"[John] Harrison [could not] express himself clearly in writing.... No matter how brilliantly ideas formed in his mind, or crystallized in his clockworks, his verbal descriptions failed to shine with the same light.... The first sentence [of his last published work] runs on, virtually unpunctuated, for twenty-five pages." Dava Sobel, Longitude, p66
"...some modern horologists claim that Harrison's work facilitated England's mastery over the oceans, and thereby led to the creation of the British Empire..." pp152-3.
After reading Longitude I am reminded and convinced even more that we require a great deal more than just visual and lingual competence. John Harrison never did receive official acknowledgement from the Board of Longitude for his monumental achievement. This servers to prove that to prevail against even those forces presumed to ally with us we must nurture the longing and patience that sustains an individual's methodical approach to anything including comprehension of the basic academics, disciplined research or complex engineering; whether there exists a learned past or not. What we have indeed become in contemporary society is impatient and lacking in faith in our own countries citizens. How many geniuses now though could either afford or possibly survive long enough in a garret anywhere in America to develop that which could save our industries from an already nearing ruin.
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