Natural Philosophy Collection

Dent Chronometer – made to last

The gimballed Dent Chronometer above keeps accurate time to within about half a second a day, more than sufficient for its former use as a laboratory timer. What our students who relied on it did not know was that this clock was made in the 1840s by one of the acknowledged premier firms in British clock making, Dent of London. Amongst his many achievements, E J Dent was responsible for the construction of Big Ben. What the students also did not know was that in 1943 the Admirality put out a national broadcast appeal to surrender marine chronometers for service use to make up for the wartime loss of chronometers at sea. The Natural Philosophy Department responded by supplying ‘Dent 1978’. The admirality gave it to HMS Tyne for three years, returning it in 1946. There must be several morals in the story that a key piece of equipment necessary to keep the Navy active during the second world war was a one hundred year old timepiece from the Physics Department from an ancient University.

John S. Reid