source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 07:45:32 -0800 Subject: Book about Harrison From: Manuel.Op.de.Coul@ezh.nl (Manuel Op de Coul) 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 Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 15 Dec 1996 19:22 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA04550; Sun, 15 Dec 1996 19:24:59 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA04709 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id KAA08804; Sun, 15 Dec 1996 10:24:57 -0800 Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 10:24:57 -0800 Message-Id: <199612151323_MC1-D36-6BA6@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu