Journal ArticleDOI
The life and death of a scientific instrument: The marine chronometer, 1770–1920
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TLDR
The first marine chronometers, developed by Harrison and others in the eighteenth century, stimulated a sector of the British watchmaking industry to supply Admiralty and commercial demand for this instrument as discussed by the authors.Abstract:
Summary Successful prototype marine chronometers, developed by Harrison and others in the eighteenth century, stimulated a sector of the British watchmaking industry to supply Admiralty and commercial demand for this instrument. Chronometers, like other British-made timepieces, were constructed by an elaborate pre-industrial method of production. The instrument's static technology and extreme durability meant replacement demand was minimal, and new demand was low relative to existing stock and the industry's capacity. The First World War created a final surge of demand that left supplies far in excess of peacetime needs; and a new technology—radio transmissions of time signals—offered an alternative method of determining Greenwich time, and thus longitude, at sea.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Prizes, Patents and the Search for Longitude
M. Diane Burton,Tom Nicholas +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors highlight the importance of complementarities between prize and patent-based incentives in the design of innovation inducement contests and show that the propensity to patent was high among marine chronometer inventors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Evidence from trade cards for the scientific instrument industry
TL;DR: Over sixty English trade cards from London and the provinces, covering the period 1670 to 1900, are illustrated and it is shown that aesthetic style and type-face design, combined with written and pictorial content, may be used to deduce dates and business practices.
Vocational science and the politics of independence: The Boston Marine Society, 1754--1812
TL;DR: The Boston Marine Society as discussed by the authors developed vocational scientific practices adapted from day-to-day work routines to expand the navigational knowledge of New England's coastlines between 1754 and 1812.
Dissertation
Economically sustainable public security and emergency network exploiting a broadband communications satellite
TL;DR: In this article, the authors presented a case study of a Nigerian Public Safety Security Communications Pilot project deployed in regions of the African continent with inadequate terrestrial last-mile infrastructure and thus requiring a robust regional Communications Satellite complemented with variants of terrestrial wireless technologies to bridge the digital hiatus as a short and medium term measure apart from other strategic needs.
Journal ArticleDOI
Time Marks and Clock Corrections: A Century of Seismological Timekeeping
TL;DR: In this article, the authors outline how reliable time has been obtained for seismology, and describe the histories of master clocks, local clocks, time transfer, time comparison, and uniform motion for visual recording.
References
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Book
Life and Labour of the People in London
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the life and labour of the people in London (1889) / Charles Booth (1840-1916) and discuss the relationship between the two.
Book
British entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century
TL;DR: The quality of British entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century is continually being reassessed as discussed by the authors, and a major leitmotiv in accounts of British economic development from the heroic days of the Industrial Revolution to the eve of the First World War was the steady dissipation of a fund of entrepreneurship which, it has been implied, reached its greatest abundance during and immediately after the Napoleonic Wars.