APPENDIX. No 1. REMARKS [BY JOHN HARRISON] ON A PAMPHLET LATELY [IN 1767] PUBLISHED BY THE REV. NEVIL MASKELYNE, UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE BOARD OF LONGITUDE. A PUBLICATION having lately been made by the Rev. Mr. Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal, under the authority of the Board of Longitude, manifestly tending, by the suppression of some facts and the misrepresentation of others, to impress the world with an unjust opinion of my Invention, and falsely asserting that my Watch did not at certain periods therein mentioned keep time with sufficient exactness to determine the Longitude within the limits prescribed by the Act of the 12th of Queen Anne; I think it incumbent upon me to submit some observations thereon to the impartial public; and the rather, because the said Pamphlet is rendered so confused by unnecessary repetitions, and voluminous tables, that a man must be pretty conversant in these matters, to trace and combine the facts, so as to check the conclusions, which would consequently be taken upon trust by the generality of readers, unless publicly contradicted. As it will be my endeavour so far to avoid the use of all terms of art as to make the subject generally intelligible, I flatter myself I shall not be thought impertinent for giving a short explanation (though quite unnecessary to the far greater part of my readers) of what the Longitude is, and what the service required of the Watch.* The Longitude of any place is its distance East or West from any other given place; and what we want is a method of finding out at sea, how far we * The ensuing paragraph would have been left out, had not Mr. Mudge, admiring it for its clearness, given it insertion in his reply and also by reason that in a work adapted as far as the writer could effect it, for general perusal, it may be of use to some tyros; and occasionally serve to make the Ladies distinctly acquainted with a word so often in their way, on taking up a newspaper. They will please to observe that four seconds of time are equivalent to a geographical mile, rather more than a statute mile, in space; which gives fifteen such miles to a minute, and sixty, or a degree, to four minutes. By the same progression, the earth revolves 21,600 miles at the equator in the twenty-four hours; but the motion of our globe on its polar axis becomes trifling when compared with its velocity in its orbit, for Mr. Whiston tells them-that while he is writing, himself and his study are carried at the rate of 25,000 miles an hour! are got to the Eastward or Westward of the place we sailed from. The application of a Timekeeper to this discovery is founded upon the following principles: the earth's surface is divided into 360 equal parts (by imaginary lines drawn from North to South) which are called Degrees of Longitude; and its daily revolution Eastward round its own axis is performed in 24 hours; consequently in that period, each of those imaginary lines or degrees, becomes successively opposite to the Sun (which makes the noon or precise middle of the day at each of those degrees;) and it must follow, that from the time any one of those lines passes the Sun, till the next passes, must be just four minutes, for 24 hours being divided by 360 will give that quantity; so that for every degree of Longitude we sail Westward, it will be noon with us four minutes the later, and for every degree Eastward four minutes the sooner, and so on in proportion for any greater or less quantity. Now, the exact time of the day at the place where we are, can be ascertained by well known and easy observations of the Sun if visible for a few minutes at any time from his being ten degrees high until within an hour of noon, or from an hour after noon until he is only 10 degrees high in the afternoon; if therefore, at any time when such observation is made, a Timekeeper tells us at the same moment what o'clock it is at the place we sailed from, our Longitude is clearly discovered. To do this, it is not necessary that a Watch should |