Comments by "craxd1" (@craxd1) on "Why European science, technology, and possibly thought, are superior to all others in the world" video.

  1. One could say that what we have today was started by two things, an accurate maritime clock (early 1700s), which was British, and steam power, also, British. Shipping and trade advanced a great deal over those two things, and to be honest, that was triggered by Henry VIII founding the Royal Navy and building fifty ships beforehand, I believe. Exploration under Elizabeth I was next, which led to the great inventions. Exploration before that was hit-and-miss, and one was lucky to survive the trip. "Until the mid-1750s, accurate navigation at sea out of sight of land was an unsolved problem due to the difficulty in calculating longitude. Navigators could determine their latitude by measuring the sun's angle at noon (i.e., when it reached its highest point in the sky, or culmination) or, in the Northern Hemisphere, by measuring the angle of Polaris (the North Star) from the horizon (usually during twilight). To find their longitude, however, they needed a time standard that would work aboard a ship." John Harrison solved that with his marine chronometers. Source: Wiki article on marine chronometer
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