Many Years Ago I Read About A Wooden Clock Being Made,

by John Harrison,

which was a pretty amazing idea, especially considering it was made by Harrison in 1717, Harrison was a carpenter who was born on the Nostell Priory estate near Wakefield, having followed his father into the carpenter's trade, John Harrison found himself repairing and then making clocks,


Harrison's clocks, with their all-wooden mechanism, proved to be very accurate, Terry Bedford who is one of Nostell Priory's Volunteer Room Stewards says: "I think he was 24 and this was his third one, His younger brother also worked with him, they worked together on a lot of the bigger clocks." only three of Harrison's wooden clocks still survive today and Terry believes the Nostell clock may be the most accessible,


the amazing thing is that 300 years later this clock still runs and keeps accurate time, but perhaps Harrison is better remembered by solving the Longitude problem, 


March 25, 1704 - an urgent petition reached Parliament from "Certain Captains of Her Majesty's Ships, Merchants of London, and Commanders of Merchant-men" who wanted something done about the problems of Longitude in navigation, up to now it was either guess (dead-reckoning) or carry long, heavy telescopes and awkward pendulum clocks, which couldn't be used aboard ship anyway, to track a tiny Jovian moon after the manner of Cassini, the elder, neither method was proving satisfactory and there ware numerous ship-wrecks owing to incorrect guesstimates of position,


Since "The Discovery of the Longitude is of such Consequence to Great Britain for the safety of the Navy and Merchant Ships is well as for the improvement of Trade that for want thereof many Ships have been retarded in their voyages, and many lost..." Parliament, in 1774, voted to offer a reward (£10,000 for any method capable of determining a ship's longitude within one degree; £15,000, within 40 minutes, and £20,000 within one half a degree) "for such person or persons as shall discover the Longitude," The Board of Longitude, composed of scientists and admirals was permanently set up to examine proposals and check results of accuracy tests,


yes you guessed it, Harrison solved the problem by making 4 successively more accurate timepieces, all of which as a matter of fact both Diana and myself saw on our last visit to Great Britain when we went to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich,

but Valerii Danevych has taken wooden clock making to a completely new and different level by producing, with the exception of the steel spring, a completely wooden wrist watch, working under a microscope to get the parts working perfectly, the Ukrainian craftsman creates amazing masterpieces that actually keep time (with an accuracy of around 5 minutes per day for wristwatches), He claims the series of wooden gears inside his watches can store 20 hours of reserve power,

but as you might expect craftsmanship like this does not happen quickly or cheaply, the watch featured here is a men’s wristwatch with a tourbillon movement and full retrograde indication into which he put 1,800 hours of work over a seven-month period, the €100,000 price tag reflects the time and effort that went into making it, I am guessing that like John Harrison back in the 1700s Valerii used his skill as a carpenter to select woods that had natural oils in them which actually lubricated the movement as it worked, in any event a true masterpiece.