John Carte on Horology and Cosmology

Author: Anthony Turner

93 pages, 21 illustrations

A Transcription, with Introduction and Notes, of Bodleian Library Ms Carte 264ff. 18r-57r.

John Carte was apprenticed to Samuel Watson in Coventry and moved with Watson to London probably in 1691. By April 1695 Carte had established his own business and was a Free Brother of the Clockmakers' Company. Carte emigrated to Germany around 1702 and had premises in Hamburg.

Carte started work on his treatise in the first two decades of the 18th century but it was never finished and only exists in fragmentary form. He intended to entitle it something like The Longitude Found Out but no parts of the remaining manuscript relate to his longitude plans.

What remains of Carte's manuscript on horology and cosmology offers fascinating and intimate glimpses of the practice of English clock and watch-making in the age of Tompion, and a rare insight into the ideas of a first-class working clockmaker concerning his trade, how it had developed and could be improved, together with his conception of the structure of the cosmos that he represented on his geographical and cosmographic clocks.

The text is transcribed with explanatory commentary and a contextual introduction that includes new biographies of Carte himself and the master to whom he was apprenticed, Samuel Watson.