About two hundred years later the English government offered 5,000 pounds for a chronometer by which a ship six months from home could get her longitude within sixty miles; 7,500 pounds if within forty miles; 10,000 pounds if within thirty miles; and in another clause 20,000 pounds for correctness within thirty miles, a careless repetition.
The watchmakers of the world contested for the prizes, but 1761 came, and they had not been awarded.

In that year John Harrison asked for a test of his chronometer.

In a trip of one hundred and forty-seven days from Portsmouth to Jamaica and back, it varied less than two minutes, and only four seconds on the outward voyage.

In a round trip of one hundred and fifty-six days to Barbadoes, the variation was only fifteen seconds.

The 20,000 pounds was paid to the man who had worked and experimented for forty years, and whose hand was as exquisitely delicate in its movement as the mechanism of his chronometer.
"Make me as good a hammer as you know how," said a carpenter to the blacksmith in a New York village before the first railroad was built; "six of us have come to work on the new church, and I've left mine at home." "As good a one as I know how ?" asked David Maydole, doubtfully, "but perhaps you don't want to pay for as good a one as I know how to make." "Yes, I do," said the carpenter, "I want a good hammer." It was indeed a good hammer that he received, the best, probably, that had ever been made.