John Harrison Facts: Google Doodle Honors Marine Chronometer Inventor On 325th Birthday

On Tuesday, Google dedicated its doodle in honor of British inventor John Harrison’s 325^th birthday — the man who famously invented the first marine chronometer to calculate longitude at sea.

An animated Harrison, also called the “clockmaker” for his exceptional contribution in the world of sea navigation, was depicted in the doodle, hard at work, surrounded by clock-making tools.

In the modern era, people often tend to confuse him with the famed ice cream tester or actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s Star Trek character, both of whom go by the same name. So, in order to refresh your memory, here are some facts regarding the 18th-century inventor:

1) Harrison was born in 1693 in Foulby — a village in West Yorkshire, starting out as a self-taught carpenter just like his father.

2) His love for clock-making developed at six years of age. He was handed a watch to keep himself amused when he was bed-ridden with small pox. Harrison was so fascinated by the watch that he would spend hours playing with it, listening to it and closely examining the different parts of its mechanism, Metro reported.

3) The “sea clock” invented by Harrison came at a crucial time in marine navigation after 1,550 British sailors lost their lives in a naval disaster off the Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, in 1707. The cause of the tragedy was attributed to an error in navigation. The British government announced a prize of £20,000 (nearly $28,000) for anyone who can come up with a device that can calculate the longitude at sea.

4) Harrison won the prize after working on the clock that would revolutionize marine navigation for years. He completed the clock in 1735 by working on the clock for five years. He dedicated another couple pf decades perfecting the design of the clock. The fourth updated version of the clock was introduced in 1761, CNET reported.

5) Three more clocks that he developed after the first one were smaller and more accurate than the original version.

6) Harrison’s invention defied even Isaac Newton’s expectations, who never thought creating such a clock could be possible.

“A good watch may serve to keep a reckoning at sea for some days and to know the time of a celestial observation; and for this end a good Jewel may suffice till a better sort of watch can be found out. But when longitude at sea is lost, it cannot be found again by any watch,” Newton said, Independent reported.

7) The marine chronometer let navigators tell whether they travelled east or west by comparing the time at home with the local time, which was measured from the sun or stars.

8) Moreover, it was able to keep time over 50 days without letting fluctuating temperatures, pressure, humidity or corrosion from salt water affect its mechanism.

9) The GPS technology that has brought navigation in the palm of everyone’s hands had its roots in Harrison’s invention.

10) Apart from the device that let voyagers tell time under the sea, he also invented the gridiron pendulum, the bi-metallic strip (used in most modern kettles), a grasshopper escapement (a low-friction escapement for pendulum clocks) and an automatic form of manning power.

11) He died in March 24, 1776. He was buried beside his second wife, Elizabeth, in St John’s Church in Hampstead, north London. Together they had a son, William Harrison, an instrument maker who sometimes helped his father with inventions.