Article
ID: CBB400315220

Alexander Bruce: Scotland's accidental 'Scientific Revolutionary' (2020)

unapi
Technological innovation Time measuring instruments Clocks 17th century Scotland

The mid-seventeenth century saw unprecedented scientific progress. With the Middle Ages well and truly over, the Scientific Revolution had begun. However, scientific advancement does not always proceed along well-planned trajectories. Chance encounters and sheer luck have important roles to play, although more so in the seventeenth century than today. In this context, the Scottish businessman and erstwhile royalist exile, Alexander Bruce, found himself in the right place at the right time to contribute significant innovations to the nascent pendulum clock design championed by contemporary natural philosophers such as Christiaan Huygens, Robert Moray, and Robert Hooke as the solution to the perennial 'longitude problem.' Bruce's fledgling interests in science and engineering were greatly boosted by his association with the brightest minds of the newly established Royal Society of London. From an underdog position, his innovations soon outdid the achievements of the era's celebrated scholars, enabling him to conduct some of the first promising sea trials of viable marine timekeepers. International collaboration became international rivalry as time went on, with little known Scottish inventions soon becoming part of mainstream clock designs.

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Authors & Contributors
Rohr, René R. J.
Mills, Allan A.
Avner Wishnitzer
Morfouli, Meropi
Carina Gliese
Rory McEvoy
Journals
Antiquarian Horology and the Proceedings of the Antiquarian Horological Society
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
Ferrum
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences
Publishers
Brill
IOP Publishing Ltd
University of Wisconsin at Madison
University of Chicago Press
Oxford University Press
Manchester University Press
Concepts
Time measuring instruments
Clocks
Time measurement
Astronomical chronology
Technological innovation
Technology and society
People
Wren, Christopher
Ozanam, Jacques
Newton, Isaac
Martinelli, Domenico
Line, Francis
La Hire, Philippe de
Time Periods
17th century
19th century
18th century
Premodern
Early modern
Renaissance
Places
Scotland
Middle and Near East
Mediterranean region
Americas
South Africa
Germany
Institutions
Royal Institute of British Architects
Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope
Royal Society of London
Royal Observatory Greenwich
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