Seventh Question

You are walking down the street and looking for a puzzle to solve. After some time while crossing a street you see TWO very interesting signs:



You can choose what to do.

End of Round Six

Why this question ?

To learn something new ( or old) and understand the "gut feeling".

My view:
Yes, he is famous for his clocks, but those are not his greatest achievement. Not even his grasshopper escapement, the bimetallic strip or the caged roller bearing.

His will to try and make something that was thought impossible, even when told otherwise, was his greatest achievement. Not only the invention itself, but also the stubbornness to continue improving his clock when the government dismissed the preciseness as “luck”.

The H4 was tested thoroughly and still said that it does not work and needs more testing. The moral there is that some things just work - luckily - and excessive testing is waste of time. We as testers need to feel when more testing is needed or when that would be a waste of resources.


Before the discussion the answer nr. 2 was voted the best.

The following are all the answers I received :
(Spelling not corrected. )

Tester 1:
H1- Because it was first one and idea is the most important. All others was only upgrades.

Tester 2:
John Harrisons greatest achievement to my mind was the H4. It was the most accurate chronometer of his time. It was in fact so accurate that it required extensive testing just to verify how accurate it was. As the testers were the brightest minds of those days - they were members of a science society called Astronomer Royal I can only conclude that because even they were struggling to understand just how accurate the H4 was - It had to be very precisely built --> error free and therefore the greatest achievement of John Harrison.

Tester 5:
John Harrison greatest achievment was solving the problem of accurately establishing the East-West position. Idea that clock can be accurate enough to measure longitude at the sea was insain. But he did it, he build a series of clocks which were revolutionary at that time. All clocks (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5) that he build were accurate enough that they could be used. But i have to choose and and as being tester i choose H4 which was more tested than other clocks.

Tester 6:
Answer is e) or H5. It's last version of his work and includes all knowledge he acquired when developing H1, H2, H3 and H4.

Tester 9:
e) Although the H1 was the first ever good chronometer and H2-H5
were even better his greatest inventions were bimetallic strip and caged
roller bearings. Two inventions which are widely used everyday without any
big changes from 18 century

Tester 10:
H4
It was the first compact, reliable, unaffected by high frequency motion or drastic change of temperature, extremely accurate and 100% mechanically working timekeeper. It is probably one of the most important and benchmarked timekeeper ever made.

Tester 11:
Altho greating H1 he was the pioneer of the technology, his greatest achievement was H4 simply because it had the most accurate technology and was tested way more than all the previous versions.

Tester 13:

In my opinion, the greatest achievement of John Harrison would be the H4. It was most improved, developed and tested watch, because it was the last one of them. H4 was also the one that lasted longer, because out of the hundreds of new clocks created after the H4 during 210 years, there was none that improved accuracy of H4.