Do forum members go along with the idea that Harrison was just a brilliant scientist whose work and good name was undermined by the Board of Longitude?

Or do you think that the board was merely exasperated by Harrison's stubborness and refusal to adhere to their precise demands, over testing?

History has been very much on the side of Harrison, whose life has been celebrated on film. I've even heard a sea shanty (starts 16:20) about him.

I guess that Harrison would have been the ultimate 18th century tech-head/geek and people like that often rub people up the wrong way. Clearly, he deserved his reward though.

Here's a documentary about longitude, for those that are interested.

People often herald the beauty and need for simplicity in solutions to problems, but this is one of the true great tales of how extraordinary technical complexity and engineering can triumph in many (if not more) cases as well.

I suspect from my relatively limited reading on the subject past Longitude that deep down it was the perceived elegance and simplicity of the lunar method that led so many to doubt/overlook/challenge Harrison for so long and lead him to such stubbornness. The history of science is just so littered with stubborn people falling in love with ideas that seems so devilishly simple but can't quite be proved, and this is one of the classic examples.

It is also part of the ongoing miracle of mechanised production that the sea clock was ever made cheap enough to be mass produced/used; and looking down at my solar powered, lose at most a second a year under any condition stainless steel $100 Citizen, or my mobile phone with built in GPS, maps and velocity calculator, one can only wonder in awe at what they would have made of modern timekeeping/horology and how far we have now come.

The marine chronometer initially cost about 1/3 as much as the ships it was designed for, although the price quickly began to drop.

I wish I could buy a ship for 1/3 of the price of a swatch

Not a bad bit of kit for the year 1761! Lost 5 seconds on a voyage from Britain to Jamaica. The board dismissed this as just luck and demanded a second trial.

How the hell could anyone make something as advanced as this in 1761?

This is a table watch, the earliest dated watch known. It was made in Germany in 1530, could be wound for up to 16 hours and was accurate within about half an hour.

Don't have the location of page. But they just tested his original design and it worked but it was huge.