Russ Roberts: You mentioned that the solution had to be replicated to claim the prize…

You tell a lot of stories—not a lot. But, you talk for a little bit about how once they got a little more common on boats, they had to be locked up and that led to other problems. Just mention that for a minute because it’s quite charming.
Rebecca Struthers: Yeah. Sure. This ties in with the replicable thing again. There were those sort of accusations: if the watch suddenly didn’t keep time, then it was obviously something someone had done on the ship. Obviously, there’s issues with magnetism, as well, on ships. You’ve got a lot of iron work on ships back then. So, there were all sorts of potential pitfalls that could be blamed and human error was one of them.

So, as the chronometer design evolved, they were quite often placed in locked wooden boxes and that way only ranking officers would have the key, and you’d have someone who was designated as being responsible for maintaining the winding of the ship’s chronometer. But, even that in itself creates another room for human error. And, I list a few examples of not just the wood of the box warping, so the thing gets stuck in there, but also losing the keys—that most human error of all.

So, either, yeah, keys getting lost or broken off in the latch, and someone leaving the ship with the keys. There are also a few incidents involving ships’ cats, who I can vouch for as having a couple of cats myself, they are very curious animals and they have broken a couple of watches in maritime history. Trim, Captain Flinders’ cat, was particularly interested in—what was described as—had an interest in maritime horology.

So, it wasn’t a perfect science for quite a long time. And, a combination of this and them been very expensive, we continued to use celestial navigation. So, using a sextant, as well, for quite a long time. Right away, up until in the 20^th century.