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Pazul Hirose led us to a relevant and interesting paper-

| In November 1911, The Observatory published an old letter from Nevil
| Maskelyne in which he describes an hour of answering questions before
| the House of Commons. The subject was Harrison's chronometer versus the
| lunar distance method.
|
| http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1911Obs....34..391.

However, It was rather hard to find my way from that first webpage, which
indexes a whole year of "The Observatory", and some tips may be helpful.

The first page you reach is split into three panes, each with its own
scrollbar, and you need to go to the upper right pane, scrolling down as
necessary, to find "other article options", and click on it. That takes you
to a page where you can click on "thumbnails", and that throws up a pageful
of a hundred-and-odd little thumbnail images of pages from the journal, but
that doesn't take you far enough in; the Maskelyne letter of interest being
on pages 394 to 396. So you need to click on "next set of page thumbnails",
and so on, until you get to the wanted set of pages. Then scan down to click
on page 394. There may be simpler ways to get there, but I haven't found
them.

And indeed, when you get there, it's illuminating reading. It completely
demolishes Sobel's contention that Maskelyne showed overt hostility to the
chronometer method, and to Harrison. In his testimony in responding to
questions (taking his own account of it at face vale, anyway), he comes
across as scrupulously fair; indeed, more than fair, in avoiding any
criticism of Harrison and his watch, and showing its performance, in the
Barbados trial, in the most favourable light. Well worth reading.

George.

contact George Huxtable at george@huxtable.u-net.com
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.


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