{"id":2515,"date":"2009-05-22T03:00:17","date_gmt":"2009-05-22T08:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=2515"},"modified":"2009-05-22T03:00:17","modified_gmt":"2009-05-22T08:00:17","slug":"harrison-wasnt-a-solo-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/2515","title":{"rendered":"Harrison Wasn't a Solo Artist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Lone’ longitude genius may have had help<\/a><\/p>\n

The story of John Harrison the “lone genius” who solved the problem of finding longitude at sea is in urgent need of a rewrite.<\/p>\n

Discoveries made during repairs to Harrison’s first successful “sea clock” \u2013 completed in 1735 \u2013 suggest that others contributed to his pioneering timepieces. “Harrison is always cast as a self-taught lone genius pitted against the establishment. The truth is, that is a great over-simplification,” says horologist Jonathan Betts of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think the idea that equating “lone genius” with “never talked to anyone about their work” is quite a reach. It’s been a while since I read Longitude<\/em>, but I don’t recall having the impression that Harrison never sought out others to learn things. At what point are you no longer working alone? If you have a bottle-washer? If you don’t smelt your own brass?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Lone’ longitude genius may have had help The story of John Harrison the “lone genius” who solved the problem of finding longitude at sea is in urgent need of a rewrite. Discoveries made during repairs to Harrison’s first successful “sea … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-science-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}