Clock repairer here: It’s difficult to comprehend John Harrison’s brilliance, especially since he came from a humble family of bell hangers. He developed the caged ball bearing and the bimetallic spring, inventions we all use all day, every day. He also created the gridiron pendulum (which compensates for temperature fluctuations) and the grasshopper escapement (which requires no oil). Harrison’s “wooden” clocks used a hard, self-lubricating wood called “lingum vitae” on the bearing surfaces. The old (paraphrased) saying “Show me the perfect bearing and I’ll build you the perfect clock” was especially true in the 1700s, when oils were terrible at best. Just by doing this, he got around the problem of lubrication, at least one of his timepieces has been running without a drop of oil since it was made. I spend my days dealing with oil and consequences of bad oil. If you don’t lube your clock every few years, it will wear our. Using synthetic oil buys extra time, but it’s still a maintenance item. Most folks don’t do this, so now they’re looking at cleaning, pivot polishing and bushings and all that jazz. If Harrison’s designs really took off, I’d be out of a job, maybe I should be thankful his genius was ignored. He’s right up there with Stephenson and Brunel, maybe even Newton.
We deal with oiling issues on typewriters as well. Chief among which are: previous owners who believe that WD40 is a lubricant first and foremost. Oh yes, it will work for a bit, and then gum up everything. Something I'm sure you are well aware of! Thankfully, the clock-springs and escapements are usually pretty robust on typewriters, thanks mostly to the fact that they don't have to be as precise as those in a timepiece!
Bellringer here: It makes so much sense that he has bell hanging roots! What is almost always in a church tower other than bells? Clocks! He must have seen a variety of clocks from an early age and part of the job sometimes would be connecting the bells to the clock if it had a strike train. Often the church would have the only clock in the village. I've learnt quite a bit about clocks just by being in a church tower all my life.
Also makes sense that he invented ball bearings. Plain bearings are awful to ring on and require a lot of maintenance. We often ring for 3 hours non stop. On plain bearings, this means it all gets considerably tougher the longer you ring!
@@AllonsyRapunzel - Plain bearings are fine if they’re maintained, but they never are. That’s why they’re banned from railroads. All it takes is one maintenance slip-up and then you have an axle fire or even worse.
Of course, wages don't really convert simply by adjusting for inflation. In the mid-1700s, in London, skilled tradesman would have likely made around 1 pound sterling a week. So 20,000 pounds was 400 years wages for a skilled tradesman, which would convert to about $24,000,000. Put another way, HMS Victory cost around 60,000 pounds sterling and it was a flagship naval vessel.
@@gilroymenezes1558 Oh my god, TH-cam's translator wants to translate your comment which is already written in English, to English and say "Ba stupid tss". The translated comment goes to Translator...brave idea translator!
Although John Harrison died on the same calendar date that he was born, he was born under the Julian calendar and died under the Gregorian, so technically 11 days short of 83 years old when he died.
There's a wonderful TV mini series with Jeremy Irons and Michael Gambon called 'Longitude'. Sadly only a low res version is available on TH-cam but you can buy it for less than £20,000+inflation. Highly recommended!
@@JayForeman Separate the instrumental and the vocals. Play only the instrumental during the intro. Later at a random point in the video, insert the vocals.
Navy sailor here: On the plus side, with digital engine readouts for speed and digital (read: inertial) compasses, dead reckoning is WAY more accurate than when this was done with a knotted rope and a shoddy magnetic compass. Navigating on an ever shifting seemingly-infinite flat-on-a-good-day featureless non-euclidean plane is always going to be a problem, complicated by drift but if GPS fails, we can still get a rough sense of where we are. This is something we had to practice, like kinda all the time. They'd make us compare our dead reckoning track on the chart with the quartermaster's astronomically-ascertained position every half hour and I could typically get us within a few miles.
... and doing dead reckoning (or astronomic navigation) is always a good hobby if you are bored while sailing (the intellectual part of my brain loves the challenge)
Is there any other kind of sailor then? Because I thought all sailors were navy, either military or civilian Military is HMS, US, CHMS, AHMS, RDN, Or civilian Merchant Navy, SS, RMS My point is they are ALL navy sailors so why say NAVY sailor? Is there a AIRLINE sailor? If you meant your nation military then specify it as Royal, US Canadian, Dutch, French Navy which would negate 1, the need to say "sailor" and 2, clear up what branch of "NAVY" you are referring too.
In regard to the sailor that tried to warn Admiral Shovell, Wikipedia says "While it is possible that a sailor may have debated the vessel's location and feared for its fate, such debates were common upon entering the English Channel, as noted by Samuel Pepys in 1684. Naval historians have repeatedly discredited the story, noting the lack of any evidence in contemporary documents, its fanciful stock conventions and dubious origins.However, the myth was revived in 1997 when author Dava Sobel presented it as an unqualified truth in her book Longitude."
Would there have been enough time for a hanging between the sailor reporting his findings and the ships crashing into the rocks ? As an "on the spot" hanging would have been very unusual for the British navy, there would have been a short trial first, then the "ceremony" of the hanging. All taking time.
As entertaining as Map Men videos are, I see these comments - or check the facts myself - and often find them to be a complete fabrication. It really makes me put the whole channel in serious doubt. This video might just be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Agreed, though Maskelin (sp?) is not really the baddie the Longitude book makes him out to be. Although Harrison's chronometers were extremely accurate they were expensive and tricky to use on a pitching ship. Maskelin's tables were accurate enough, could be published cheaply decades in advance and were usable by anyone who could read.
@@lukedaniel7669 I don't see how any accusation of difficulty of using something on a pitching ship isn't true of Maskelin's idea. I don't see how a method of lunar observation could be made foolproof either.
when I was around 10 or so, I went to your “songs for rotten kids” show in edinburgh, and bought both cds and listened to them on repeat. about 3 years ago i discovered your youtube channel. I am now 17, and hearing “end of the movie” at the end of this video brought back a wave of memories. Thank you Jay Foreman
The problem of longitude would eventually contribute to Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, the precursor to modern computers. Longitude by lunar observation required the use of tables of logarithms, which were calculated and typeset by hand, making them prone to potentially dangerous errors. The Difference Engine (as designed) would not only calculate the tables perfectly, it also had an attached machine for turning those results directly into printing plates, eliminating all sources of human error.
H1, H2, H3 and H4 are all at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, in the eastern outskirts of London. H1, H2, and H3 are all kept running, and show amazing precision. H4 does not run, as it depends upon oil for lubrication, so every tick wears it out just a little bit. The book by Dava Sobel is beyond good, it is a superb story.
3:59 Besides the TikTok reference, I loved the little thing about how when you draw a clock and you put too much space between the numbers early on so you have to pack in the last numbers.
Oh no! Nevil Maskelyne slander! This episode deserves a follow up in the style of "Extra History: Lies" because Dava Sobel's book is very, very unfair to Nevil Maskelyne. 1. The lunar distance method supported by Maskelyne worked and is the basis for The Nautical Almanac, which is still published to this day. 2. Maskelyne never submitted a method to try and win the prize, but did support awarding a partial prize to Tobias Mayer for his calculation of lunar tables. 3. The sextant is still used to this day to calculate longitude using lunar distance, in case electronic timekeepers fail. 4. Maskelyne was not against timekeepers. He supported the watchmaker John Arnold in developing a copy of Harrison's H4 that could be produced in large quantities at a cheaper cost, to support the Admiralty. (John Arnold did better than a copy, he added innovations of his own design that simplified the H4 to make it cheaper and easier to produce, and make it more accurate.)
I've read the Story of Shovell hanging a sailer who questioned his navigation skills was actually made up in the 19th century, coming from a local Scilly myth that came about a couple of years after the disaster that a Native sailor to the Isles was punished for saying he recognized the waters but was instead ignored and punished but not hanged. All 800 hands and Shovell were lost when ship HMS Association sank quickly after running aground, no contemporary record of any such sailor existing or being punished or hanged exist. Edit: grammer
Also, they struck rocks not because they didn't know the longitude, but because they got the latitude wrong. They were further north than they should have been to safely sail into the Channel.
Thank you for doing an episode on this. I wrote a report on "The Longitude Problem" in 8th grade, and why it was so important. No one knew what the hell I was talking about
am a watchmaking apprentice. the precision of watches used for navigation is insane. it is disappointing that there is no more demand for them though - mechanical watches are still popular, but some complications just aren't really needed anymore.
@@christofferhjelte Depends on which one. The watch that I had that broke down on me recently, ran fast by about 1 second per day. The watch I've used since has drifted by only about 10 seconds in the past 2 months. They all are temperature sensitive unless held at constant (hot) temperature: oven controlled crystal oscillator. Typically 75 Celsius. I doubt any wristwatches actually do that.
@@JonatasAdoM If it's cheap, it's definitely quartz, because it's actually cheaper than alternatives. Non quartz watches require more components in their movements, so they start at a higher price.
In Maskelyne's defense, he did develop a cheaper method that worked for less demanding circumstances (using only a sextant rather than a £300+inflation watch), albeit not as accurate as Harrison's. And he was the first person to measure the mass of the earth accurately!
@@sydhenderson6753 from what I remember Cavendish came decades later giving a far more accurate figure and advanced physics in a myriad of other ways. However it was the earlier experiment that first provided a reasonably accurate Earth mass.
Maskelyne might be the villain here but the story of the Schiehallion experiment when he weighed a mountain in Scotland, then used that to weigh the Earth, is fascinating... they also invented contour lines in the process, so it's sort of map related.
1:30 Dava Sobel in Longitude should not have reprinted the myth of Shovell having a man hanged. There's never been any evidence of such a thing, and it likely grossly mutated from a story about a sailor local to the Scilly Isles recognizing the shallows and trying to warn leadership but being rebuked.
Love the video, but as a Dane I have to point out, that none of the gentlemen Galileo, Newton, Halley or Cassini found the speed of light. Though Galileo tried, all his attempts failed. The first to measure the speed of light - or as he called it (translated from Danish) "the hesitation of light - was the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer in 1676. In the book "Opticks" published in 1704 Newton reported about Rømers calculations. But Rømer was the first. :-)
This might be my favorite informative series on TH-cam. The time between each upload just means quality is guaranteed every single time. Love what ya do from Alaska!
All you have to do is know what time it is in Greenwich, then look at your map and see how many timezones forward or behind you are, and boom! Now you know what time it is!* *Unless you're trying to find the time in Greenwich.
@@Alphacron A trivial problem. Find out the time where you are, then check a map to work out which time zone you're in and voila! You can calculate the time in Greenwich.
3:15 eh, nowadays you have people who believe that some stones have magical abilities, believe that the earth is flat, and believe in astrology. The concept of dog wifi doesn't even faze me anymore.
For Americans, replace "Yorkshireman" with "hillbilly" and you'll begin to grasp why the Astronomer Royal et al hated Harrison so much, and figured his clock must be crap. I saw a re-enactment at the Greenwich Royal Observatory and Harrison's accent instantly clued me to a whole dimension of the story that was easy to gloss over otherwise.
@@mortache It wasn't really either, the Longitude book significantly exaggerates Maskelin's animosity to Harrison for storytelling effect. Chronometers were highly accurate, very expensive and temperamental; Maskelin's lunar tables were accurate enough, cheap and never went wrong as they were calculated and published years in advance.
Yes, during my 2nd ever visit to London, in 2019, Greenwich Observatory was the only thing on my "must" list. (I happened to be in London during the finals of the Wimbeldon tennis tournament, but no chance of seeing that in person.) Everything else was random exploring, cool as it was. I most remember the ceremonial prime meridian outside and the "Is my satnav broken?" sign there, explaining why most GPS receivers won't read exactly zero longitude there. WGS84 datum versus historical, is the way I learned that.
6:19 Jay's delivery should qualify him for any role in any piece of media as the announcer of someone not returning home after work/school/travel the day before
You will eventually. But only to the day, your're right in the act of making your first child with your wife, you will remember Jay's face saying "navigating seamen". Happy to help!
Dead reckoning isn't guessing. It's using your last known position and your current speed to extrapolate your current position. In the absence of unknowns like currents it can be perfectly adequate.
John Harrison has been for a long time one of my science heroes. And I find interesting that it was his experience as a maker of wooden clocks that allowed him in the end to being able to create a chronograph that worked in all kinds of whether, because of his knowledge that certain types of wood have natural oils and so his wooden clocks were self-lubricating. And so need for using other oils that created a lot of gunk and where the variation in wood properties, if not lubricated, would affect the accuracy of those clocks. That serendipitous knowledge put him on the right path to solve a key issue to develop a clock that worked at sea and in all kinds of whether.
I don't see anyone pointing out to you guys *_Map Men_***, that at **0:15** that is *NOT* a picture/drawing/illustration of a clock. It is in fact a *Watch* more specifically, a turn of the century (20th) gentleman's pocket watch. As is evident by the watch chain hoop at the tip of the watch and face cover (lid) hinge to the left of the watch face (9 o'clock position). All that being said please continue gentlemen!
I love your videos! I almost always watch a second time so I can pause on the funny bits that pop up too fast for me to read. Thanks for making these! :)
I love the story but I think Nevil Maskelyne is unfairly criticized in recent history. Although Harrisons watch was a huge innovation and superb piece of craftmanship it wasn't very practical because it cost almost half as much as a ship did and you weren't 100% sure it was correct. The lunar distance method (also endorsed by the board of longitude) was used for over 100 years in place of a chronometer and was a very reliable although a little less accurate than the chronometer when it was working right. Most mariners couldn't afford a chronometer. In fact the K1 watch replica of Harrison that went with Captain Cook on his voyages but stopped and had to be repaired en-route. I bet they restarted it using the lunar distance method as a reference 😁. You can understand why the board was reluctant to give Harrison the prize money at first because the method needed to be practical and not a curiosity. Today we think the opposite since a $5 quartz watch would do the job as long as you had a good battery. You could buy 2 so you could confirm it was working right....
“…last for centuries. Give or take a few minutes.” Choose your own hyperbolic, though somehow also very true, response. Hint: they all apply. *chef’s kiss* - im ded - lol - rofl - epic - sensible chuckle
Yeah, you don’t get a lot of those in history. It’s nice to see a brilliant person get recognized in their time, instead of getting executed for “communing with demons” or whatever and only being recognized centuries later
I don't know wny, yours are the kind of video I'll watch time and time again, just to listen to, even though I know (almost) the whole video by heart. Usually there's something new I haven't seen or heard before...
![ทุกครั้งที่หลับตา (Lucid Dream) - AYLA's [ Official MV ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4i1OBAQyv58/mqdefault.jpg)
I hope that one day you open by saying “we’re the map and here’s the men”
Yes
Or We’re the men, but where’s the map?
Yes
@@clipscompilations4442 The real map was the friendships they made along the way...
Men map, men map, men men, men map map.
"Died on the same day he was born" sounds a lot more poetic and noble and exciting than "died on his birthday".
Well, neonatal mortality was quite high in those days.
That's an englishmen for you.
@@distinctloafer -man
Or simply, “poetic irony!”
i mean it is the correct phrase because of the switch from the julian to gregorian calendar
Clock repairer here: It’s difficult to comprehend John Harrison’s brilliance, especially since he came from a humble family of bell hangers. He developed the caged ball bearing and the bimetallic spring, inventions we all use all day, every day. He also created the gridiron pendulum (which compensates for temperature fluctuations) and the grasshopper escapement (which requires no oil). Harrison’s “wooden” clocks used a hard, self-lubricating wood called “lingum vitae” on the bearing surfaces. The old (paraphrased) saying “Show me the perfect bearing and I’ll build you the perfect clock” was especially true in the 1700s, when oils were terrible at best. Just by doing this, he got around the problem of lubrication, at least one of his timepieces has been running without a drop of oil since it was made. I spend my days dealing with oil and consequences of bad oil. If you don’t lube your clock every few years, it will wear our. Using synthetic oil buys extra time, but it’s still a maintenance item. Most folks don’t do this, so now they’re looking at cleaning, pivot polishing and bushings and all that jazz. If Harrison’s designs really took off, I’d be out of a job, maybe I should be thankful his genius was ignored. He’s right up there with Stephenson and Brunel, maybe even Newton.
We deal with oiling issues on typewriters as well. Chief among which are: previous owners who believe that WD40 is a lubricant first and foremost. Oh yes, it will work for a bit, and then gum up everything. Something I'm sure you are well aware of! Thankfully, the clock-springs and escapements are usually pretty robust on typewriters, thanks mostly to the fact that they don't have to be as precise as those in a timepiece!
So what you're telling me is I should start up a wooden watch making company?
Bellringer here: It makes so much sense that he has bell hanging roots! What is almost always in a church tower other than bells? Clocks! He must have seen a variety of clocks from an early age and part of the job sometimes would be connecting the bells to the clock if it had a strike train. Often the church would have the only clock in the village. I've learnt quite a bit about clocks just by being in a church tower all my life.
Also makes sense that he invented ball bearings. Plain bearings are awful to ring on and require a lot of maintenance. We often ring for 3 hours non stop. On plain bearings, this means it all gets considerably tougher the longer you ring!
@@AllonsyRapunzel - Plain bearings are fine if they’re maintained, but they never are. That’s why they’re banned from railroads. All it takes is one maintenance slip-up and then you have an axle fire or even worse.
For anyone who is interested, £20,000 in 1714 is almost exactly £4m today. Also, Longitude is a very interesting book.
£3,994,609.36 to be exact. Or $5,498,575.79 in USD. Or $6,941,319.60 in CAD.
jesus, that joke had me legit bursting in laughter
@@epicjoyfulcreations4580 A bit more time and it's exactly 4 million pounds...
Of course, wages don't really convert simply by adjusting for inflation. In the mid-1700s, in London, skilled tradesman would have likely made around 1 pound sterling a week. So 20,000 pounds was 400 years wages for a skilled tradesman, which would convert to about $24,000,000.
Put another way, HMS Victory cost around 60,000 pounds sterling and it was a flagship naval vessel.
@@epicjoyfulcreations4580 Whats that in € ? :P
Sounds like Shovell dug his own grave...
Your comment is very brilliant
Oh, shut up! 😄
This needs more likes
Ba dum tss
@@gilroymenezes1558 Oh my god, TH-cam's translator wants to translate your comment which is already written in English, to English and say "Ba stupid tss". The translated comment goes to Translator...brave idea translator!
Although John Harrison died on the same calendar date that he was born, he was born under the Julian calendar and died under the Gregorian, so technically 11 days short of 83 years old when he died.
Yeah but it’s cooler to say he died on the same day he was born so just ignore that
*shuffles under carpet*
So what you say is he accounted for the change to still land on the same day, even if a full 83 years hadn't elapsed.
What a mad man.
He accounted for the difference in time zones.
Boooooooo *throws tomatoes*
There's a wonderful TV mini series with Jeremy Irons and Michael Gambon called 'Longitude'. Sadly only a low res version is available on TH-cam but you can buy it for less than £20,000+inflation. Highly recommended!
@TommyInnit 🅥 thanks buddy
Stephen Fry's performance as the man promoting the stabbed dog method is hilarous!
@TommyInnit 🅥 just an absolute Chad, doing an absolutely Chad thing
I concur. It's a great story expertly told.
@@ullasjoseph4502 what link
Now we’re expecting the intros to be weird, so you should do a perfectly classic intro next time just to mess with us
Way ahead of you!
Eh they kinda already did that, at least as far as the theme tune is concerned.
@@JayForeman Separate the instrumental and the vocals. Play only the instrumental during the intro. Later at a random point in the video, insert the vocals.
@@JayForeman I like it when you do 'map men' theme with lots of extra maps and mens
Men Map Men Map Men Men Men Map
Map
Navy sailor here: On the plus side, with digital engine readouts for speed and digital (read: inertial) compasses, dead reckoning is WAY more accurate than when this was done with a knotted rope and a shoddy magnetic compass. Navigating on an ever shifting seemingly-infinite flat-on-a-good-day featureless non-euclidean plane is always going to be a problem, complicated by drift but if GPS fails, we can still get a rough sense of where we are. This is something we had to practice, like kinda all the time. They'd make us compare our dead reckoning track on the chart with the quartermaster's astronomically-ascertained position every half hour and I could typically get us within a few miles.
Which Navy?
@@gamemeister27 US Navy!
... and doing dead reckoning (or astronomic navigation) is always a good hobby if you are bored while sailing (the intellectual part of my brain loves the challenge)
Is there any other kind of sailor then? Because I thought all sailors were navy, either military or civilian
Military is HMS, US, CHMS, AHMS, RDN,
Or civilian
Merchant Navy, SS, RMS
My point is they are ALL navy sailors so why say NAVY sailor?
Is there a AIRLINE sailor?
If you meant your nation military then specify it as Royal, US Canadian, Dutch, French Navy which would negate 1, the need to say "sailor" and 2, clear up what branch of "NAVY" you are referring too.
@@HypocrisyLaidBare don't be a pedant
In regard to the sailor that tried to warn Admiral Shovell, Wikipedia says "While it is possible that a sailor may have debated the vessel's location and feared for its fate, such debates were common upon entering the English Channel, as noted by Samuel Pepys in 1684. Naval historians have repeatedly discredited the story, noting the lack of any evidence in contemporary documents, its fanciful stock conventions and dubious origins.However, the myth was revived in 1997 when author Dava Sobel presented it as an unqualified truth in her book Longitude."
Thank you
Thank you! Ugh, will everyone please stop propagating this slanderous myth?!?!
Would there have been enough time for a hanging between the sailor reporting his findings and the ships crashing into the rocks ? As an "on the spot" hanging would have been very unusual for the British navy, there would have been a short trial first, then the "ceremony" of the hanging. All taking time.
As entertaining as Map Men videos are, I see these comments - or check the facts myself - and often find them to be a complete fabrication. It really makes me put the whole channel in serious doubt. This video might just be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Maybe so, but the story adds controversy and humour; and we all know that that's much more interesting than mere facts.
That Tiktok joke was utterly rancid and I love it
It was wasn't it? It was Jay's - I hated it as much as I loved it.
XD best joke ever
@@markcooper-jones7494 are you- wait...
@@markcooper-jones7494 i assume that he’s forcing you to say this , so we can just say that you hated it
I dunno why but I thought of tic tac at first
"Which in today's money is £20000 plus inflation"
That's why I love this series
It's worth like 4.5 million pounds
@@adsasori close, it’s £3,994,609.36 according to the Bank of England website
@@takers786 different sites different measurements yours probably right
I think "20000 times inflation" would have been a little more accurate
That “moving the goalposts” joke was top-notch.
I'm lost, care to explain?
Watched that part a second time, and I found that quite funny too!
Thanks for the explanation, I couldn’t figure out what in the heck that part was about!
Agreed, though Maskelin (sp?) is not really the baddie the Longitude book makes him out to be. Although Harrison's chronometers were extremely accurate they were expensive and tricky to use on a pitching ship. Maskelin's tables were accurate enough, could be published cheaply decades in advance and were usable by anyone who could read.
@@lukedaniel7669 I don't see how any accusation of difficulty of using something on a pitching ship isn't true of Maskelin's idea. I don't see how a method of lunar observation could be made foolproof either.
So many history lessons learnt through these videos, with an extra sprinkle of wit and humour 📗 😂
Wow. A TH-cam account commenting on a TH-cam video.
Hi TH-cam, glad to see you on such quality content.
This comment has tarnished the reputation of Jay Foreman's channel
Hey TH-cam, please stop these awfull mobile game ads!!!
@@conanichigawa I’ve seen it a couple times before
the TikTok reference at 4:00 is 1 of the most hilarious and genius things I’ve ever seen!
when I was around 10 or so, I went to your “songs for rotten kids” show in edinburgh, and bought both cds and listened to them on repeat. about 3 years ago i discovered your youtube channel. I am now 17, and hearing “end of the movie” at the end of this video brought back a wave of memories. Thank you Jay Foreman
Awesome story :)
@@nainatalwar8050 How about no
I hope "End of the Movie" will be on Jay's upcoming "Songs that Sound Like but Aren't the Beatles' Songs Album" album.
He is very good at writing songs that sound like but aren't the Beatles' songs, isn't he?
th-cam.com/video/wiX8SmqYWyI/w-d-xo.html
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 Hell, he even looks like a Beatle that isn't a Beatle
Will it beeee, will it be, will it beee, will it beee.
@@blurds Come back, Elaine Rugby, id like to shake your hand, yellow subway sandwich.... all the classics.
The problem of longitude would eventually contribute to Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, the precursor to modern computers. Longitude by lunar observation required the use of tables of logarithms, which were calculated and typeset by hand, making them prone to potentially dangerous errors. The Difference Engine (as designed) would not only calculate the tables perfectly, it also had an attached machine for turning those results directly into printing plates, eliminating all sources of human error.
An attached what? We need to know!
@@AgentAileron Babbage never built it, but one has now been made from his design th-cam.com/video/BlbQsKpq3Ak/w-d-xo.html
Ooo, that's cool
Cheers for sharing
Good cut and paste job but not really relevant to determining longitude....
really interesting!
H1, H2, H3 and H4 are all at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, in the eastern outskirts of London. H1, H2, and H3 are all kept running, and show amazing precision. H4 does not run, as it depends upon oil for lubrication, so every tick wears it out just a little bit.
The book by Dava Sobel is beyond good, it is a superb story.
“Can I have a go at your hammer”
“Bang bang bang bang bang bang”
I laughed so hard...
Sir Cloudsey Shovell sounds like the name of a villain in a children’s program.
There's actually a band with that name, too
You're close, the villain would actually be Shovelly McShovellface.
Looks like one, too.
Or Shovel Knight's evil sky pirate cousin.
The name was the inspiration for Clodsley Shovel, a talking gardening mole in the Chronicles of Narnia.
£20.000+inflation would be around £3.400.000 now.
Or about $4.700.000 or €4.000.000
That child spinning the clock and saying "weeee!" really is art. It should be in a museum.
It's adorable 😅
3:59 Besides the TikTok reference, I loved the little thing about how when you draw a clock and you put too much space between the numbers early on so you have to pack in the last numbers.
Oh no! Nevil Maskelyne slander!
This episode deserves a follow up in the style of "Extra History: Lies" because Dava Sobel's book is very, very unfair to Nevil Maskelyne.
1. The lunar distance method supported by Maskelyne worked and is the basis for The Nautical Almanac, which is still published to this day.
2. Maskelyne never submitted a method to try and win the prize, but did support awarding a partial prize to Tobias Mayer for his calculation of lunar tables.
3. The sextant is still used to this day to calculate longitude using lunar distance, in case electronic timekeepers fail.
4. Maskelyne was not against timekeepers. He supported the watchmaker John Arnold in developing a copy of Harrison's H4 that could be produced in large quantities at a cheaper cost, to support the Admiralty.
(John Arnold did better than a copy, he added innovations of his own design that simplified the H4 to make it cheaper and easier to produce, and make it more accurate.)
Ah, but was he against _Yorkshiremen?_
@@dominateeye they're Yorkshireman
Arnold also made the time lady's watch. Both Citation Needed and Futility Closet have good episodes about her.
Nevil Maskelyne was at his best when he collaborated with David Devant.
I have the book they jointly wrote, "Our Magic".
@@tooleyheadbang4239 Interesting man, but I am speaking about a different Maskelyne.
This channel shoud get the no. 1 prize in british humor competition. Delightful to learn from such witty storytellers.
I've read the Story of Shovell hanging a sailer who questioned his navigation skills was actually made up in the 19th century, coming from a local Scilly myth that came about a couple of years after the disaster that a Native sailor to the Isles was punished for saying he recognized the waters but was instead ignored and punished but not hanged. All 800 hands and Shovell were lost when ship HMS Association sank quickly after running aground, no contemporary record of any such sailor existing or being punished or hanged exist.
Edit: grammer
Interesting, though strangely you've used the wrong grammar which amused me. That theory would make sense too though.
No one dare like this, 69 likes forever pls
It stands to reason that if all hands were lost there was nobody to relate the story. Liked, so there.
Also, they struck rocks not because they didn't know the longitude, but because they got the latitude wrong. They were further north than they should have been to safely sail into the Channel.
Ironically it’s spelled grammar not grammer
Ooh, Encarta. Now that's a name I have not heard in a long, long time.
Wow, we think alike, lol. And you beat me by a couple of minutes.
Ah yes, the Wikipedia before Wikipedia existed.
Of all the content in the video, this too was the one I was going to comment about.
Having the part of Adm. Shovell played by an actual shovel with googly eyes and a bicorne hat was a stroke of genius.
"Yes, Cloudesley Shovel was his real name. No, he wasn't really a shovel with googly eyes."
Thank you for doing an episode on this. I wrote a report on "The Longitude Problem" in 8th grade, and why it was so important. No one knew what the hell I was talking about
1:24 This is the origin of the famous quote "Let us not go there--it is a Scilly place".
Where the sailors coming back from a quest for the Grail?
It's just a model!
Shhhhh!
@@kellywelz5398Yes, unfortunately they were stopped by French soldiers and the police
I work at the Royal Observatory! So happy that you got to talk about the chronometers that reside within it!
So give them back already! You spilled enough tea over them. :(
⚾ SERCH ADITYA RATHORE, HE ALSO MAKES JOURNALISTIC CONTENT LIKE JAY ON U-TUBE⚾
I think my heart stopped when the Map Men theme did.
*starts singing along the chorus in my head* Map men Map men- *gets confused* *oh you* *you got me - again* - keep the show running U guys rock
I am so proud to have come from a long line of seamen...those early days of exploration must have been long and hard
technically i think most people come from semen, actually
am a watchmaking apprentice. the precision of watches used for navigation is insane.
it is disappointing that there is no more demand for them though - mechanical watches are still popular, but some complications just aren't really needed anymore.
Hasnt GPS moved due to variations in earths wobble etc ?
A quartz wristwatch doesnt do the trick?
@@christofferhjelte Depends on which one.
The watch that I had that broke down on me recently, ran fast by about 1 second per day.
The watch I've used since has drifted by only about 10 seconds in the past 2 months.
They all are temperature sensitive unless held at constant (hot) temperature: oven controlled crystal oscillator. Typically 75 Celsius. I doubt any wristwatches actually do that.
@@mattbartley2843 And most qartz watches are Chinese, so you can't even tell if they're actu ally quartz.
@@JonatasAdoM If it's cheap, it's definitely quartz, because it's actually cheaper than alternatives. Non quartz watches require more components in their movements, so they start at a higher price.
2:08 If anybody is wondering how much that money would be now, it would be £3,994,609 or $5,554,503
But how much was it in US dollars in 1963?
@@Zeem4 $625,580
Thanks, John F. Kennedy
Wow. In today's money, that's £3,994,609 plus inflation!
And a little over 200 years after his death his watch made it way to 2 brothers in Peckham who when they sold it at auction became millionaires
Haha was hoping for this in the video
@@Momo_1412 Would be amazing if H6 ever did show up. No mention of H5 in the video either.
In Maskelyne's defense, he did develop a cheaper method that worked for less demanding circumstances (using only a sextant rather than a £300+inflation watch), albeit not as accurate as Harrison's.
And he was the first person to measure the mass of the earth accurately!
Actually, in 240 BCE Eratosthenes had done the same, albeit slightly less accurately
@@anabsolutemess8850 As far as I can find, Eratosthenes measured and calculated the circumference of the Earth, not its mass.
@@anabsolutemess8850 Didn't Eratosthenes measure Earth's circumference, not mass? Or did he do both?
More accurately than Henry Cavendish?
@@sydhenderson6753 from what I remember Cavendish came decades later giving a far more accurate figure and advanced physics in a myriad of other ways. However it was the earlier experiment that first provided a reasonably accurate Earth mass.
Maskelyne might be the villain here but the story of the Schiehallion experiment when he weighed a mountain in Scotland, then used that to weigh the Earth, is fascinating... they also invented contour lines in the process, so it's sort of map related.
All of you talking about the tik tok joke but is anyone going to talk how 3:46 is the cutest thing ever.
Yes, it's the cutest thing ever. I only scrolled down to comment section to see if anyone else had noticed, or if it was just me.
But were did he get it.....
3:49 wEEEEEeee
Absolutely adorable
you guys have mastered the art of sponsored segments
Indeed, that was one of the only ones I've actually wanted to watch through.
I'm waiting for the day they'll say "We're the map, and here's the man", an then they just show a completely unrelated person.
6:22 best joke.
This series is absolutely fantastic. I do not have the words to appreciate it. Please keep on it. Hate to think yall have broken up
Thanks! We haven’t broken up. Map Men is coming back in 2023. Stay tuned!
@@JayForeman in the meantime I guess I’ll just punch my head against a rusty knife
@@JayForeman This is the best news I have ever heard so far
One thing though; the story of a sailor being hanged for pointing out to Admiral Shovell that they were about to hit the rocks off Scilly is a myth.
probably
1:30 Dava Sobel in Longitude should not have reprinted the myth of Shovell having a man hanged. There's never been any evidence of such a thing, and it likely grossly mutated from a story about a sailor local to the Scilly Isles recognizing the shallows and trying to warn leadership but being rebuked.
Men Map however, is an 1800’s version of Grindr.
“We’re the map, and here’s the men!”
Thank you Napoleon, very cool!
WAIT A MOMENT...
I thought you were pretty dead. I visited your grave. 🤔
10/10
@@untruelie2640
Well, he's got pretty good wifi down there.
🟪 SERCH ADITYA RATHORE, HE ALSO MAKES JOURNALISTIC CONTENT LIKE JAY ON U-TUBE🟪
4:07 And then there is my microwave with a digital clock that drifts by half an hour a day. Clearly designed for boats and not stationary houses.
Love the video, but as a Dane I have to point out, that none of the gentlemen Galileo, Newton, Halley or Cassini found the speed of light. Though Galileo tried, all his attempts failed. The first to measure the speed of light - or as he called it (translated from Danish) "the hesitation of light - was the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer in 1676.
In the book "Opticks" published in 1704 Newton reported about Rømers calculations. But Rømer was the first.
:-)
Honestly some of the best humorous whilst factual writing on the platform! **moves goalposts**
I'm calling my clock "chronometer" from now
I call mine Chronopeter. :P
You can't unless COSC allows you to :Е
But that only works if the clock is made in regional France. Otherwise it's just a "sparkling timepiece".
🟡 SERCH ADITYA RATHORE, HE ALSO MAKES JOURNALISTIC CONTENT LIKE JAY ON U-TUBE🟡
All watches/clocks are chronometers
By the look of the “advert” at the end, I’m assuming that they are big fans of the Mighty Boosh.
Big Tony Harrison energy.
"This is an outrage!"
or Red Dwarf
SOUP.
This might be my favorite informative series on TH-cam. The time between each upload just means quality is guaranteed every single time. Love what ya do from Alaska!
You forgot the story of Harrison's 6th watch which was found by 2 market traders in the mid 90s and sold at auction for £6.2mil
The thing about Shovell hanging a sailor for trying to correct his navigation is just a myth unfortunately
*fortunately
I only knew this because of Only Fools and Horses, as is true of many things.
Was disappointed Del Boy didn’t get a shout out 😂
Next week: "How to tell the time of day with a map"
All you have to do is know what time it is in Greenwich, then look at your map and see how many timezones forward or behind you are, and boom! Now you know what time it is!*
*Unless you're trying to find the time in Greenwich.
@@Alphacron A trivial problem. Find out the time where you are, then check a map to work out which time zone you're in and voila! You can calculate the time in Greenwich.
0:21 I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you guys are actually the best
3:15 eh, nowadays you have people who believe that some stones have magical abilities, believe that the earth is flat, and believe in astrology. The concept of dog wifi doesn't even faze me anymore.
For Americans, replace "Yorkshireman" with "hillbilly" and you'll begin to grasp why the Astronomer Royal et al hated Harrison so much, and figured his clock must be crap. I saw a re-enactment at the Greenwich Royal Observatory and Harrison's accent instantly clued me to a whole dimension of the story that was easy to gloss over otherwise.
Hillbilly? I think not!
But if those people were competent they would have recognized the genius of the device. It was either negligence or jealousy
Someone from the north? Bleh! They don't even live in houses up there. (Quote heard in London yesterday)
As a Texan who lived in Middlesbrough (north-east England) for four years, this makes a lot of sense.
@@mortache It wasn't really either, the Longitude book significantly exaggerates Maskelin's animosity to Harrison for storytelling effect. Chronometers were highly accurate, very expensive and temperamental; Maskelin's lunar tables were accurate enough, cheap and never went wrong as they were calculated and published years in advance.
Seeing Harrison's clocks at Greenwich was one of my top experiences visiting UK.
OK, I'm a nerd...
the beer in the local pub wasn't too bad either.
Same!!
Yes, during my 2nd ever visit to London, in 2019, Greenwich Observatory was the only thing on my "must" list. (I happened to be in London during the finals of the Wimbeldon tennis tournament, but no chance of seeing that in person.) Everything else was random exploring, cool as it was.
I most remember the ceremonial prime meridian outside and the "Is my satnav broken?" sign there, explaining why most GPS receivers won't read exactly zero longitude there. WGS84 datum versus historical, is the way I learned that.
0:37 "kind of like the triwizard tournament except no, not at all"
6:19 Jay's delivery should qualify him for any role in any piece of media as the announcer of someone not returning home after work/school/travel the day before
I like the fact the word "Semen" is said within the first five seconds of the video.
You deserve a like.
Ironically, ‘sympathy dog’ predicted ‘quantum entanglement’ by some 300 years…
Lol, humanity really is just a hivemind, we're rediscovering secrets of the universe we've known for hundreds or thousands of years. /j
And a cat may or may have not been killed in the process.
They're nothing alike. And quantum entanglement can't be used to transmit information.
@@General12th nor can a sticking plaster on a dog :)
@@bob_the_bomb4508 Actually, that's a fair point.
Some day I'll be mature enough to not laugh at "seamen"
I as well. But today is not that day
I laughed at "Shovell," so imagine MY level of maturity.
Tip: dont become that mature.
You will eventually.
But only to the day, your're right in the act of making your first child with your wife, you will remember Jay's face saying "navigating seamen".
Happy to help!
Never gonna happen
ahh yes dead reckoning...the best terminology for guessing
Dead reckoning isn't guessing. It's using your last known position and your current speed to extrapolate your current position. In the absence of unknowns like currents it can be perfectly adequate.
@@Quagmirian Only if you're travelling on land - add air or sea currents and it's next to useless.
@@hairyairey if you know the wind and tide then you can account for it
@@Quagmirian Over what distance? I doubt either of those could be calculated accurately for more than a few miles.
@@hairyairey it's still extensively used in aviation and marine navigation, even with the advent of gps.
I cannot express the amount of pleasure I get out of you all slightly changing the intro every time. This is how I survived 2020.
John Harrison has been for a long time one of my science heroes. And I find interesting that it was his experience as a maker of wooden clocks that allowed him in the end to being able to create a chronograph that worked in all kinds of whether, because of his knowledge that certain types of wood have natural oils and so his wooden clocks were self-lubricating. And so need for using other oils that created a lot of gunk and where the variation in wood properties, if not lubricated, would affect the accuracy of those clocks. That serendipitous knowledge put him on the right path to solve a key issue to develop a clock that worked at sea and in all kinds of whether.
His H4 did not use wood, though and required lubrication
Dava Sobel's "Longitude" is one of only two books I've managed to read cover-to-cover twice in one sitting.
What was the other book?
I can guess where you were sitting. Curry was it ?
I don't see anyone pointing out to you guys *_Map Men_***, that at **0:15** that is *NOT* a picture/drawing/illustration of a clock.
It is in fact a *Watch* more specifically, a turn of the century (20th) gentleman's pocket watch.
As is evident by the watch chain hoop at the tip of the watch and face cover (lid) hinge to the left of the watch face (9 o'clock position).
All that being said please continue gentlemen!
All watches are clocks, though. "My good sir, this is NOT an animal! It's an elephant! You can tell from the trunk, big ears and overall hugeness!"
0:52
Rejected exam question: Using the angle of the dangle-
Just when i thought you guys reached peak performance with your intro you step up the game like this.
I love it
Imagine a sequeal of Horrible Histories called "Horrible Geography", with Jay and Mark. I would die happy
“He died the same date he was born” might sound like a lot, until you say “he died on his birthday”
My local Blockbuster had Surf Shark.
Don't know if it's a coincidence or not but: "The Longitude" has a rather lengthy hold list at my local library! I'll call it the "Map Men Effect"!
I love your videos! I almost always watch a second time so I can pause on the funny bits that pop up too fast for me to read. Thanks for making these! :)
I absolutely love your sense of humor! Congrats on this awesome docu-series! Keep up the good work!
I love the story but I think Nevil Maskelyne is unfairly criticized in recent history. Although Harrisons watch was a huge innovation and superb piece of craftmanship it wasn't very practical because it cost almost half as much as a ship did and you weren't 100% sure it was correct. The lunar distance method (also endorsed by the board of longitude) was used for over 100 years in place of a chronometer and was a very reliable although a little less accurate than the chronometer when it was working right. Most mariners couldn't afford a chronometer. In fact the K1 watch replica of Harrison that went with Captain Cook on his voyages but stopped and had to be repaired en-route. I bet they restarted it using the lunar distance method as a reference 😁. You can understand why the board was reluctant to give Harrison the prize money at first because the method needed to be practical and not a curiosity. Today we think the opposite since a $5 quartz watch would do the job as long as you had a good battery. You could buy 2 so you could confirm it was working right....
“…last for centuries. Give or take a few minutes.”
Choose your own hyperbolic, though somehow also very true, response. Hint: they all apply.
*chef’s kiss* - im ded - lol - rofl - epic - sensible chuckle
the only channel where we actually watch the sponsor segment 😂
True
3:50 that baby just made an impeccable seagull sound!
I can’t believe you didn’t explain Harrison’s Victorian Egg Timer which ended up on top of an old gas cooker.
5:55 so nice to see Prince Regent from Blackadder the Third make a cameo.
Audience: How many ‘Men’ variations are you going to include?
Mark & Jay: Yesses
john harrison’s story is so wholesome. i love that it had a happy ending
Yeah, you don’t get a lot of those in history. It’s nice to see a brilliant person get recognized in their time, instead of getting executed for “communing with demons” or whatever and only being recognized centuries later
Loved the video and how often you made us pause to fully take in one of the little details you added. You guys are amazing.
I don't know wny, yours are the kind of video I'll watch time and time again, just to listen to, even though I know (almost) the whole video by heart. Usually there's something new I haven't seen or heard before...
Ah yes, reading that Longitude book in highschool really payed off here
6:42 yup that's the one
I liked your comment just because you have the blue castle crusher in your profile pic, he’s my favorite character in the game
Gave this a thumbs up in the first 5 seconds just for the navigating 'seamen' joke!
0:05 how did you even get sponsored
Lots of views?
@@galfinsp7216 he said semen.
@@floridaboigaming6961it's another name for sailers
@@floridaboigaming6961 No, seamen, not seman.
@@Red_Platinuumr/woooosh
I love the advert at the end
Each time I watch this episode, I have to smile at the child proclaiming "wheee!" at 3:50. Both cute and hilarious.
The credits song was beautiful!
0:27 is my favourite part
5:48 I wonder what the people there thought about a man holding a hammer walking toward Buckingham Palace.
Longitude is a fantastic book. Nice TH-cam vid chaps. Great that you’re championing John Harrison.
One of the best so far.