These Clocks Helped Measure the World

hey everybody Adam Savage from tested I am in the Royal Society in London alongside Keith their head librarian how are you sir good to see you uh we have a magnificent object here can you tell me about it yeah so this is a regulator clock uh it's a chronometer that was made by John Shelton in London in the late 18th century uh it's one of several that the Royal Society purchased for scientific purposes and this particular one is well known because it went on Captain J Cook's second voyage of Discovery this traveled on Cooks yet that's right yeah we think it was a board resolution so yeah wow okay so explain where the regulator clock is so um it's a very accurate instrument and and originally what they're all Society was interested in was the transit of Venus see these events where the Venus passes over the face of the Sun and if you take some very careful measurements what you want to be doing is calculating one astronomical unit and this is something that scientists were terribly interested in and when you talk about precise measurements precise measurements from two different places on Earth's surface that's right and four different places usually on the sun surface so they would look at when when Venus just touched the the face of the sun yeah and just as it was holy in the sun right and then the same on the opposite side so they had four measurements to work with and they sent out as many observers as possible all over the world because of course you never know when it was going to be cloudy so you wanted as many people out there making that observation it's possible because it doesn't happen like and so each of those people has to carry with them a chronometer of that's right so the highest possible accuracy that's right they carry telescopes to make the observations They Carried clocks so they could time the observations and uh this is uh one of those instruments uh By the time of the resolution of course they revolute HS resolution uh they were looking at different things yeah but uh yes it's a it's a Transit instrument I I remember reading accounts of somebody who had spent years getting to some remote part of South Asia only for it to be cloudy that day that's right there was a french guy if you did actually tried to make observations from the deck of a ship that didn't work because he waited for the second Transit yeah and but Legend has it that when he went back to to Europe uh he'd been declared dead his wife had married someone else and yeah it was uh science was full on it those days now this is a pendulum clock ET is yeah uh I can see this better maybe if I just open up the case there you just get rid of the label for a second oh so how would this have dealt with the pitching of a ship over thousands of C miles uh it wouldn't have so so um they would set it up and in fact they did set up in this tripod Arrangement when they landed ah yeah so um so they would calculate their proper time from local conditions uh and they had chronometers with a pretty different kinds okay um but yeah the pendulum is what they would be looking at to keep an accurate measure uh and you can see it's a it's a bi-metal pendulum so well so explain what that means these all this these rods holding it up there of different metals that that's right so because uh temperature is going to affect things so that they want to make sure they're getting them better exactly yeah so they wanted to make sure they're getting as accurate a measurement as possible uh you can see the weights here which is is the gravity which is driving right the clock itself and so the idea is that as one of these Metals expands the other is Contracting and they are canceling each other out so that the length of this pendulum does not change very yeah do you know how little variants they were able to achieve I don't for this particular instrument but they were pretty good at it and and one of the reasons they they were interested in this sort of question is because they uh use pendulums to take measurements of Earth's gravity warranty so uh one of the reasons that they use this kind of clock wasn't for time keeping at all but it was to to look at gravity missions and in fact um this instrument has had a long life after James Cook okay so it was used for uh pendulum measurements and you can see that because the front panel has been cut out yeah uh they've put some glass in there right and you might just be able to see a DOT there where they were they were taking the measurement oh my good glass so they use a small telescope to look at very very minor variations of the pendulum swing so there we have it I can open the face of the clock I would like to um is now is that bi-metal is was am I right that that's Harrison's invention all right uh yeah and um it was taken over by a variety of other people as well uh Henry cater was one of the Pioneers in this area as well so you can see the face of the clock a bit better there so uh it's it's very different from a conventional clock face as we would expect with it so you've got um 60 minute oh great look at that yeah yeah uh so you can tell the time from this inner dial here so we're at 12 about 12 14 13 14 something like that which is what that's telling you and you've got a second hand around do you have a uh a person who you bring in to clean and service this class uh this one hasn't been serviced for quite a long time because they're actually very accurate if you keep on running uh that they'll they're pretty much forever uh it happens occasionally when uh we're asked to load clocks out right uh that's when we have to start taking them apart slightly yeah making sure that the pendulum's stable during transportation and ditto when it gets to the far end for exhibition purposes and I mean speaking of that it's astounding to think of this going on to Cook's ship traveling tens of thousands of miles through all sorts of different weathers and temperatures humidities Etc and then them unpacking it and it's still being useful and accurate yeah absolutely so it was an engineer called John smeaton he's very very well known for building the Edison Lighthouse yeah uh but he designed a platform uh for these clocks so that when you go to the far end it was a nice stable platform you could put it on a tripod mounting on a beach somewhere and start to take measurements incredible uh and over here we've got some of the chronometers they would have used to yeah but just before we go up please yes um I thought we'd maybe like to wind it oh my goodness yes so uh you can see there's just a little mechanism there just to if I just push that down hopefully should just take out all right it's not going to work today here we go so uh the key goes in just that if you just give that a turn you'll see this Rising is this Rising yeah so give it a turn oh wow and that's just bringing the weight up so it's bringing the weight up yep that's amazing it's very satisfying if you taste isn't it there's something very relaxing about it and the Tactical feedback the clicks of the ratchet yeah I mean there's a I always submit you can tell a lot about a maker by touching their creation and you can feel the the gravity in this machine yeah and that would just automatically pop back in time no you don't need to do that it'll pop back oh it does does it oh goodness yeah just incredible it's also had a little mechanism cutter at the top there oh so if you stand on tippy toes it has been adapted for electrical contact oh look at that yeah and it's got a level built in yeah oh my God what so it's actually been adapted and used as a scientific instrument considerably this this was used in some quite famous gravity experiments and doll clothes mine which is one of the deep mines in England uh and at one stage it was finally dropped down online uh so uh they're revered instruments now because scientists treated them terribly I mean then slicing time into precise increments is literally like one of the oldest human endeavors very good that's amazing yeah it's quite a thing isn't it what a beautiful thing so we should we should look at some of the smaller clocks yeah yeah so are these ships chronometers they are ships yes and again uh the ones that um uh were used by the second cook Voyage um so these are by Arnold and the London maker and um these things were usually run in pairs so one of them would be kept on Greenwich time one of them on ships time now when you say they were kept in Paris does that also uh a way of also checking their accuracy or confirming yeah one of the things that the voice wanted to do was to test a variety of timepieces to see which was the most accurate right and of course it's an important question because longitude was very much on everyone's Minds how to work out their position and one way to do it was through time keeping right so uh the the best accurate timepieces were something that they're all Navy really wanted to so they would have sent more than just a couple in order to be able to confirm which were the more accurate that's right yes so um these two weren't the only ones but uh they're an important set and uh really quite quite beautiful little things uh we don't run these ones uh but they're rather nice to to look at us was there a specific protocol ownership for how these were stored so that uh this one would have been kept wound so these would have been constantly right to maintain the time one of these was apparently dropped at some stage uh and we know that because uh there is an account of it but you can actually see the difference between them because the enameling is slightly different between the two clocks because they're not quite a pair and that means on one of them the enameling has been repaired I must have cracked when it was dropped so it's not a perfectly matched set that's exactly right although they were made as that now oh you can do is take these things out oh no way and uh take a look at the mechanism behind it and it's uh quite a beautiful thing oh my goodness uh these haven't been restored at all as far as we know we land therefore they're in in the condition that they would have been originally used in oh look it's a chain drive yeah now oh wow now is that chain perhaps is there bimetallic elements going on in here uh certainly yeah I mean so there are different Metals going on and you can probably just see from the Finish yeah uh between the brass and the and the steel yeah it looks in fantastic Condition it's it's not bad it probably needs a light dusting but apart from that it's uh it's good to go um do you know the reason the chain is wrapped around the mainspring barrel like that what that what advantage that gives I think it's it's a winding thing I don't know what the advantage is but you would uh uh wind from here and uh you can probably see oh yeah that's right so you you just pull that little wooden panel out and you've got access to the bottom of the clock and that's how you wind got it it's remarkable for its age and its history yeah a chain is really something else I mean somebody manufactured every single link of that by hand by hand yeah so every part of this would have been effectively handmade they say we've had obviously tools to work with uh primitive instruments by today's standards but they manage a pretty good results they really did this is [Laughter] just thrilling to look at it Keith was there somebody on the ship whose job it was to maintain and take care of these yep so uh the duties would have been shared out but yes someone would be tasked to keep these clocks wound uh because otherwise the entire scientific element of the voice recur negated uh so yeah yeah uh very important you're surround so I could imagine that if you have five or six clocks and then you've got this one in storage and everything has to be maintained that when the clocks start to disagree yeah you have a very tough job about figuring out which clock yeah which clock is right and which clock might be exactly yeah yeah I mean you'd find out when you got back home to Greenwich oh yeah uh but yeah uh it's just uh very very difficult to know which one was right which one was was slightly out well also I would imagine actually now it occurs to me for the first time that if they go out and they come back and they read the variance between the original state and its return state that they could actually correct for some of their observations made in the field yeah and in fact uh some of Cook's voyages have exactly that kind of table in them of how each clock performed so you can you can look back you can actually look at the record because you'll see how many seconds they lost over the months yeah amazing foreign

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 74,712

Keywords: tested, adam savage, tested adam savage, adam savage tested, the royal society, brady haran, museum, museum tour, royal orb, royal mace, royal sceptre, adam savage royal society, adam savage royal mace, adam savage royal scepter, keith moore royal society, head librarian royal society, adam savage london, accurate clock, longitude problem

Id: cj3ZUeMVPCs

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 01 2023