Making Time Fit

Artisans, Astronomers and Meridian Mechanics in the Age of Calculation

This project explores the transformation of relations between artisans, computers (human and eventually mechanical), sailors and the British state in the attempt to establish a means of finding and managing longitude at sea.

It offers a new account of how the problem of longitude offers us an insight into the emergence of what could be called the 'Calculating State' in which ideas of enlightenment, invention, mechanisation, prediction and imperial governance were blended together to form a new form of techno-political regime from the late eighteenth century.

Work so far

On Chronometers and Clockmakers

1. Papers regarding public trials and improvements of clocks and chronometers, 1779-1826

2. Papers regarding John Arnold and Thomas Earnshaw's chronometers and claims for reward

3. Remarks by chronometer-makers on on John Arnold

4. Remarks by chronometer-makers on Thomas Earnshaw

5. John Gottlieb Ulrich's specification for the escapement of a marine chronometer

6. Remarks by chronometer-makers on Thomas Earnshaw's Explanation of Time Keepers

7. 'An Account of the going of Dr Maskelyne's new Chronometer N.309 made by Mr T. Earnshaw'

8. Rating of longitude watches on HMS Adventure

9. Chronometer Ledgers at the Royal Observatory

Essays written for the papers of the Board of Longitude

Thomas Earnshaw (Clockmaker), 1749-1829: RGO Collections

Voyages and Astronomers

1. Captain Cook's journal of voyage to the South Seas

2. Log book of HMS Resolution

3. Observations on HMS Resolution

4. Astronomical observations made during Captain Cook's last voyage.

5. William Gooch's: Observations in the voyage of the Daedalus

6. William Gooch: Observations in the voyage of the Daedalus

7. John Crosley, Matthew Flinders, Samuel Flinders: Log book, observations and memoir of the HMS Investigator

8. John Crosley: Reduction of the astronomical observations made during the voyage of HMS Investigator

9. Mathhew Flinders, Samueal Ward Flinders, John Crosley: observations on a voyage of discovery of the HMS Investigator

10. Observations on voyages of discovery

11. General correspondence and related papers regarding observations made on voyages of discovery

12. Draft letters from Nevil Maskelyne to Ewart, Canelas, John Dollond, Crosley and Inman

13. John Crosley's Observations

14. Fifth voyage of Bombay Castle, Bombay and China

15. Fifth voyage of Bombay Castle, Bombay and China: navigational daily work and calculations

16. Sixth voyage of Bombay Castle, Bombay and China: calculations of longitude, 1805

Instrumenting Order: Longitude, Seamen and Astronomers, 1770-1805

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315584508-3/instrumenting-order-longitude-seamen-astronomers-1770-1805-eoin-phillips

Remembering Matthew Flinders

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21533369.2012.726431

Fifty years of E.P. Thompson

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03071022.2014.914784

Of Clocks and Cats

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03071022.2014.914784

Our trusty friends? The place of technology in global histories

https://pastandpresent.org.uk/our-trusty-friends-the-place-of-technology-in-global-histories/

Articles, Book Chapters & Essays

Affordances in Time

https://blogs.salleurl.edu/en/affordances-time-progress-dr-eoin-phillipss-research-greitm

Relojes y cargamentos

https://sabersenaccio.iec.cat/es/relojes-y-cargamentos/

This work for this project was supported by the AHRC (UK) Board of Longitude project, based at the University of Cambridge and Royal Museums Greenwich. It has since been supported through a range of grants, stipends, prizes from the Huntington Library, California, and the Catalan Society for the History of Science, amongst others.