Book about Harrison

There is a very entertaining book I've been reading about the
Englishman John Harrison (1693-1776):
Dava Sobel: Longitude. The true story of a lone genius who solved
the greatest scientific problem of his time.
Hardcover: Walker and Co., New York. Paperback: Penguin, 1995.
It is a very interesting piece of science and engineering history,
solving the problem of finding longitude. It was much more difficult
than determining latitude. Ships were running aground because of poor
navigation. Harrison invented clockworks that ran accurately under
the difficult circumstances of a ship at sea, being unsteady, with
changing temperature and barometric pressure, were ordinary clocks fail.
At the same time astronomers tried to come up with a practical way
of using the positions of celestial bodies to determine longitude.
A fascinating story but why am I writing this to the alternate pudding list?
Well, like Huygens was also involved with clocks, Harrison was also
involved with tuning. His temperament has a fifth of 695.493 cents,
almost 3/10-comma meantone. As such it offers a compromise between
good minor thirds and good major thirds with the minor thirds about
twice as good. The fifths are rather rough.
Anyway, the book is very recommended.

Manuel Op de Coul coul@ezh.nl

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Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 10:24:57 -0800
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