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Concept
Marine chronometer
Summary
A marine chronometer is a precision timepiece that is carried on a ship and employed in the determination of the ship's position by celestial navigation. It is used to determine longitude by comparing Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), and the time at the current location found from observations of celestial bodies. When first developed in the 18th century, it was a major technical achievement, as accurate knowledge of the time over a long sea voyage was vital for effective navigation, lacking electronic or communications aids. The first true chronometer was the life work of one man, John Harrison, spanning 31 years of persistent experimentation and testing that revolutionized naval (and later aerial) navigation.
The term chronometer was coined from the Greek words χρόνος () (meaning time) and (meaning measure) in 1713 by the English cleric and scientist William Derham. It has recently become more commonly used to describe watches tested and certified to meet certain precision standards.
To determine a position on the Earth's surface, it is necessary and sufficient to know the latitude, longitude, and altitude. Altitude considerations can naturally be ignored for vessels operating at sea level. Until the mid-1750s, accurate navigation at sea out of sight of land was an unsolved problem due to the difficulty in calculating longitude. Navigators could determine their latitude by measuring the sun's angle at noon (i.e., when it reached its highest point in the sky, or culmination) or, in the Northern Hemisphere, to measure the angle of Polaris (the North Star) from the horizon (usually during twilight). To find their longitude, however, they needed a time standard that would work aboard a ship. Observation of regular celestial motions, such as Galileo's method based on observing Jupiter's natural satellites, was usually not possible at sea due to the ship's motion. The lunar distances method, initially proposed by Johannes Werner in 1514, was developed in parallel with the marine chronometer.
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