grandchildren,

495
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 1: including me, before he passed away at the age of

496
00:29:10,800 --> 00:29:15,040
Speaker 1: ninety three. Recently, my dad took me on a pilgrimage

497
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:17,640
Speaker 1: to the coal region to see family and friends. We

498
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: visited several mining towns, including Centralia, where a coal fire

499
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:24,960
Speaker 1: has been burning underground since nineteen sixty two, Shndo, where

500
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:28,400
Speaker 1: the Great Anthracite Coal Stride took place in nineteen o two,

501
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 1: and William Penn, a former company town where my great

502
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 1: grandfather served as chief of the volunteer fire department. A

503
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:37,960
Speaker 1: picture of my great grandfather still hangs on the wall

504
00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 1: at the firehouse. I will never forget my expedition to

505
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:43,640
Speaker 1: the coal region, because while I always knew that coal

506
00:29:43,760 --> 00:29:46,600
Speaker 1: was important to my family, I never really appreciated how

507
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 1: extensively cold contributed to the formation of the modern United States.

508
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 1: My grandfather from Fort Thomas and my grandmother from the

509
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:56,760
Speaker 1: coal region met in Washington, d C. When they both

510
00:29:56,840 --> 00:29:59,400
Speaker 1: joined the Navy to improve their prospects. I wonder if

511
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:01,800
Speaker 1: they ever spoke about the connection between the Fort Thomas

512
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: and the coal industry, or if they ever realized how

513
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: the Battle of Blair Mountain mutually affected their lives. While

514
00:30:07,760 --> 00:30:09,880
Speaker 1: my grandmother is no longer with us, Grandpa is still

515
00:30:09,920 --> 00:30:12,840
Speaker 1: active in Love's history. I will definitely play your podcast

516
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:15,920
Speaker 1: for him the next time I'm home. Thanks for helping

517
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 1: us make a new memory and for the great work

518
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:20,600
Speaker 1: that you do. Kiss. I wanted to read this for

519
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. Uh. One is that I love

520
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:26,080
Speaker 1: when we have family stories that are tied to the podcast.

521
00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: The other is that Kess included how to pronounce the

522
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:34,200
Speaker 1: town of Shendo, which is specifically spelled like Shenandoah, which

523
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:37,800
Speaker 1: is pronounced Shenandoah when used for other parts of the

524
00:30:37,840 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 1: world in other places, and pretty much any example of

525
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:46,760
Speaker 1: when something has a pronunciation that's pretty established as being

526
00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:50,120
Speaker 1: different from how local people say it is the time

527
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:52,360
Speaker 1: that I need someone to spell that out for me

528
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 1: because I would have said it wrong. Yeah, I totally

529
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:57,760
Speaker 1: would have gone with Shenandoah, yeah, because there is there

530
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: are definitely other places pronounced that way. So thank you

531
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: yes for writing and for telling me how to say

532
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: shando uh. If you would like to write to us,

533
00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 1: you can. We're at history Podcast at how stuff works

534
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com

535
00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:18,040
Speaker 1: slash miss in history and on Twitter at miss in history.

536
00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 1: Are tumbler is miss in history dot tumbler dot com,

537
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 1: and we're on Pinterest at pentterest dot com slash miss

538
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 1: in history. If you would like to learn more about

539
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:28,920
Speaker 1: what we have talked about today, you can come to

540
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:31,640
Speaker 1: our parent company's website, which is how stuff Works dot

541
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:35,160
Speaker 1: com and put the word longitude into the search bar.

542
00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 1: You will find an article called how to use the

543
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:40,520
Speaker 1: Stars to find your way. If you would like to

544
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 1: come to our website, which is missed in history dot com,

545
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:45,720
Speaker 1: you'll find our show notes, you'll find all of the episodes,

546
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:48,240
Speaker 1: and we will be putting in some links that tell

547
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 1: you in more detail how to figure out where you

548
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:53,560
Speaker 1: are using things like clocks and stars and moons and

549
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:56,280
Speaker 1: sons and things, because that would have been very convoluted

550
00:31:56,280 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: to explain in the episode. You can do all that

551
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:00,560
Speaker 1: and a whole lot more at how suff works dot

552
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:07,000
Speaker 1: com or ms in history dot com for more on

553
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff

554
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:21,920
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Mmm m