Time Restored
The Harrison timekeepers and R.T. Gould, the man who knew (almost) everything
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 29 June 2006
- ISBN 9780198568025
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages484 pages
- Size 223x147x30 mm
- Weight 890 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 59 b&w halftones, 18 colour photo plates 0
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Short description:
Biography of the polymath, Lt Cmdr Rupert T. Gould (1890-1948), the man who, in the 1920s, restored the great eighteenth century marine timekeepers by John Harrison to their former glory. With his encyclopaedic knowledge, he studied and wrote on subjects as varied as scientific mysteries (e.g. The Loch Ness Monster) and horology (timekeeping).
MoreLong description:
This is the story of Rupert T. Gould (1890-1948), the polymath and horologist. A remarkable man, Lt Cmdr Gould made important contributions in an extraordinary range of subject areas throughout his relatively short and dramatically troubled life. From antique clocks to scientific mysteries, from typewriters to the first systematic study of the Loch Ness Monster, Gould studied and published on them all. With the title The Stargazer, Gould was an early broadcaster on the BBC's Children's Hour when, with his encyclopaedic knowledge, he became known as The Man Who Knew Everything. Not surprisingly, he was also part of that elite group on BBC radio who formed The Brains Trust, giving on-the-spot answers to all manner of wide ranging and difficult questions. With his wide learning and photographic memory, Gould awed a national audience, becoming one of the era's radio celebrities.
During the 1920s Gould restored the complex and highly significant marine timekeepers constructed by John Harrison (1693-1776), and wrote the unsurpassed classic, The Marine Chronometer, its History and Development. Today he is virtually unknown, his horological contributions scarcely mentioned in Dava Sobel's bestseller Longitude. The TV version of Longitude, in which Jeremy Irons played Rupert Gould, did at least introduce Gould's name to a wider public.
Gould suffered terrible bouts of depression, resulting in a number of nervous breakdowns. These, coupled with his obsessive and pedantic nature, led to a scandalously-reported separation from his wife and cost him his family, his home, his job, and his closest friends.
In this first-ever biography of Rupert Gould, Jonathan Betts, the Royal Observatory Greenwich's Senior Horologist, has given us a compelling account of a talented but flawed individual. Using hitherto unknown personal journals, the family's extensive collection of photographs, and the polymath's surviving records and notes, Betts tells the story of how Gould's early life, his naval career, and his celebrity status came together as this talented Englishman restored part of Britain's - and the world's - most important technical heritage: John Harrison's marine timekeepers.
Time restored can be enjoyed as a well crafted description of the horological contributions of an important persona of his time, but for the reader so inclined, it is much more, it is a sensitive portrait of a troubled, but brilliant human being, who pursued his horological and scholarly goals against the odds imposed by society and his era. Fortunat Mueller-Maerki, Sussex, NJ, December 29, 2006
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Rupert T Gould
Childhood 1890-1905
Navy Training 1906-1913
The War, a Breakdown and Marriage 1914-1920
John Harrison and The Marine Chronometer
Research and the First Restorations 1920-1922
The Magnum Opus 1921-1923
Horology: the Obsession
H2 is Restored 1923-1925
The Sette of Odd Volumes
Separation 1925-1927
Oddities and Enigmas 1928-1929
The Case for the Sea Serpent 1930
The R.A.S. Regulator 1927-1929
H3 is completed 1929-1931
H1: the full restoration 1931-1933
The Loch Ness Monster 1933-1934
The Harrison Timekeepers and the NMM 1934-1935
Professor Stewart, The BBC & Tennis 1936
Many projects 1936-1937
Leaving Downside and leaving London 1937-1939
Upper Hurdcott and the Brain's Trust 1940-1945
Canterbury and a Gold Medal 1943 -1948
Appendices
