Harrison's Clocks

I have had the opportunity twice to go to Greenwich, England and look at John Harrison's Clocks. If you want to get the whole scope on this fascinating piece of engineering history coupled with political malfeasance, please go to the website here. Harrison was attempting to solve a particular navigational problem by building a clock that could withstand the rolling environment of a sailing ship and still keep a very accurate accounting of time.

We are not so interested in that part of the problem as we are in the solution Harrison provided.  He started out building clocks that were about 3 to 4 feet tall, a couple of feet wide and perhaps one foot deep (sorry for the English measurement approximations).  His final and most nearly perfect version looked like a large pocket watch.

Not lost on the Light Green Machine Institute is the fact that the solution involved making an instrument that was smaller, much smaller, than that originally envisioned.  That's our point--elegant solutions can be physically smaller, not larger.

The electronics industry has mastered this, we want to do it in the mechanical and structural world.

It took John Harrison a lifetime; some days it feels like it is taking us that long.

Think Light!

Of special note...

In a couple of months, we will be moving this column to the Light Green Machine Institute website. There is not much there right now, but you might as well get signed up and start thinking about moving over there. It is at www.lightgreenmachine.institute.