Followers of this blog who are also fans of wider social media, will know that the longitude problem is no stranger to Twitter.
Becky,
Sophie,
Alexi and I all tweet, often about our longitude research and our #longitudeblog posts. We're also ably assisted by
Thony Christie and his
Renaissance Mathematicus blog.
But this week Becky spotted that
John Harrison himself is now on Twitter! @LongitudeH4 is the handle given to him by the
John Harrison Foundation based in Barrow upon Humber. They've been tweeting about all things Harrison-related, from books and exhibitions, to facts and figures, and even a campaign to rename Humberside airport!
'Determined not deterred' is their slogan, which I think particularly apt for Harrison's efforts in the 18th century. But,
as I've written before, he was also rather verbose and rambling, especially in his 1775 pamphlet
A description concerning such mechanism as will afford a nice, or true mensuration of time. I wonder how Harrison himself would have coped with fitting his thoughts into 140 characters? Indeed for many of our
longitudinarians, such brevity might have been useful encouragement.