Strangest Things (2021–2022): Season 1, Episode 8 - The Gold Hat, The Nazi Cube and the Billion Pound Clock - full transcript
A tiny metal cube with a connection to Adolf Hitler is studied, along with the 300-year-old Berlin Gold Hat.
[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.
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.