An unlikely clockmaker cracked longitude

John Harrison died on March 24th, 1776. He had been born near Wakefield in 1693, and was by trade a carpenter, one that became the clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer. Following the loss of four warships that went off course in 1707 and were wrecked on the rocks of the Silly Isles with great loss of life, Parliament offered £20,000 to whomever could solve the problem of measuring longitude at sea.

It was widely supposed by the day's scientists that the answer would lie in measurements of the stars or the moon, but Harrison thought it might be done with a clock, if one could be constructed with an accuracy that could cope with the variations in temperature, pressure, and humidity aboard a ship that tossed and rolled on the seas, and that could be resistant to the salt spray of sea voyages. Knowing the time in Greenwich from the clock, and calculating the difference between that and local time, longitude could be calculated.

Harrison had built his first clock, entirely of wood, aged 20. Now he set about devising and refining a clock that would meet Parliament's requirements. After years of work on several models, he finally cracked the problem. His H4 chronometer looked like a large pocket watch, and used a fast-beating balance wheel controlled by a temperature-compensated spiral spring. In ocean voyage tests it met the accuracy level required.

Unfortunately one of his rivals, Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, tried to prevent him being awarded the prize, and it took the intervention of King George III to secure justice for Harrison by having Parliament finally vote to reward him.

Parliament's approach to the problem of longitude was sound. They offered the prize for however the problem could be solved, allowing free rein for several approaches to be tested. They wanted the result, regardless of the process that produced it.

Too often regulators specify the approach and the technology that must be used, rather than allowing creativity to test different approaches. When the US wanted to control auto emissions, they specified catalytic converters, requiring them by law to be fitted to all autos. They were widely unpopular because they increased fuel consumption and cut performance. A better approach would have been to set maximum emissions levels, leaving it to engineers and inventors to find ways of achieving them. Regulation should specify the result required, rather than the process to attain it. EU regulators are notoriously inclined to require process-driven, rather than result-driven regulation.

The Parliament that passed the Longitude Act was also right not to pay people to produce the result, but to offer a prize to anyone who could. That way they had several people working on solutions, but only had to pay the successful one. The Ansari X-Prize for the first private enterprise space flight used the same principle. The success of both serves to vindicate the offering of prizes to teams that can come up with technically viable solutions to the word's problems.

This might be harsh but perhaps there shouldn't be a funding stream for this

We wouldn’t say that this is an entirely and fully baked suggestion. Rather that this is something that does need to be thought about. If we create a dedicated fund, funding stream, to compensate for a certain form of criminal activity, aren’t we then reducing the pressure to reduce this form of criminal activity?

Banks are lobbying to introduce charges on the vast majority of money transfers to fund payouts for fraud victims, Telegraph Money understands.

The industry has agreed that victims of bank transfer fraud who did nothing to put themselves at risk should get their money back. It is now under pressure to agree where this money will come from.

This week it emerged that the number of reported cases of bank transfer fraud, where someone is tricked into authorising a payment to criminals, has almost doubled in a year, from 43,875 to 84,624, according to the banking trade body, UK Finance. In total £354m was stolen but banks returned only £83m to victims.

If the banks must compensate from shareholder funds then that will put a certain pressure on the bank and management systems to reduce this form of crime. If there’s a funding scheme, that flow of funds from each and every transfer, then that pressure will be reduced. The banks won’t have skin in the game in reducing the instances of the fraud. Their profits are unaffected by the scale of crime.

Is that what we really want? Those best able to limit the thieving having no economic pressure to reduce it? It’s not entirely obvious that it is, is it?

What the Strategic Defence Initiative achieved

On March 23rd, 1983, just 36 years ago to the day, President Ronald Reagan announced from the White House that he had initiated a Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). The proposed system was designed to protect the United States from intercontinental and submarine-launched missiles. Its significance was its move away from deterrence to a defensive capability. The prevailing policy, called "Mutual assured destruction" (MAD), was designed to convince a would-be attacker that they, too, would be destroyed by a retaliatory strike from their opponents.

SDI was something new. It would use a dazzling array of new technologies to detect and destroy incoming missiles. The advanced weaponry that would have to be developed included lasers, x-ray lasers, particle-beam weapons, and space-based missiles to supplement ground-launched ones. President Reagan suggested that it could remove the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation from the lives of Americans.

The revolutionary concept was widely attacked, chiefly because of the instability it brought to a world that had learned to live with the nuclear stalemate. It was derided as "fantasy by some." They dubbed it "Star Wars," claiming that the technology to implement it could never be gained. Other people, and often the same people, warned of its dangers, claiming that it could be a first strike weapon, tempting an invincible America to attack without fear of retaliation. This was like listing a shield as a first strike weapon because it could allow its bearer to throw spears with impunity.

Despite the orchestrated chorus of derision from the left-leaning media of the time, Reagan pressed ahead, funding the research and development of many of the systems the SDI would need to incorporate. The Soviet Union made it a top priority to prevent such a system from being deployed. The 1986 summit in Reykjavik between Reagan and Gorbachev ended without agreement because abandoning SDI was top of the Soviet priorities, and it was the one thing Reagan would not give up. Thus agreement failed because of what many insisted was a "fantasy."

In fact Reagan's advisers had been briefed, pre-summit, by Oleg Gordievsky, who had been KGB Bureau Chief in London while secretly working for the British. He had been party to top Soviet thinking, and told the American team to hold fast on SDI because it would ultimately break a Soviet Union unable to compete economically and technologically with such a project. Even without SDI, the huge proportion of the Soviet budget allocated to the military had deprived its civilian sector of funds for investment. Its economy could not cope with a space arms race.

Within a few years Gordievsky's prediction was confirmed. The Communist empire collapsed in 1989. The Berlin Wall came down, and the Soviet Union was dissolved shortly afterwards. If it was, indeed, "a fantasy," and "never more than a graphic," the Strategic Defence initiative became the graphic that changed history.

Yes, lovely theory, now how about reality?

We’re told that the privatisation of water was a big mistake, we really must take it all back into public hands. Because:

Our water supply belongs to all of us. Having our water industry run by public servants who are elected and are accountable to voters means that we can reinvest money in technologies, maintenance and systems that will ensure our water supply’s viability – instead of giving huge payouts to shareholders. Nationalising the UK water industry is what works best for consumers and what will ensure the conservation of our water supply for the next 25 years – and beyond.

It’s a great theory. Society’s impartial technocrats will optimally allocate resources to all our benefit if only they were freed to do so. Like all theories this has to be tested against reality. So, what did happen when that did happen?

Investment under nationalisation was lower than after privatisation. In fact, the privatising was in part caused by that need for investment which the public couldn’t, or at least wouldn’t, deliver. That is, the problem with the theory is that reality just doesn’t work out that way.

The State has many things to spend money upon. It also faces budget constraints. What does get spent upon within those constraints often turns out to be a great deal less than is socially optimal. That technocratic allocation simply doesn’t work as assumed above.

This is thus the big question that would be nationalisers have to answer. If nationalisation would raise investment why is it that privatisation raised investment?

Freedom's Fighters with David Davis

Earlier this month the Adam Smith Institute hosted the Rt Hon. David Davis MP for the latest in our series of Freedom’s Fighters. A serial champion for civil liberties and liberal policy, the interview with ASI President Madsen Pirie looks back on his business and political careers. You can watch the full interview below.

March 22nd is World Water Day

The UN designates March 22nd as World Water Day, to draw attention to the world supplies and uses of fresh water. It supports the management of fresh water supplies in a sustainable way, covering such issues as its scarcity, pollution, and access to it.

The UN will doubtless use the day to pass resolutions asserting everyone's 'right' to clean, fresh water, and demanding access to it for women, minorities, children and disabled people. It will issue school packs to make children aware of the importance of water, and organize competitions to have children draw pictures that illustrate it.

None of this will actually produce any more fresh water, but fortunately there are other people out there already doing just that. This is important. The pumping, treating and transporting of water uses about 8% of all energy generated. Sometimes its conservation can be achieved using natural means such as restoring or developing wetlands, or managing floodplains. The reintroduction of beavers into the UK is helping with that conservation.

Ultimately, however, and given the increasing demand for fresh water, the solution lies with developing new sources and new technology. Voluntary groups are assisting villagers to dig deep wells. Others are demonstrating how plastic bottles and sunlight can purify contaminated water. For an adequate supply of drinkable quality water, though, the future will have to involve the large-scale desalination of seawater.

A key problem is that the two main types of desalination, thermal and osmotic, are both energy intensive and expensive. But breakthroughs promise to reduce the costs. Israel has just upped the output of its Sorek plant, the world's largest reverse osmosis desalination plant. Built by Israel Desalination Enterprises, it produces enough fresh water to cover 20% of the country's households. Additional desalination plants are ramping up to produce 50% of the country's water needs. Its secret is good engineering. Is uses 16-inch pressure tubes instead of the usual 8-inch ones, meaning it needs only a quarter of the piping. It also uses highly efficient pumps and has energy recovery mechanisms, giving it the cheapest desalinated seawater in the world.

Another breakthrough has come in grapheme-oxide membranes. A University of Manchester group has announced in the journal Nature Nanotechnology that it can now prevent the membranes becoming swollen in water, and can precisely control their pore size, enabling unwanted salts to be sieved out at speed, leaving clean, drinkable water. They aim to scale this up into large-scale and cost effective plants.

By all means let us celebrate World Water Day. But let us remember as we do so that it is voluntary workers who are currently helping remote communities gain access to clean water, and it is engineers and entrepreneurs who are applying the work of researchers to give the world all the clean water it will need in the future. The doomsayers are wrong yet again. There will be no "water wars," largely because we are unlikely to run out of seawater or, indeed, of the human ingenuity that can process it.

Opposing nuclear because of the land it uses looks very odd indeed to us

That varied people oppose nuclear power is both fine and a fact of life. That, in our opinion, near all do through not understanding the issue might be more about us than them. But to oppose nuclear because of a blot on the landscape seems absurd even then:

A coalition of actors, broadcasters and entrepreneurs is warning that building work to replace Sizewell nuclear power station will “lay waste” to swathes of Suffolk’s most idyllic landscape.

Bill Turnbull, the broadcaster; actors Bill Nighy and Diana Quick; the novelist Esther Freud and renowned sculptor Maggi Hambling are among those voicing their opposition to the movement of tons of construction materials and waste to and from the site.

They say the plans could mean 1,500 lorries a day thundering through the quiet Suffolk countryside, with construction work disrupting the lives of residents and carving up farms and communities for years to come.

We don’t doubt in the slightest that there will be some disruption and noise and lorries and so on. But to ask Thomas Sowell’s question, compared to what?

Note that Sizewell C will be pretty much where A and B already are. No one’s going to be using that land for much else given the general and unjustified queasiness about reusing nuclear occupied land. But compared to what?

Say that we tried to gain 1,600 MW of power from solar panels? One estimate would give us 6,400 acres. Or 10 square miles. Or 0.7% of the entire county of Suffolk. This would be more or less disruptive of that landscape? And if we use windmills instead? 150 foot birdchoppers invoke the Hay Wain in what manner?

Sure, complain about nuclear all you’d like but to moan about the footprint of it is to be absurd. For the one thing that nuclear is really conservative in is its use of is land.

When laws came from on high

The Code Napoleon, embodying the codification of the laws of France, was officially adopted on March 21st, 1804, this day 215 years ago. Until then different laws, many of them feudal in nature, had been applied to different parts of France. The new Code provided a unified set of laws for the whole country, written in plain language and within a rational framework. It drew heavily on the Sixth Century compilation of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, which set out laws on property, the family and the individual.

The Code is a type of civil law, relying on legislation and statutes to determine rights, and is in contrast to a common law system, such as England, where the laws embody traditional rights and follow the legal precedent of previous cases. Under the Napoleonic Code, judges are investigators, whereas in common-law traditions they arbitrate between contending parties that argue their case in front of them.

The Napoleonic Code was criticized in common law countries for its de facto presumption of guilt, and for the way it combined magistrate and prosecutor in one person. It was also criticized for making it possible for those accused to be detained for long periods ahead of trial.

It actually took away some rights women had gained under the Revolution. The man was empowered as head of the household, and women were not allowed to trade in possessions or property without asking his permission. He could also disinherit children and imprison them for a month.

The fundamental philosophical difference is that civil law sets out what a citizen's rights are, whereas common law assumes that a person has the rights not specifically prohibited by statute. In popular parlance, civil law tells you what you can do, whereas common law tells you what you cannot do, and assumes you are free to do everything else.

There is a strong tradition in England that your rights are not given to you from on high, but ones that you are entitled to simply by being English. The laws in England have recognized and codified those rights from time to time. Supporters of common law like the fact that much of it comes from below, reflecting the traditional rights that people have enjoyed since ancient times. And they point out that it is more flexible, and quicker to adapt without the need for legislation.

Some commentators have asserted out that the civil law systems of many Continental nations, often derived from the Code Napoleon, do not sit easily with the English common law system, and have led to disputes and disagreements between the two, and a widespread feeling in England that a foreign system was being imposed on them via the European Union. This may have played a role in determining the UK's decision to leave it.  

So how do we decide about changing technology?

Apparently it’s now possible to build perfect artificial surfing lakes where once stood golf courses. This is a result of a change in technology:

Putting greens and fairways from London to Edinburgh are being sized-up for conversion to inland surfing parks by a new breed of non-Pringle wearing entrepreneur.

Advances in computing have - after decades of trying - finally made it possible to create an endless supply of perfect surf waves in inland lakes and dozens are now being planned and built across the world.

Well, how do we decide which should be converted? Or none or all?

We could allow those who did PPE at Oxford to decide for us. Yet there’s a certain hesitance to thinking that those who did PPE at Oxford know how many people would prefer to surf than golf. The only really logical method we’ve got is to allow people who wish to spend their money doing so try it out and see. That is, just leave it to the market.

Of course, this is true of all such things. What is technically possible is something that changes day by day - that white hot heat of the technological revolution. Given that what can be done changes we need to have a system which allows continual trying out of those possibilities. That is, run the world not through PPE but through markets.

There is one more part to this though. We have more than a sneaking suspicion that these golf courses, while they might be worth more to the surfer dudes, might be best used as places to put housing. As has been noted, there’s more of Surrey under golf courses than dwellings. A market system should - must - therefore be a proper market system, one that allows people to try out what is really the best use of an asset given all circumstances. That is, until we have a properly market based planning system - ie, near none but that market - we’ll never really find out what is the best use of all that land.

Gravity and economics are more complex than we thought

On March 20th, 1915, Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity. Already in 1905 he had proposed the equivalence of mass and energy in his Special Theory of Relativity. Now the General Theory offered a description of gravity as a property of space and time, which had previously been considered to be independent of matter and motion. Spacetime is curved, depending on the energy and momentum of the matter and radiation present.

Many of the General Theory’s predictions have been confirmed experimentally. When light is bent by gravity, for example, it can lead to gravitational lensing, in which multiple images of an object can be seen as its light is bent by massive objects. This has been observed to happen as predicted. And the gravitational waves predicted by the theory have recently been detected.

Gravity in particular, and the universe in general, turn out to be far more complex than had previously been supposed. Quantum Mechanics later showed it to have even greater levels of complexity. That we can achieve this degree of understanding is remarkable, given that humankind has evolved over 3 million years with the skills required to throw spears and rocks, rather than to fathom the complexities of subatomic particles.

We now know that human societies are also far more complex than we once supposed, and that this also applies to their economic systems. Scholars have come a long way from simple assumptions that primitive savages once came together to sign a contract for their greater security. And most scholars no longer suppose that a functioning economy can be reduced to a few basic principles that explain it.

The economy emerges from the way in which people deal with each other. It has the inputs of billions of people and trillions of transactions. These interact with each other to produce its outcomes, but the outcomes are transitory, replaced in a trice as other decisions produce other outcomes to supplant them. Some academics try to simplify things in order to be able to describe it, but in doing so, they often assume away some of its vital elements. ‘Perfect competition’ never happens, nor does ‘perfect information.’ In the real world people do the best they can with the limited amount of information they have access to.

Mathematical models might purport to explain and predict the economy, but they fall short because the economy is not a thing that can be modelled; it is a process, one of unimagined complexity. We can observe generalizations and tendencies about the way most people behave, but we do so in the knowledge that these are about what usually happens. In the world of science the theory has to cover every case that happens. This universal coverage is not to be found in the world of economics, which has the habit of surprising us with unpredicted, and often unpleasant, outcomes.

When the Queen asked the bankers and economists, “Why did none of you see the crisis coming?” they might well have replied, “Because the economy is more complex than the General Theory of Relativity.”