Subject: Arrr, them were different times.
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Posted on: 2020-02-14 15:50:08 UTC

Some images of other watches around the same time show that this sort of decoration was absolutely the norm, so seeing a watch without it would have been quite shocking even then. H5 took three years to complete, and Harrison tested it personally for another two before handing it over to King George III for further testing - I take your point about confidence, but if you're working that closely with something, you'd normally do something with it. The faces of H4 and H5 show the same dramatic difference.

Coming back to the book itself, I absolutely recommend both this and every other Dava Sobel book. I don't actually own them all, but that's only because I didn't know about her 2016 release until literally today. She tells the story of Gallileo through the letters he received from his daughter, and does Copernicus by sticking an entire play into the middle of her book. She's an absolutely gripping historical pop-sci author.

... and now I'm going to stick in a picture of H3. It's not the prettiest of the sea clocks (that's H1, hands-down), but it's definitely the one that best shows off its workings. And if you stick a chair somewhere on the front, you could go visit the Morlocks with it!

hS

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