Equinoctial Dial, by Juan Cocart, Spanish, 1596 (Inv. 51773) This object is in the Museum’s collections.
Name: Elisa
Age: 29
Occupation: PhD Candidate
From: Madrid, Spain
Object: Equinoctial Dial, by Juan Cocart, Spanish, 1596
Story: I have found many scientific objects with this inscription “Juani Cocart me fe. 1596” (made by Juan Cocart in 1596) around the world, which make me think about science travelling through space and time!
Two-Day Marine Chronometer, c. 1840 (Inv. 38217) ‘Chronometer’ is the title given to clocks accurate enough to be used at sea. This one comes from the Museum’s collections, we wonder if it was similar to those Catilin saw at the Greenwich Maritime Museum.
Name: Caitlin
Age: 24
Occupation: Student
From: Kent
Object: Nautical Clock
Story: When I was about 8 I went to Greenwich Maritime Museum with my parents. They spent ages explaining how the clocks has helped sailors navigate the globe, which I found really boring. Their lecture was rewarded a few weeks later when my school held a science competition and my essay on how the nautical clocks at Greenwich helped sailors travel the work won me first prize – a book on science, a box of magnets and a huge bag of sweets (which lasted far longer than the book!).
Verge watch, London, c.1750 (Inv. 52706). Although this watch is more than 200 years old, its face is incredibly similar to those we wear today.
Name: Daniel
Occupation: Student
Object: Analogue watch
Story: I recently received a watch, from a loved one, as a gift. I adore it, it is bluff and appealing. However, something more then that attracts me to it. It tells the time just like another watch I’ve seen, the one in the picture displayed, and that watch is hundreds of years old. Put simply, I love the somewhat sentimental thought that time today is as time yesterday and time tomorrow.
I hope that this object won’t one day merely be one of purely historical interest. To my mind, the analogue watch or, it as I prefer to call it, the watch is one of those special scientific objects which cannot be improved upon if it is to retain its natural character. That is to say, it cannot be added to in function if is to remain, simply, a timepiece. The essence of the watch is demeaned and betrayed by throwing in bells and whistles, weather-dials, musical output and whatever other flight of fancy take a modern designer’s mind.
A standard 12 point circular display is, truly, a thing of beauty but it is more than that: it is a constant link to our collective past. Such a face tells the time as Dickens saw it as he wrote long into the night, as Churchill glimpsed it whilst toiling under London when Britain stood alone, as Big Ben displayed and displays it to all as eras passed and new sun’s rise. In our time when we are increasingly driven by the unceasing demand for quantifiable progress in each aspect of our yet more corporate world, and in which each minute seems to be worth more than the last, there is something deeply reassuring in seeing time as our forebears saw it and remembering that for us, as them, a minute hasn’t changed.
This is the planisphere Peter uses, it looks very different to the Museum’s one at the bottom of the post! The big dipper can be seen to the right of the pole star.
Name: Peter
Age: Ancient
From: Oxford
Object: Planisphere
Story: My modern planisphere is shown in the photo above. The brass rivet at its centre marks the position of the pole star. Because the Earth rotates daily, all stars seem to revolve about the pole star. By setting the date and time a planisphere shows which stars are visible in the night sky.
I like it because it can also be used in reverse, like a nocturnal, to tell the time at night:
Celestial Planisphere, London, Early 19th Century (Inv. 40743). This planisphere from the Museum’s collections is about 200 years old!
