Astronomers Vs Harrison (clock maker) ref Longitude problem

ive just finnished a great book on the Harrison saga.
he was a remakable man and he was in an interesting
conflict with astronomers, harrison wanted to solve the problem
of ships getting lost due to not knowing the longitude position of the ship
and he favourered a very accurate time piece, and Astronomers, went for
a solution based on star/planet.moon positions, in various combinations.

anyway the watch won :-) (the prize)

anyway if your looking for a good read i would recommend it

title= Longitude
Author = Dava Sobel
publisher = forth estate london

title= Longitude
Author = Dava Sobel
publisher = forth estate london

Did you watch (!!) the TV series ?
jc

No I missed it, was it any good?


"john carruthers" wrote in message
...
title= Longitude
Author = Dava Sobel
publisher = forth estate london

Did you watch (!!) the TV series ?
jc

To Hayley

You can ask these astronomers why they believe that the Earth rotates
through 360 degrees in 23 hours 56 min 04 sec when the principles which
supported Harrison's clocks rely on axial rotation at 15 degrees per
hour and 24 hours/360 degrees in total.

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/JennyChen.shtml

You are addressing the descendents of Maskelyne and the celestial
cataloguers who made Harrison's life miserable and more importantly
Harrison knew their methods were poor -

"Now, in the former part of this book, I have treated about matters
pertaining to the strictness of measuring time; and have shewn the
deficiencies of such means as Mr. Graham had taken or made use of for
that purpose; and I have also treated of the improper, troublesome,
erroneous - tedious method, which the professors at Cambridge and
Oxford would have to be for the longitude at sea:" John Harrison

Why you and everyone else here will use the pace of a clock fixed to
axial rotation at 15 degrees per hour (despite belief in another value
and method) and why it will never change is far more interesting than
you can imagine for it begins long before Copernicus reasoned that the
Earth had an axial and orbital motion.

Our ancestors knew that the total length of a day from one noon to the
next noon were never the same so they devised a correction known as the
Equation of Time to equalise the variations and create the 24 hour day
and its seamless transition into the next 24 hour day using noon as a
marker.

The early heliocentrists (after 1543) adapted the pre-Copernican
Equation of Time correction and the 24 hour day to the newly discovered
insight that the Earth rotates on its axis.Easy to see why it will
always be precisely 15 degrees per hour and 24 hours/360 degrees
today,tommorrow and as long as you live.

Those who try to justify axial rotation as 23 hours 56 min 04 sec are
just the descendents of those miserable men regardless of what you read
in this forum.They have not won but they have temporarily wrecked
astronomical principles that belong to Harrison and true astronomers.

Harrison's clocks rely on rotation@15°/hour relative to a frame of reference
that is itself rotating@just under 1°/day. (That should clog up the address
trawlers a bit!) The rotation net of FOR rotation is therefore indeed just
under 15°/hour. I have not heard of Maskelyne, and therefore do not know the
Maskelyne agenda.

"oriel36" wrote in message
ups.com...
To Hayley

You can ask these astronomers why they believe that the Earth rotates
through 360 degrees in 23 hours 56 min 04 sec when the principles which
supported Harrison's clocks rely on axial rotation at 15 degrees per
hour and 24 hours/360 degrees in total.

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/JennyChen.shtml

You are addressing the descendents of Maskelyne and the celestial
cataloguers who made Harrison's life miserable and more importantly
Harrison knew their methods were poor

No I missed it, was it any good?
Superb, Michael Gambon as Harrison was as good a Yorkshireman as could be
hoped for. A line that stood out for me though was from Harrison the son
when speaking to the revered person of the Astronomer Royal
"..within a thirtieth of a second Sir, and that's bloody nigh perfect..."
:-)
jc

Charles Gilman wrote:
Harrison's clocks rely on rotation@15°/hour relative to a frame of reference
that is itself rotating@just under 1°/day. (That should clog up the address
trawlers a bit!) The rotation net of FOR rotation is therefore indeed just
under 15°/hour. I have not heard of Maskelyne, and therefore do not know the
Maskelyne agenda.


Your introduction of a 'frame of reference' for clocks and axial
rotation is roughly the same miserable type of reasoning that Harrison
faced in his efforts to promote the clock method for resolving
longitude.The original poster of this thread should be aware that these
contrived and convoluted expressions are just that in contrast to the
clear principles which make clocks good longitude keepers at the rate
of 15 degrees per hour exactly .In this matter it is good to give
Harrison a voice -

"Now, in the former part of this book, I have treated about matters
pertaining to the strictness of measuring time; and have shewn the
deficiencies of such means as Mr. Graham had taken or made use of for
that purpose; and I have also treated of the improper, troublesome,
erroneous - tedious method, which the professors at Cambridge and
Oxford would have to be for the longitude at sea:"


" But indeed, had I continued under the hands of the rude
commissioners, this completion, or great accomplishment, neither
would, nor could, ever have been obtained; but however, providence
otherwise ordered the matter, and I can now boldly say, that if the
provision for the heat and cold could properly be in the balance
itself, as it is in the pendulum, the watch [or my longitude
time-keeper] would then perform to a few seconds in a year, yea, to
such perfection now are imaginary impossibilities conquered; so the
priests at Cambridge and Oxford, &c. may cease their pursuit in the
longitude affair, and as otherwise then to occupy their time."

John Harrison.


The sidereal value of 23 hours 56 min 04 sec and its justification
that you adhere to is little more than a cartoon but very much in line
with the astronomical fudges that 17th/18th century cataloguers
introduced to fix axial rotation to the celestial sphere directly.With
the internet,it is now easier than ever to expose the ridiculous
maneuvering that has you running for 'frames of reference' and other
linguistic garbage when the clarity of the original method for fixing
the pace of a clock to axial rotation is evident to all.

The wonderful thing about the noon Equation of Time correction which
fixes the pace of clocks to terrestial longitudes and axial rotation
is that it has its roots in pre-Copernican astronomy and Copernican
astronomy.The pre-Copernican astronomers give us the equable 24 hour
day from the natural unequal day by using the noon Equation of Time
correction and the early heliocentrists adapted this to the newly
discovered Copernican insight of indepedent axial rotation.

A location on Earth does Not rotate to face the Sun (otherwise known as
natural noon) every 24 hours hence the neccessity of the ancient
Equation of Time correction.The enjoyable reasoning behind the transfer
from the Equation of Time as a means to allow one equable 24 hour day
seamlessly elapse into the next 24 hour day (Monday-Tuesday-Wed...) to
constant axial rotation at 15 degrees per hour and 24 hours/360degrees
in total in that it equalise the actual cause of the natural inequality
- the orbital motion of the Earth and the varying speed in which it
travels in its annual path around the Sun.

The dumb cataloguers have a location on Earth rotate to face the Sun in
24 hours when no such thing occurs yet they need it to justify the
sidereal value of 23 hours 56 min 04 sec.Here is how the numbskulls
justify it mathematically and graphically.

http://www.pfm.howard.edu/astronomy/...S/AACHCIR0.JPG

360 degrees = 24 hours
1 deg = 4 min
..986 deg = 3 min 56 sec

24 hours minus 3 min 56 sec = 23 hours 56 min 04 sec


I would hope that the original poster would not be swayed by contrived
'frames of reference' garbage for indeed Flamsteed's erroneous 'proof'
for constant axial rotation and the astronomical fudge known as the
analemma has concealed the really exquisite transfer of pre-Copernican
astronomy to the heliocentric jewel of axial rotation at 24 hours/360
degress.These principles everyone will use today and for the rest of
their lives,even those tedious and miserable men who believe that the
value is an alternative one.

Tribunals and commissions are normally set up where gross misconduct
or incompetence are involved.I have done an audit on what happended and
why it snowballed into a monster.Should any of you consider the
opposition to Harrison and something shameful then it is no less
disgraceful that the final chapter of that story has still to be
written.The victims now are school children which you once
were,children who are taught that pretension and cunning maneuvering is
an attribute.





"oriel36" wrote in message
ups.com...
To Hayley

You can ask these astronomers why they believe that the Earth rotates
through 360 degrees in 23 hours 56 min 04 sec when the principles which
supported Harrison's clocks rely on axial rotation at 15 degrees per
hour and 24 hours/360 degrees in total.

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/JennyChen.shtml

You are addressing the descendents of Maskelyne and the celestial
cataloguers who made Harrison's life miserable and more importantly
Harrison knew their methods were poor

"oriel36" wrote:
[snip]
The dumb cataloguers have a location on Earth rotate to face the Sun in
24 hours when no such thing occurs yet they need it to justify the
sidereal value of 23 hours 56 min 04 sec.Here is how the numbskulls
justify it mathematically and graphically.

http://www.pfm.howard.edu/astronomy/...S/AACHCIR0.JPG

360 degrees = 24 hours
1 deg = 4 min
.986 deg = 3 min 56 sec

24 hours minus 3 min 56 sec = 23 hours 56 min 04 sec

You persist in repeating this misrepresentation of the facts despite
being corrected on a number of occasions. Why?

As has been explained to you before, the above is an illustration of
the difference between average solar days and sidereal days. Nothing
more. Please stop beating up the straw men, they're getting rather
tired of it.


Tim
--
Shares are your votes in a pigologocracy.

In article ,
Hayley wrote:
ive just finnished a great book on the Harrison saga.
he was a remakable man and he was in an interesting
conflict with astronomers, harrison wanted to solve the problem
of ships getting lost due to not knowing the longitude position of the ship
and he favourered a very accurate time piece, and Astronomers, went for
a solution based on star/planet.moon positions, in various combinations.

anyway the watch won :-) (the prize)


Somewhat OT for the group, I know - but Harrison did /not/ win the
Longitude prize (nor did he deserve to). He was given an award from the
prize fund, but not the prize. This was because the prize was for
a "useful and practicable means of determining the longitude". A
watch which cost as much as a ship, which could only be made (or
serviced) by one man, and that man in his 70s, was not the solution.
That's one reason the admiralty favoured the astronomical solution
- tables of lunars and eclipses of the Jovian moons. Even when Earnshaw
produced a mass-production chronometer (and got an award from the
prize-fund for it), making it possible for every major warship
to have a chromometer, the tables were still produced. Improving
the accuracy of these tables was, indeed, the reason that Babbage's
computing engines received official support. Chronometers were
not the entire answer - for one thing they tended not to survive
the shock of battle damage. The navy taught longitude by lunars
and by Jovian eclipses at least into the 1950s - my father used
longitude-by-lunars in the 1940s in the South Atlantic after
their chronometers went iffy after they dropped a shallow
depth-charge pattern. I'd not be surprised if lunars weren't
finally dropped until after DECCA and LORAN were available.

End of off-topic..

--
Andy Breen ~ Not speaking on behalf of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Feng Shui: an ancient oriental art for extracting
money from the gullible (Martin Sinclair)

Tim Auton wrote:
"oriel36" wrote:
[snip]
The dumb cataloguers have a location on Earth rotate to face the Sun in
24 hours when no such thing occurs yet they need it to justify the
sidereal value of 23 hours 56 min 04 sec.Here is how the numbskulls
justify it mathematically and graphically.

http://www.pfm.howard.edu/astronomy/...S/AACHCIR0.JPG

360 degrees = 24 hours
1 deg = 4 min
.986 deg = 3 min 56 sec

24 hours minus 3 min 56 sec = 23 hours 56 min 04 sec

You persist in repeating this misrepresentation of the facts despite
being corrected on a number of occasions. Why?


I would hope the poster would get a feel for the frustration Harrison
knew too well in encountering the dullest bunch of people ever to set
foot on the planet,people who cannot even get the fact that the Earth
rotates at 15 degrees per hour and 24 hours/360 degrees in total.

No problem with the unfamiliarity with the Equation of Time correction
which uses natural noon as the means to transfer the natural unequal
length of a day into the equable 24 hour day.They may even enjoy how
the early heliocentrists adapted the pre-Copernican principle to the
newly discovered insight that the Earth has an indepedent axial
rotation.It is this gorgeous transfer from pre-Copernican principles
to their heliocentric counterpart that makes clocks such good rulers of
distance.




As has been explained to you before, the above is an illustration of
the difference between average solar days and sidereal days. Nothing
more. Please stop beating up the straw men, they're getting rather
tired of it.


I hope it sickens you all for what you did and continue to do to the
achievements of our ancestors.You are the same people introduced fudges
like the analemma to dilute the appreciation of the Equation of Time
and determined that the Earth has a variation in axial tilt to the Sun
-

http://epod.usra.edu/archive/images/analemma.jpg

The final chapter of the Longitude story has yet to be written for
there is unfinished business in recovering astronomy from those awful
astronomical fudges that now serve no good ends.That I have to do this
alone is no great thing but anyone who cares to restore the original
principles which fix the pace of clock to axial rotation at 15 degrees
an hour exactly will do humanity and future generations a service
worthy of the great astronomers and people like Harrison.









Tim
--
Shares are your votes in a pigologocracy.

T