About time

Man spends his entire life on something, and the world forgets. But then remembers. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

The playwright George Bernard Shaw famously wrote:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

On the occasion of what would have been his 328th birthday, let’s talk about an extremely unreasonable man: John Harrison, inventor of the “sea watch,” or the “marine chronometer.”

Harrison spent nearly 50 years of his life on his invention, which solved one of the great technological challenges of his time: how to accurately calculate longitude while at sea.

Inaccurate navigation led to calamitous shipwrecks, because calculating longitude required keeping precise track of time, and the watches and clocks of the pre-Harrison era simply couldn't keep accurate time during long sea voyages.

This was a massive challenge, so important that in 1714, the British Parliament established a £28,000 prize for anyone who could come up with a solution (equivalent of several mill…