All language subtitles for Strangest.Things.S01E02.The.Relic.That.Sees.the.Future.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_eng

[narrator]
Could this 3,000-year-old
gold cone

reveal the secrets
of the cosmos.

It can predict the future,
can communicate

with allegedly
supernatural forces.

[narrator]
Was this strange cube created
to win the war for Hitler?

A handwritten note says
"Taken from Germany,

from the nuclear reactor
that Hitler tried to build."

[narrator]
And could this weird looking
clock change the world?

It really was a work
of engineering genius.

[narrator]
These are most remarkable

and mysterious objects
on Earth.

Hidden away
in museums, laboratories
and storage rooms.

Now, new research
and technology

can get under their skin
like never before.

We can rebuild them,

pull them apart
and zoom in

to reveal the unbelievable,

the ancient,

and the truly bizarre.

These are
the world's strangest things.

In a glass case,
in a Berlin museum sits
a bizarre looking gold cone.

It's a 3,000-year-old relic
thought to contain

the secret knowledge
of a Bronze Age culture.

A device for predicting
the future.

[Maggie] If the theories
behind it are true,

this is truly a revelation.

[narrator] Now we're bringing
every detail

of this astonishing artifact

out into the light.

It's utterly jaw dropping
in its, in its splendor.

[narrator]
It's 29-inches long,

crafted from
wafer thin gold alloy

and covered with intricate,
cryptic patterns.

There are 21 horizontal
bands and almost 2,000 symbols

[narrator]
And experts think these
images

are far more
than just decoration.

They believe
they form a highly complex
celestial code,

one that some believe
they have finally cracked.

[Mark] It's a very remarkable
artifact.

It's beautiful,
meticulously done.

And if you imagine
this was done
during the Bronze Age,

that is really astonishing.

[narrator]
Where did it come from?

What do these
cryptic symbols mean?

What exactly is it?

This peculiar cone is
acquired by the Berlin Museum
of History and Prehistory

from an antiques market
in 1996.

So they only have
a rough idea

of exactly where it is
originally discovered.

[Ben]
It was believed to have been
found somewhere

north of the Alps,
Germany or Switzerland.

It dates to between
a 1,000 to 800 BC.

So we think it comes
from the Urnfield culture.

[narrator]
The Urnfield dominate much
of Central Europe

from 1,300 to 750 BCE.

They're called the Urnfield
culture because they
practice cremation burials

and they bury their dead
in urns, in cremation
burial cemeteries.

So you get these fields
of urns, the Urnfield culture.

[narrator] One theory is that
this could be
an ornate funeral urn,

but speculation
doesn't end there.

[Mark]
There are a lot of guesses
of what it is.

It could be a phallic symbol.

It could be a containment
for arrows.

It could be something
just decorative.

[narrator]
Others have suggested
that it might be a vase

or even an ornamental cover
for a ceremonial standard.

But archeologists now believe
its size and shape
hold the answer.

When you look at the
objects you know, you
might turn around.

You notice that it's got
a hole in the base about
the size of a human head.

[narrator]
This leads experts to
a surprising conclusion.

The thinking
is that it's a hat.

That that's exactly
what it's for.

[narrator]
This is now considered
the dominant theory

for this strange object.

It has even become known
as the Berlin Gold Hat, after
the museum where it's kept.

But it really stands out
for a hat.

It's a really unusual level
of decadence and scale

for this particular
archeological period.

This hat is an amazing piece
of craftsmanship.

You know, even today,
it would be very impressive

to create such a beautiful
object out of gold.

[narrator]
If it's difficult
to make today,

how on earth did Bronze Age
metal workers pull it off
3,000 years ago?

Chemical analysis
of the hat's gold
reveals that whoever made it,

had a sophisticated
understanding of metals.

[Anna] If this hat was made
of just pure gold,

it probably buckle
under its own weight

because
the walls are so thin.

[narrator]
To overcome this,

the hats maker mixes gold
with other metals.

[Anna]
The mixture is about
9.8% silver,

0.4% copper and 0.1% tin.

That makes it much stronger
and more rigid so that it can
stand up under its own weight.

These goldsmiths clearly knew
what they were doing.

This is actually about
the right ratio that we use
for 22 karat gold today.

[narrator]
These are astonishing lengths
to go to for just a hat.

An analysis of
its construction reveals
something even stranger.

When you X-ray
the Berlin gold hats,
there are no seams in it,

so this whole object
has been beaten out of
a single piece.

[narrator]
The gold alloy has been worked
to an extraordinary degree.

This is only possible
because the arrangement
of atoms in gold

make it uniquely malleable,
so it can be worked in a way
no other metal can be.

If you beat gold onto
a flat surface,

you can create a really thin
piece of gold leaf that is
just a few atoms thick.

It's so thin that
you can actually see
light through it.

[narrator]
Which explains the hats
delicate construction.

The single sheet of gold
that this hat is made out of

is just the thickness
of a few sheets of paper.

This means
that the gold from
the whole hat

is the equivalent of a cube
about that size.

[narrator]
It's already an
incredible achievement

for a Bronze Age craftsman.

But there's far more to it.

Every one of the almost
2,000 intricate symbols is
individually crafted.

That was probably
made from a mixture
of two technique

called
repousse and chasing.

With repousse
what you do is you create
a sort of rough shape

on a mold and you hammer
the gold from behind

in order to create
the relief of the pattern.

After that, you do chasing
which is using smaller tools

to add to the intricate
fine details onto the front.

[narrator]
The finished piece could have
taken months to make.

Why expend all
this precious resource and
concentrated effort on a hat?

Is there more to this
mysterious object
than meets the eye?

Detailed analysis
of these decorations suggests

that the Berlin Gold Hat
is anything but a regular
piece of head wear.

Experts now believe that
some symbols represent
the sun,

others the moon.

This leads to an astonishing
conclusion.

The Berlin Gold Hat
may be a celestial calendar

that can predict the future.

[narrator] Experts believe
this 3,000-year-old Gold Hat

may actually
be a celestial calendar

used to predict the future.

The Bronze Age people
who made it

measure time
using the phases of the moon

to count months,

but the annual cycle
of the sun
to measure years,

and that is a problem
for them.

[Maggie]
The lunar cycle and
the solar cycle

don't mesh up
very well.

12 lunar cycles don't add up
to one solar cycle.

It takes the earth 365
and a quarter days to go
all the way around the sun.

But it takes the moon 29
and a half days to go
around the earth.

[narrator]
So 12 lunar months

is 11 and a half days
short of a full year.

And if you rely on the sun
and the moon to know
when you should plant

or harvest or hunt,
this is a problem.

Your two essential calendars
are getting more and more
out of sync

with each other all the time.

In 432 BCE,

Greek astronomer
Meton observes

that it takes 19 years for
the moon cycle to come back
into sync with the sun.

He uses this
to come up with a fix.

The ancient Greeks decided
to fit in with the Meton cycle

to add an extra lunar month

for 7 of the 19 years

when the two calendars
were out of sync.

[narrator]
This fix keeps the lunar
and solar calendars

approximately in sync

until they actually
line up again every 19 years.

What astonishes archaeologists

is that the symbols
on the Gold Hat

provide a way of calculating
exactly the same fix

to correct for
this difference.

[Maggie] It seems to be a...
an indication
of a cross reference

between the lunar calendar
and the solar calendar.

What's more,
it looks as if

they actually keep
the two calendars in check.

[narrator]
Astronomers call this
an intercalary correction.

What makes this so exciting

is that the Hat
appears to predate
Meton's discovery

by an incredible 500 years.

If the theory
of this hat is correct,

then it shows that these
what we consider to be
primitive people

had a detailed understanding
of astronomical cycles.

To actually do
this calculation,

they would have to do
very, very detailed
observations

over long periods of time.

So it shows a sophistication
that is unexpected.

[narrator]
This would be
an astonishing claim to make

based on a single artifact.

But the Berlin Gold Hat
is not alone.

[Mark]
There are three other objects
that are very similar.

Two of them are from
today modern Germany,

from Schifferstadt
and from Nurnberg...
Nuremberg,

and another one
is from Poitiers in France.

[narrator]
The patterns on the other hats

have not yet been
closely studied,

but they are organized
in comparable sequences.

So it's assumed
they have a similar purpose.

3,000 years ago,

this level
of astronomical knowledge
may have seemed magical.

[Mark] We have an object here

that allows you
to predict the future

when it comes to sun and moon,

it allows you to communicate
with supernatural forces.

[narrator]
That sounds as much like
religion as astronomy.

[Ben]
When we're studying people
in the past,

it's really important
for us to remember

that religion
and everyday life

don't sit apart
from each other.

They're completely intertwined
and completely interwoven.

Your spiritual well-being
had a direct relationship
and a direct effect

on things like
the success of your crops,

the happiness of your family,

the security
of your community.

[narrator]
So if the Hat is
a supernatural predictor

of the future,

is it also part
of religious life?

And if so, who or what
is being worshiped?

On the top of the Hat
is an eight-pointed star.

Some archaeologists believe
it represents the sun,

which is highly significant

because in the ancient world,
sun worship is
a recurring theme.

Sun gods are known

through history
all over the world.

For example, in Shinto,

there's Amaterasu,
the Sun Goddess,

the prime ruler
of the universe.

The Lozi tribe
in Zambia believe

that their kings
are direct descendants

from the Sun God
and the Moon Goddess.

[narrator]
And around 1,340 BCE,

one of the greatest
civilizations
of the ancient world

also became
dedicated sun worshipers.

[Rebecca]
There was one moment
in ancient Egypt

where the Sun God was raised
above all of the other gods

and worship was dedicated
completely to him.

This God was called the Aten

and he was created by
a pharaoh called Akhenaten.

He built sun temples

of absolutely
unbelievable size

and he created
a brand new city

that was totally dedicated
to the Sun God.

[narrator]
Sun cults are well known
in Europe too.

So it would fit
with what we know

if the Berlin Gold Hat
is worn by a revered figure,

perhaps a high priest
in a European sun cult,

a holy person or leader
who can interpret the meaning

and importance
of its markings.

This would have invested
that person with immense power

the power
to effectively predict
the astronomical future,

perhaps when to sow crops,
when to harvest,
things like that.

Having that sort of knowledge,

especially in that
sort of culture,

would have been
immensely powerful.

[narrator]
The Berlin Gold Hat

is transforming
our understanding

of European life
in the Bronze Age.

It suggests that these were
highly sophisticated people

with the patience
to make what we consider

scientific observations
over decades,

possibly centuries.

It's amazing how much
you can tell about
an entire culture

just by looking
at a weird hat.

In the summer of 2013,

Professor Timothy Koeth
at Maryland University
receives a package

containing a curiously heavy
two-inch black cube.

It comes with a message.

A handwritten note says,

"Taken from Germany

from the nuclear reactor
that Hitler tried to build.

Gift of Ninninger."

[narrator]
What is this strange cube?

Why is it sent
to a Maryland professor?

Did Hitler really have
an atomic program?

Did he try to create
a Nazi atom bomb?

Is it really from
a Nazi reactor?

[narrator]
Is a small cube
sent to an American professor

at a Maryland university

part of a Nazi
nuclear program?

Now, using
the latest technology,

we can examine it
in minute detail
to uncover its secrets.

It measures two inches
along each face

and it's a dark
charcoal-black color.

The surface is pockmarked
with voids, imperfections,
and machined slots.

The cube weighs
about five pounds,

unexpectedly heavy
for such a small object.

Only one material
fits the bill,

uranium.

It's well documented that
Hitler dreams of having
a Nazi atom bomb.

I don't think there was really
any doubt in anyone's mind

that if Hitler had
an atomic weapon,
he... he would use it,

he would use it
as soon as he had it.

[narrator]
Could the tiny cube

really be part
of that project?

Uranium has a special property

essential to making
an atom bomb,

it's radioactive.

That means that there are
so many subatomic particles

packed into its nucleus
that it's...
it's barely stable

and it occasionally
sheds little clusters

of subatomic particles
as radiation.

[narrator]
What makes the cube so special

is that it's not simply
raw uranium.

[Philip] It was clear that
this little cube of uranium
had been processed.

So it had been refined
from uranium ore,

and then it had
the sort of tell-tale markings

of having been cast
in some way.

So this was clearly
a very deliberately
human-made object.

[narrator]
But is it a Nazi cube?

The first step
is to analyze its chemistry.

[Dougal]
When you look at
the composition of this cube,

it's pure uranium,

it's not been enriched.

[narrator]
The most radioactive part
of pure uranium

is the isotope U-235.

But it makes up
just 1% of the material.

So uranium
is now enriched

to increase the radioactive
U-235 content.

[Dougal]
Almost all of the uranium
that we use

in modern day
is enriched uranium.

That gives us a really good
fingerprint as to where
the cube has come from

because the time
that we were starting
to play around with uranium

in any great depth

was towards
the end of World War II.

[narrator]
So it is World War II uranium.

But if Hitler has
the raw material
for making a nuclear bomb,

why doesn't he use it...

or does he?

In December 1938,
at a Berlin laboratory,

German scientists
Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann

do something that changes
the world forever.

They split the atom.

[Tim]
They were doing this
by firing neutrons

at the uranium targets,

and the amazing discovery
wasn't just that they,

say, chipped off
a little bit of it.

They essentially split
into two other elements,
cesium and barium.

[narrator]
What makes
this discovery

the genesis of the most
dangerous weapon on earth

is that the weight of the
two new elements is less

than the weight of
the original uranium.

Some mass has gone missing.

Essentially, what's
happening is that

some of the initial
mass of that nucleus,

rather than just ending up

in the mass of the,
the two fragments,

some of it is
being converted
directly into energy.

[narrator]
And the
tiny amount of mass

produces a truly vast
amount of energy.

[Philip]
If you could find a way
of sustaining that process,

then you could build...
a bomb.

[narrator]
The discovery
is a Pandora's box.

Because it comes at one
of the most perilous
moments in world history.

[Sascha]
The timing of this discovery

is extremely... crucial.

Germany is under the
dictatorship of Adolf Hitler,

plans are being drawn up
for invasion of Poland.

So, the world is on...
the knife edge of war.

And into this
extraordinarily...
fraught moment

arrives the beginnings
of the most powerful weapon
that human beings

will ever develop.

[narrator]
And what's
worse is that leading the race

to develop the
first nuclear bomb

are the Nazis.

[narrator]
An innocent
looking metal cube

that arrived through the
post at Maryland University

turns out to have a
dark and disturbing past.

It may be part of
the Nazis' attempt

to develop an atomic bomb...
before the Allies could.

The same month
that World War II begins,
September 1939,

the German Nazi government
establishes the Uranverein,

the Uranium club.

There's an immense number
of incredibly intelligent,

well-trained people,

including...
Werner Heisenberg,

who's one of the
fathers of quantum physics.

[narrator]
Heisenberg
and his team of scientists

end up in a location straight
out of a Hollywood movie.

A secret lab under
a medieval castle

on the edge of
the Black Forest.

[narrator]
Beneath Haigerloch
Castle in Southwest Germany,

Heisenberg's team
begins to construct

what he calls his
uranium machine.

It's built around hundreds
of tiny cubes of pure uranium.

We know it better
as a nuclear reactor,

the first step on the
road to an atom bomb.

[Philip] And when the
splitting apart of uranium
happened, crucially,

it releases neutrons

and neutrons are the
particles that induce that
splitting in the first place.

[narrator]
Each time
a uranium atom splits,

it produces more
than one neutron,

each of which can split
another uranium atom,

creating an exponentially
increasing release of energy.

It immediately became
clear to these physicists

that what you've got here
is the potential for
a self-sustaining process,

a chain reaction.

[narrator]
The amount of
uranium needed to create

a chain reaction is
called the critical mass.

[Philip] So what they did was
to come up with a design

where you'd assemble
this critical mass of uranium

from small pieces, from
these cube blocks.

[narrator] The arrangement
of the cubes looks like some
kind of lethal candelabra.

Expanding
and rotating the cube
reveals machined notches

in the middle of two edges.

These fit perfectly with
the wires used to suspend
Heisenberg's cubes.

This is definitively
a Nazi cube.

So why doesn't it lead
to the Nazis building
the ultimate weapon?

The reason is simple.

They run out of time.

In April 27, 1945,

the Allies advance
enough into Germany,

they actually
capture the main site

where this experimentation
was happening.

[narrator] Most of
the scientists and
facilities are captured.

Three months later,

the US Manhattan Project

proves just how dangerous
the atom bomb really is.

On July 16,

1945,

the Trinity test

and the first successful
atomic explosion happens.

And the world will
never be the same again.

Oppenheimer, who was
managing the project,

actually quoted the Indian
epic, the Bhagavadgita,

"I am become Death,
Destroyer of Worlds."

[narrator] In the end,
America's victory in the race
to harness

the deadly power of the
atom appears decisive.

But how close did the Nazis
actually come
to winning the atomic race?

US scientists
chemically test the cubes,

looking for the fingerprints
of the new elements produced

when uranium atoms are split.

[Dougal]
When you analyze this cube,

it's just uranium.
There's no cesium
in it at all.

So it didn't really
get that far.

[narrator] It's clear
Heisenberg's uranium machine
never works,

yet the Manhattan Project
creates a working nuclear
reactor by late 1942.

Why don't the Nazis
have the same success?

[Philip]
One of the problems was simply
the disruption of the war.

Berlin was suffering
so heavily from bombing

that it was decided that they
had to shift the whole thing,
including all the uranium

out of Berlin and down South.

[narrator] And Nazi ideology
causes a massive brain drain.

[Tim]
A lot of the brightest minds
in Physics

had actually left Germany
at that time

and gone on to
the United States.

[narrator] Ironically,
many of them end up working
on the Manhattan Project.

But perhaps the Nazis'
greatest problem of all

is their belief in
competition at all costs.

[Philip]
Heisenberg wasn't the only one
working on uranium projects.

He had a competitor, a rival
really, called Kurt Diebner,

who was engaged in a
completely different project.

And so, you know, this
was also a hindrance,

the... their resources
were split

and their energies were split,

and there was this rivalry
between the two groups.

[narrator] Now, newly
declassified documents

have revealed that if
not for that rivalry,

the race for a Nazi atom bomb
could have turned out
very differently.

So recently, looking through
the archives,
they realized that

within the Heisenberg site,

there were about 660 cubes.

There were about 400
cubes at the other sites,

and the rough estimates
of what was required

in order to get the
reactor up and functional

was on the order
of a thousand.

And so, they actually had the
uranium resources they need

in order to drive a
functional nuclear reactor.

It was just the choice to
split the cubes up among
multiple sites,

prevented them
from achieving that.

[narrator]
So, the only
thing left to answer is,

how does a Nazi cube end up on
the desk of a
Maryland professor?

And who is Ninninger?

[narrator] How does a key part
of the Nazi nuclear program

end up in the office of a
Maryland university professor?

Declassified papers
show that the cubes were
shipped back to the States.

This is where Ninninger comes
in, he's one of the managers
on the Manhattan Project

and he is the one who takes

receipt of a bunch
of these cubes,

so we know that they
crossed his desk
at some point.

Ninninger dies in 2004,
and according to his wife,

he left the cube to a
friend who then gave
it to another friend.

And through this kind
of improbable chain of

pass the cube,
it eventually ends up
on the desk

of a Maryland physicist.

[narrator]
In a different
version of history,

the two-inch cube could
have been the first step

to Nazi Germany
winning the nuclear race.

Instead, Hitler's Nazi
nuclear program ends up

as a paperweight.

In a locked cabinet at
London's Science Museum,

is a unique 290-year-old work
of mechanical genius.

This incredible device
is designed to help

build empires and create
unimaginable wealth.

Huge money making,

vast money making.

An untold new sort
of money making,

that's going to blow
all other types of moneymaking
out of the water.

[narrator] To understand why,
you need to get
right inside it.

This is H1.

It was completely
revolutionary.

[narrator] In 1736,
H1 is the most advanced clock
on the planet.

It stands just 24
and a half inches tall.

Its mechanical skeleton is
made from brass,
bronze and steel,

and it's unlike
any other clock.

Its decorated face has
four dials with strange
double ended hands,

parts of its mechanism move
with almost
supernatural grace,

and inside some components
have been precision machined

from a rare tropical hardwood.

It's almost like
a living thing.

When it's built, these odd
mechanisms make it

one of the most accurate
clocks on the planet.

A clock designed to
change the world.

Who makes it?

What is it for?

How can one machine
be so important?

H1 is created to achieve
two things,

power and money.

So the beginning of
the 18th century,

Europeans are seeing a
way of just taking over
the world basically.

They think, oh, well,
we can take what we like,

and the only competition
is between each other.

The whole globe is there
seemingly

up for grabs and
they are grabbing.

[narrator]
Europeans prefer to call it
the Golden Age of Exploration.

It relies on one thing, ships.

Europe had bigger,
better, faster, stronger,
more robust ships

that could handle
the big crossings,

that could handle the storms,

that could move
large cargoes,

and it was this that
unlocked the world.

[narrator]
But navigating the world's
oceans can go horribly wrong.

Errors, calculating
a ship's position

often result in
unintended contact with land,

which rarely ends well
for the ships involved.

In the 50 years before 1714,

around 27 ships are lost
due to navigational errors.

Losing one of this ships
is a big deal.

I mean, economy busting sort
of a big deal, really,
when you think about it.

We know of at least one cargo

that probably would have been
worth about a billion.

One ship.

[narrator] Any country that
can stop this by cracking
the navigation problem

will hold all
the cards for world trade
and empire building.

The British government
wants to win this race.

So, in 1714, they offer up to
£20,000 for a solution,

the equivalent of over
$5 million today.

It was a huge sum
and it wasn't
particularly prescriptive.

You know, you could come up
with pretty much

any sort of solution that
you thought would work.

But if they believed it
really had, if you
really solved it

and they tested it
and it worked,

big money.

[narrator]
Clockmaker John Harrison wants
to win this prize with H1.

It's jam packed with the most
sophisticated technology
in the world,

because cracking navigation
is very tough.

Even though we're on a sphere,
you can think about it

is an X and a Y
coordinate first.

So, North South gives you
your, your latitude

and then the East West
as your longitude.

[narrator] Latitude is
easily ascertained from the
position of the sun or stars.

H1 is created to
find longitude,

something that has
confounded sailors for
thousands of years.

The catch phrase
discovering longitude
became a sort of way of saying

that something was
completely impossible.

[narrator]
Yet the basic principles
don't seem all that complex.

[Daniel]
We grid out longitude by
drawing circles

all the way around the earth
through the poles,

and you divide the earth
up by degrees,

and it looks a bit like
the segments of an orange.

[narrator]
And measuring longitude is
all about time.

Have you ever wondered

why noon in New York is five
hours later than
noon in London?

It's because that's how long
it takes the earth to rotate

from the sun directly overhead
in London to the sun directly
overhead in New York.

To make more accurate
measurements, longitude is
divided into 360 degrees.

Each one of those degrees
represents 60 miles

and so that's the relationship
between time and location.

[narrator]
Every four minutes, the earth
rotates by one degree.

So, if you accurately know
the time at a fixed place
called the prime meridian

and you know how much
later or earlier noon is
where you are,

you can calculate
your longitude.

All you need to
crack longitude is to know

what the time is at your
prime meridian when you're
away at sea.

And that is H1s purpose.

Sounds simple,
but it really isn't.

To win the top prize from
the British government,

H1 must keep phenomenally
accurate time.

[Tim] In order to
achieve that prize,

the clock could gain
or lose no more than
three seconds per day.

[narrator] Accurate
enough clocks do exist,

but they use a swinging
pendulum that only works in
a very stable environment,

which is pretty much
everything a ship is not.

An 18th century ship
was about the worst place

to try and put a precision
instruments on, like a
precise pendulum clock.

When I've sailed ships
like that, they get
into heavy weather,

they roll from side to side,
they pitch up and down.

Temperatures are going
from tropical down to
freezing back up again.

If you've got a precision
mechanism, it simply
can't handle this

and that was the challenge.

[narrator]
It seems impossible,

which is probably why
the cash prize is so great.

So, can H1 achieve
the impossible and
snatch the prize?

[narrator] Clockmaker John
Harrison creates H1

to solve an
unsolvable problem,

calculating a ship's position,
East or West longitude.

This has confounded mankind
for thousands of years.

What makes him
think he can crack it?

So, Harrison came
into this not as an amateur.

He was actually an
established clockmaker

with a track record
of building very
accurate timepieces.

[narrator] But Harrison
brings more than just

superior clock making
to cracking longitude.

He also has a deep
understanding of the
fundamental science.

So, the first sort of
intractable problem

with putting
a precision clock at sea
was the pendulum,

because as it swings
and the ship rolls,

that disturbs the
pendulum's motion

and the pendulum is the heart
of making the timekeeper work.

So, Harrison has a brilliant
idea, which might seem
slightly counterintuitive.

He puts what are essentially
two pendulums on the clock

and they sit
next to each other,
they pivot in the center.

They've got little ball
weights on the top and bottom,

and they move in
opposition to each other.

And what that does is
as the ship moves back
and forth and sways,

as it impacts one
pendulum in one way,

that's counteracted actually
in the other pendulum.

And so together they
can cancel out a lot
of the ship's motion.

[narrator] One of
Harrison's other great
enemies is friction.

Friction is a real
problem because

friction is where two things
rub against each other.

It slows things down,
they jam, they stick.

[narrator] Clockmakers
usually use oil to reduce
friction by lubrication,

but that is a problem for H1.

The issue there is that
as oil cools down,
it's going to become thicker.

As it heats up it's thinner

and that's going to be
another error source for
the clock mechanism.

[narrator] To solve this,
Harrison comes up with
a counterintuitive idea.

He uses wood.

Wood just seemed odd
in the precision clock,
but it's the perfect material.

He uses wood to
actually make the clock

lubricate itself
without any little
drops of oil all over it.

He makes the places where
the mechanism fit together

out of a tropical hardwood
called Lignum Vitae.

And Lignum Vitae kind of...
it sweats some oil
out of itself all the time.

So it's always got
a slightly oily sheen,

but it's actually
within the wood.

And what that actually
did was allow for the clock

to rotate around
without the need for
putting an external oil.

[narrator] The first true
marine chronometer

is packed with
revolutionary innovations.

It takes Harrison five years

to combine all this
brilliance into one clock, H1.

The finished clock
has four dials,

the bottom one shows the day,
on the right as the hour hand,

its double ended pointer goes
around once every 24 hours.

The dial on the left
shows minutes.

It is also double ended
and rotates once
every two hours.

At the top, the second hand
completes one revolution
every two minutes.

H1 is unlike any clock
seen before.

But is it enough
to secure the prize?

In 1736, Harrison takes
H1 on a test voyage to
Lisbon and back.

They set off down
the channel, turn left,
head down to Lisbon,

and by all accounts,
it goes appallingly.

The weather is really bad.

Harrison gets appallingly
sick. He's completely unable
to look after his clock.

And when they get to Lisbon,
and the clock hasn't
performed particularly well,

Harrison's baby
has not done its job.

[narrator] But after a little
R and R in Lisbon

things improve enormously
on the voyage home.

[Daniel]
Harrison's got his sea legs

and the weather's not
quite as bad,

and he looks after
his beautiful H1

and it seems
to perform brilliantly.

And when they make landfall,

it's when you sight lands

as they reach Britain,

the captain
is absolutely convinced
he's seeing the Starts,

which is Start Point.

[narrator]
Start Point is near Plymouth
on the South Coast of England.

But according to H1,
they are actually seeing
The Lizard,

the most southerly point
in the country,
70 miles to the west.

And sure enough,
Harrison's right

because his clock
is absolutely bang on.

[narrator]
The impossible longitude
problem has been cracked.

H1 is the first clock
that proves

that you can navigate at sea,
that you can calculate
and measure longitude

using a clock.

[narrator]
Having proven H1 works,

Harrison is in line
to win the fortune
offered by the government.

All H1 must do
is complete a voyage to
the West Indies

to demonstrate its
long-distance prowess.

But it never happens
because there is a problem,

not with the clock,
but with
its perfectionist creator.

[Tim] It was actually
Harrison himself,

who stepped back
and said, no, no,

I'd actually like
to perfect this clock.

I can do better.

And he's the one who
actually said that the H1
clock was not good enough.

[narrator] Harrison
spends five years
refining H1 into H2,

but he abandons that
untested to make an even
more perfect version, H3.

H3 takes a further
19 years to design and build,

but H3 isn't to
his liking either.

H4 is finally ready in 1761,

31 years after
Harrison started on H1.

[Tim] So Harrison's son
takes the H4

and goes on a 81-day
voyage and at the end of it,

they end up only five
seconds off, which is almost

30 times better than
what was required for
the longitude prize.

[narrator] By the time
Harrison finally receives
his money, he is 80 years old.

He dies three years later.

He doesn't live to see
marine chronometers

become the gold standard
for navigation at sea.

It all began with this clock,
the quite remarkable H1.

And although,
it is no longer run,

nearly three centuries
after it was created,

H1 still works.