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Latitude and longitude. Two critical line of coordinates for sea traveling. And now, used in everywhere and every sense, these two coordinates are indispensable in the modern world. Among these, the latitude was solved many hundred years ago. Wasn't a problem. Kinda easy. But the problem was longitude. Today we look on how mankind solved the longitude problem and took navigations light-years ahead.

Before solving this longitude problem, sailors used their speed and passed time on the sea to measure how east or west they went. But as you all know sea waves are a very phenomenal creature, this method didn't work and sailors went lost very often. Often even falling prey to shipwrecking. So when the situation was getting out of hand the British queen in 1714 put up a bounty on mister longitude's head. Whoever can solve the longitude issue will earn 20000 pounds. Many tried and many failed and many years passed too. But the Greeks, many centuries ago, probably a millennium ago, already solved the longitude hypothesis. They said that if you want to the exact position of where you are, you need to master the time. For example, if you know the exact time of a certain place, you can use the sun's position of your current location against that time to determine where you currently are. This was hard already in itself. What made it more hard was the clocks of the 1700s. The grandfather clock as they call it. 


The famous pendulum clocks were a thing of that time. And if the pendulum loses balance, the clock gives you a wrong time. But even if it didn't lose balance, the average pendulum clock would slow down by a minute every day. And a minute on longitude calculations can put you off about 17 miles. A walk in a park huh?

Years later a guy comes into the picture called John Harrison. This is the guy who made the first ever clock which was not run by a pendulum nor did it need oil like the rest. This made his clock immune to any kind of slowdowns or pendulum balance losing. But mister perfection Harrison didn't submit his work as final because he was a perfectionist. Couple years later he came with the second generation of his clock which was smaller than the last one and more advanced. Literally Steve Jobs clock edition. Harrison didn't submit that either as he still wasn't happy. He came with the third generation which was even more advanced and smaller but same story again. On the fourth iteration he finally submitted the clock which we later came to know as "chronometer". Here take note mister John Harrison was self educated in both his carpentry and clock making. The work he submitted to solve the longitude problem was denied by authority for some political reasons. Turned out the authority never took his work to the royal family to carry out the procedures. 

John Harrison didn't say anything for quite a while. God knows why. Then one morning the guy felt different and went straight to the king to complain about what happened. The king took immediate actions and John Harrison was rewarded the 20000 pounds in his dying ages. Who would've thought that one of the most sought after problems will be solved by someone who wasn't even taught scarcely about the solution and not by some scholar? Help does come from the most unlikeliest places.


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