Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Grumpy Celt" data-source="post: 2463325" data-attributes="member: 1019">(Grumpy Celt gets up on his soapbox…)I did some research into this issue for the Mechamancy book.In terms of sailing, once the vessel is out of sight of land, the lack of fix objects was an obstacle for purposes of determining the position of the vessel, which was vital for reliable navigation. Before latitude was developed as a concept, the North Star was used for determining the relative North-South position of the vessel – at least for vessels in the northern hemisphere. The North Star is relatively fixed in position, unlike most other celestial bodies.However, it was traditionally very difficult to determine longitude, or relative west-east position, because of that very lack of fix objects. This remained an issue until the 18th century, when John Harrison developed a marintime clock. Before this reliable clocks had largly depended on the pendilum to regulate the the consistant and regular action of the mechanism of the clock. The problem was the rolling of ship in the ocean distrupted the action of the pendimulmHarrison’s clock, through a number of technical innovations, was able to avoid this issue and thus provide reliable measure of time passing on the ship. This, coupled with an a measure of the vessels speed, allowed for more reliable longitude calculations than had before been possible.There were other methods – such as the Lunar Distances – but they were often more complicated and less accurate than Harrison’s clocks.For more information, refer to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison" target="_blank"> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison </a>In terms of manufacturing, clocks – and thermometers – did not necessarily improve the function of a crossbow or tell people when the best time to build a castle. However, again, accurate measurements facilitated improvements to metallurgy and other technologies.As such, properly using a clock could offer a bonus when crafting masterwork weapons, armors and other such items.</blockquote>

Verification