H4 Marine Chronometer

H4 Marine Chronometer Temporary Tattoo

In the 1700’s Britain had a huge problem, they had no way to precisely determine the longitude of a ship at sea. This may not seem like a big deal, but in 1707, over 2,000 men died because they accidentally ran ships ran aground. They though they were more east than they were. This brought the problem to national attention and the British government offered an enormous prize, equivalent of millions of today’s dollars, to anyone who could solve the longitude problem. In theory the problem was simple, if you knew the exact time of a specific place, you could measure the sun's position in the sky and figure out exactly how far east or west you were. The roadblock was at the time there was no precise way to keep time on a ship. Along comes John Harrison, a carpenter who invents a series of four clocks to solve the problem. The first took 20 years and was roughly two feet on all sides. It worked sufficiently, but Harrison was a perfectionist who simply would not accept a mediocre solution. So, he spent another 20 years developing up to H4. It was a marvel of engineering that only lost 5.4 seconds over 81 days, and fit into a pocket. That gave it an accuracy 30 times what was necessary to win the challenge and take the prize. H4 shows that the most beautiful, elegant solutions to impossible problems come from unexpected places.