Sam the Octopus @troubleMoney@computerfairi.es

@mavica oh yeah, this dude pulled it off in THE 18TH GODDAMN CENTURY and made a system that could locate you anywhere on the globe within like, 70 km

@mavica this requires a very accurate clock, far more accurate than you could usually get at the time (badum tsh) but Harrison was a very good clockmaker

it took him years, most of his life in fact, but he eventually developed a clock that could do it

he called it the marine chronometer and it was the standard for navigation at sea since 1760-ish to when radio beacons were invented

@mavica the theory was this: if you have a good reference of what the time is at your starting point, and a good sense of where the sun is where you are, then you can work out how far east or west of that starting point you are

you'd make a note of when the sun was at its highest where you are (that's called solar noon), and then compare it against what your clock says, the hours, minutes, and seconds between is how far east or west you are

@mavica clocks at the time were primarily of the standing up in your hallway sort, pendulum clocks, any movement of the case would put the clock off by a fair amount per day which, if you're on a boat is not ideal

and so a bloke called John Harrison, a prodigy of a clockmaker, decided to try to build a clock with a lever escapement that would be accurate enough to tell the time at sea

@mavica there were prizes for anyone who could solve this problem, governments offering large amounts of cash for the solution

there were two ways people tried to solve it, with the position of the stars and an almanac, or with a clock

spoiler alert: the one that worked was a clock

@mavica for centuries, the only way of finding your way across an ocean like the atlantic was to go north or south to the longitude you wanted, using the coastline to guide you to the right place, and then sailing due west or east and hope you hadn't gone off course too much

@mavica in the beginning, there was no way of figuring out exactly where you were on the planet without being in sight of some landmark

you could work out your latitude by the angle of the sun measured on a sextant and an almanac of where it's meant to be on that day, but the longitude wasn't something you could work out

@mavica hmm... how about... right, pull up a chair and the octopus shall tell you a brief history of using a clock to figure out where you are

@mavica yeah, that's always hard to get started with

I can nerd at you a bit about watches or something if that'd help?

@mavica well, I can talk about it with you but I'm not very good at things like that

@mavica ah, that sucks

any of the feelings resolvable in any way or are they just sort of there?

@mavica hey mavi, what's up? *brings tea and other nice things*

@stolas@elekk.xyz this is just the first wave so the US does have time to catch up

@TheGibson it does sound a bit "ghosts in blood, do cocaine about it"

@sydneyfalk need some series B funding to finish it

@sydneyfalk yeah, I ran out about there as well

@sydneyfalk don't call it a startup

we've been here for years
scamming my peers
putting investors in fear
making the cash rain like a monsoon
listen to the stocks go boom