Wonders -- Harrison's timepiece

vanishpoint · February 23, 2001, 16:12

18th-century clockmaker William Harrison's invention might not stand as one of the great wonders in an architectural or sense nor evoke passions as a national symbol, but the tiny pocketwatch he designed had more of an impact on the world than many of the other wonder-nominated items/inventions.
Background: Navigators have always been able to determine their latitude by the position of the sun, but determining longitude was nearly impossible. Because of that, traveling the high seas was indeed risky business -- ships would arrive in a port only to find that they had sailed 1,000 miles of course. By devising a clock that could accurately keep time (the ultimate design only lost/gained a second or three over a couple months), Harrison gave navigators what had eluded them throughout mankind's sea-going history: the ability to pinpoint themselves exactly on a map. This not only leads to naval dominance but also trade advantages.
Anyone who's read Dava Sobel's "Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genuis Who Solved the Greated Scientific Problem of His Time" or has seen the PBS docudrama on it would agree, I think.

Optimizer · February 23, 2001, 17:34

Well... accurate watches should rather be a tech.

Otherwise, it would be an interesting idea if ships in the pre-industrial game could end up in the wrong place after crossing the high seas, due to hard weather or erratic navigation.

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EnochF · February 23, 2001, 19:24

I'm still waiting to hear from Firaxis, whether the tech advances will be customizable to the point where I could, if I wished, include a "Clockwork" tech that has a civilization-wide effect on ships, for example, increasing movement by 1 or decreasing the chances that a trireme will sink away from shore. I think that would be the way to go, if anything.

vanishpoint · February 24, 2001, 20:15

quote:

Originally posted by Optimizer on 02-23-2001 04:34 PM
Well... accurate watches should rather be a tech.

Otherwise, it would be an interesting idea if ships in the pre-industrial game could end up in the wrong place after crossing the high seas, due to hard weather or erratic navigation.

That would be very interesting -- not only could your civilization be hampered in the obvious ways, but it could just as likely benefit -- after all, Columbus "discovered" North America by accident. Imagine if your ship destined for the port of an established trade partner ends up on an undiscovered land or one in which the civilization is friendly. Or not-so-friendly and decides to embark on its own conquest. Would be very interesting, but tough to incorporate in the game.

Oh, and you're definitely right -- it would be a tech advance. Been a couple months since I've actually had time to play the games and am a bit rusty. Sorry 'bout that.