Throughout the great age of exploration, sailors attempted to navigate the oceans without any means of measuring their longitude.  All too often, voyages ended in disaster when both crew and cargo were captured or lost upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall.  Thousands of lives and the fortunes of seafaring nations hung upon a resolution.

John Harrison, a carpenter by trade, single handedly derived a solution to this, one of the greatest scientific, geopolitical, economic, and humanitarian problems of the 17th and 18th ceturies. This talk will tell his story.