MAX helps to delve into the history of the British Board of Longitude

 

The British Board of Longitude was created in 1714 and existed for more than a century. Back in the 1700s Longitude was incredibly difficult to find, hence the launch of the Board as directed by the British government. The idea was to invite solutions to this problem, and a prize of £20,000 – a huge amount of money at the time – was offered for this purpose.

The organisation would have a historic role in maritime history, which is why a joint research project is now underway into the 114 years of developments initiated by the Board. The Arts and Humanities Research Council has granted funding to support the project, undertaken by the National Maritime Museum and the University of Cambridge (the Department of History and Philosophy of Science).

MAX and the National Maritime Museum

MAX is proud to be able to play a key role in this project. The man who claimed the £20,000 prize offered by the British Board of Longitude was John Harrison. Those who are familiar with maritime history will no doubt recognise this name. John Harrison was born in 1693 and was 21 when the British Board of Longitude came into being. He began his work to find an accurate measure of longitude at sea in 1730, but would not win the prize until 1773, forty-three years later. He was only granted it then by an Act of Parliament.

Two years later at the age of 82, his seminal work on longitude, “A Description Concerning Such Mechanism”, was published. It was this very book, handwritten and presented in a tough leather case, which found its way into the hands of our employee Sam Rowland recently. Sam is responsible for digitising the book on behalf of the National Maritime Museum, an organisation we are proud to have a twelve year association with.

Sam was amazed when he realised what he had in his hands. “I removed the book from its tough leather case and began checking through, expecting to find printed text,” he said. “When I saw handwriting, the realisation of what I was holding in my hands was immense. It was John Harrison’s 230 year old hand written work ‘Such Mechanism’. I feel extremely privileged to be trusted with such a historic article.”

MAX Communications – provider of expert digitisation services

John Harrison’s book is clearly a fine tome and one we are proud to be working with. However it is not the only precious manuscript the team at MAX has seen. We can handle manuscripts that are centuries old in a sensitive and careful manner. We have a dedicated book scanner onsite, enabling us to handle large scale digitisation projects just as easily as small scale ones.

The National Maritime Museum is one of many clients to take advantage of our onsite scanning service and fully managed colour calibrated workflow. Please contact us today if you have a similar project you would like us to work on.