Marine chronometer. History of invention and production

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Marine chronometer. History of invention and production

The history of technology, technology, objects around us

Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us

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Chronometer - a watch with a particularly accurate course - (mechanical or quartz).

Marine chronometer

For the first time, an accurate marine chronometer was invented by the English inventor, watchmaker Harrison in 1731, in 1734 he brought it to practical use. In his invention, he managed to compensate for two main errors in the chronometer movement - a change in the mechanical moment for the balancer trigger as the mainspring unwinds and applied thermal compensation of the length and elasticity of the balancer thread from changes in external temperature using bimetallic bending elements.

By the beginning of the era of the Great geographical discoveries, determining the coordinates was still an unattainable dream of navigators.
Determining the latitude was not a particular problem - it is easily calculated by measuring the elevation angle of the North Star above the horizon. But longitude remained a tough nut to crack. The mistake led to the loss of ships, people and goods.

The leading maritime powers - Spain and Portugal, Holland, France and Great Britain - have established serious bonuses for solving the problem. Over time, several astronomical methods appeared - Werner (method of lunar distances, 1514), Galileo (according to the position of Jupiter's satellites, 1612), but their implementation required complex astronomical tools and calculations. A simpler method (attributed to Gemma Frisius) - comparing local time with the exact one at the reference point (port) - required a very accurate clock.

In 1714, the British Parliament established a special prize for the development of a method for determining longitude. The amount was fantastic for those times - £10 with an error of 000 nautical miles, £60 (15 miles) and £000 (40 miles). In order to determine longitude with such accuracy during a voyage to the West Indies, a watch with an average daily drift of no more than 20 seconds was required (this despite the fact that watches at that time were considered especially accurate if they had a minute hand).

In 1728, the self-taught carpenter and watchmaker John Harrison entered the competition. He studied ship roll for a couple of years and by 1735 he had completed the H1 clock. Huge and heavy (almost 40 kg) pendulum clocks with an average daily drift of 8 seconds showed an error of 150 miles in longitude after sailing from London to Lisbon and back. Similar results were shown in 1741 by model H2. In 1749, the H3 model saw the light of day, where Harrison used a bimetallic plate in the pendulum for temperature compensation and gimbals for rocking compensation.

This watch was more accurate at sea than any other on land, with an average daily drift of less than 2 seconds, and after 45 days of sailing, longitude accuracy was only 10 miles. However, by that time the parliament had changed the conditions of the competition - now not only accuracy was required, but also compactness!

Harrison did not give up and in 1760 introduced a new model, H4, no longer pendulum, but with balance. The watch had a diameter of 12 cm and was tested during two voyages to the West Indies - in 1761 and 1764, while the drift was 5 seconds over a three-month journey. But even after that, the parliament was in no hurry to pay the money. The fact is that in 1757, the British naval officer John Campbell developed the design of a sextant - an instrument for measuring the angular distances between celestial bodies.

Parliament hoped that with the help of tables of the Royal Observatory and Werner's method, longitude could be calculated "for free" (Campbell was in the royal military service, and he was not entitled to a prize). But Harrison's watch turned out to be more convenient, and in the end, in March 1776 - on his 83rd birthday - he was paid a well-deserved bonus.

Over the past centuries, the design of Garrison's chronometer has not changed much (except for manufacturing technology and materials).

Author: S.Apresov

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