HARRISON'S CLOCK

5 6 Y H A R R I S O N ’ S C L O C K J O S E P H H A R R I S O N Even the most recalcitrant conundrum, Most enigmatic brain-teaser, most baΔing, Perplexedly stupefying And dilemmatic quandary, Logic-defying, Which brings our rut-inhabiting and humdrum Intelligence to some Impenetrable boundary, Some blind spot, some unfathomable sum And sets us waΔing, Imprisoned by polarities (Nature or nurture? particle or wave?), Some cul-de-sac or cave Murky with deep obscurities – Dark energy, dark matter, neutrino mass, Cantor’s infinities, Schrödinger’s cat, The source of gamma rays, The seven bridges of Königsberg, The intricate ‘‘maze Of moral relativism’’ (or turf, or grass, Or maize), a better mousetrap, The IT nightmare of Rube Goldberg Database management, an honest house trap Repair, a fatFree diet that satisfies, the sins Of fathers visiting yet one more time, The perfect, victimless crime, The origin of origins – 5 7 R Yields sometimes, in the end, not to the flights Of fancy speculation, sidereal charts, Or the pure good of theory, But to the dull, mechanical, Patient and weary Labors of tedious days and troubled nights Through trials that fail and fail, Obsession’s grim, tyrannical Absorption in the pickiest detail, The stubborn arts Of the compulsive, focused will, Accepting the perfectionist’s confinement In quest of what refinement Can amplify her growing skill: For instance, the holy grail of navigation, Discovering one’s longitude at sea, Which vexed such intellects As Newton, Halley, Euler, Hooke, And caused the wrecks Of countless ships (one horrid illustration: Their reckoning o√ by miles Despite procedures by the book, Two thousand sailors died on the Scilly Isles, A tragedy That spurred the fabled Longitude Act, Establishing a monetary prize Of unprecedented size For any reasonably exact 5 8 Y Solution), was found not by ephemerides Like Galileo’s, or Flamsteed’s catalog Mapping celestial motion, Or any correction for the flux Of trackless ocean Using the stars and moon as pinpoint guides, Or more unlikely helps Proposed to resolve the fiendish crux, Like timing the pathetic howls and yelps Of a tortured dog Using ‘‘powder of sympathy,’’ Or stationing ships with guns to fire away Appointed times of day At intervals across the sea, But a self-taught provincial, an abrupt, Obscure clock-maker, one John Harrison, Whose artistry reformed The craft of the chronometric trade, As he transformed The laggard clock, forever interruptEd by wear and winding, fallIng out of time, to a home-made Baroque high-tech device precise past all Comparison, Equipped to counteract the raw Conditions (changes in humidity, Temperature, gravity, And barometric pressure, the yaw 5 9 R And pitch of shipboard, the insidious Corrosion of salt air, each variable Conducive to mistakes) By carpentry taking in hand Clamps, scrapers, stakes, Tongs, saws, screw arbors with fastidious Mastery, calibrated By innovation on demand Of all the staggering gadgets he created, Very able To rig up what he needed – pairing Brass and steel in the bi-metallic strip, Countering friction’s grip By inventing the ball bearing, Plus other gifts he found just feeling his way, The gridiron pendulum, the grasshopper Escapement, lubrication Via lignum vitae – to mechanize Close calculation In his great sea clocks’ brilliant brass display Of balance and precision, Of whirring wheels that harmonize With rods and springs and dials in timely vision, Each show-stopper Proving, as Hogarth said, ‘‘one of The most exquisite movements ever made,’’ A spectacular cascade Unwinding long labors of love 6 0 Y (Love of the object, true – true love of art, Of tiny fillips no one else will see, Of ornamental function Fusing resistant elements In taut conjunction Of form with force and shimmering part with part), ‘‘H1,’’ the toast of all London, ‘‘H2,’’ which represents Breakthrough minute adjustments, most of all ‘‘Harrison 3,’’ The master’s ‘‘curious third machine,’’ An odd assembly of balances and gears That cost him nineteen years To streamline, till, lighter and lean, Comprising seven hundred and fifty-three Separate parts, it too sat in its box, Polished and perfected Only, just...