Ships, Clocks & Stars: new exhibition - in pictures

A gallery of images from a new exhibition marking the tercentenary of the first Longitude Act - it opens tomorrow at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich

Rebekah Higgitt
theguardian.com, Thursday 10 July 2014 07.03 EDT

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National Maritime Museum's Ships, Clocks and Stars exhibition — The exhibition opens with a large, changing seascape - a scene with no landmarks except the moon and stars - and objects that evoke the risks and rewards of maritime travel. Photograph: National Maritime Museum

Scene from Ships, Clocks and Stars exhibition — Visitors learn from text and video what longitude is, and why it was a problem. At the same time, early navigational tools remind us that much successful maritime travel, trade and exploration took place before the 18th century. Photograph: National Maritime Museum

The 1714 Longitude Act, installed at the National Maritime Museum — The first Longitude Act, given royal assent by Queen Anne on 9 July 1714. This is the first time the original Act, on loan from the Parliamentary Archives, has been on display. It is shown with a letter by Isaac Newton: Newton advised parliament on the bill and the likely success of various potential solutions Photograph: National Maritime Museum

Exhibition display on longitude methods at National Maritime Museum — As Isaac Newton said, by 1714 there were various methods of finding longitude known to be "true in theory, though very difficult in practice". Visitors are shown the backstory and how the methods worked through objects, portraits and touchscreen videos. Photograph: National Maritime Museum

An evocation of a Georgian Coffee House at the National Maritime Museum — A section of the Ships, Clocks & Stars exhibition has become a Georgian coffee house, showing that longitude wasn't just a matter for astronomers and instrument makers but was a topic for public debate, discussion, lobbying - and satire. Photograph: National Maritime Museum

John Harrison's sea clocks on display at the National Maritime Museum — Coming to London and gaining the long-term support - with a series of awards of £500 every few years - was vital to the career of John Harrison and the development of his extraordinary sea clocks. Photograph: National Maritime Museum

Display on the development of octants and lunar tables at the National Maritime Museum — At exactly the same time that Harrison was working on his clocks, new instruments - including the octant and sextant - and improved astronomical tables made finding longitude by lunar distances possible. Tobias Mayer of Gottingen did what Newton failed to do: produced a lunar theory good enough navigation. Photograph: National Maritime Museum

A projected video explains the decisions of the Board of Longitude — Visitors are brought, virtually, into a meeting of the Board of Longitude on 9 February 1765, when the results of trials of Harrison's sea watch and Mayer's lunar tables were discussed. The two methods were seen as complementary and both were deemed worthy of reward and further development. Photograph: National Maritime Museum

Scene from Ships, Clocks and Stars exhibition — The exhibition goes on to explore what happened after the early success of these two methods: their support by the Board of Longitude and Royal Observatory, and their testing and use on elite voyages of survey and exploration like those of James Cook. Photograph: National Maritime Museum

Scene from Ships, Clocks and Stars exhibition — This section called looks at the London artisans and businessmen who standardised production of sextants and chronometers, making a commercial success and products that could, by the early 19th century, be sent out on most long-distance voyages and be used to produce more accurate charts. Photograph: National Maritime Museum

Cover of Finding Longitude book — See more at the exhibition, 11 July 2014 - 4 Jan 2015. For those who would like to read more, this illustrated book by the exhibition's curators, Richard Dunn and Rebekah Higgitt, can be bought as a paperback (called Ships, Clocks & Stars) from the National Maritime Museum or as a hardback or ebook from all good booksellers. Photograph: /Collins

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