Jeremy Thacker

Jeremy Thacker was a possibly apocryphal 18th-century writer and watchmaker, who for a long time was believed to be the first to have coined the word "chronometer" for precise clocks designed to find longitude at sea, though an earlier reference by William Derham has now been found.

[1][2] Thacker is credited with writing The Longitudes Examin'd, published in London in 1714, in which the term 'chronometer' appears.

[3] In the work, the claim is made that Thacker created and extensively tested a marine chronometer positioned on gimbals and within a vacuum, and that sea trials would take place.

[6] According to an article[7] published in the Times Literary Supplement in November 2008, Pat Rogers argued that "Thacker may never have existed and his proposal now emerges possibly as a hoax?".

[8] Gregory Lynall, 'Scriblerian Projections of Longitude: Arbuthnot, Swift, and the Agency of Satire in a Culture of Invention', Journal of Literature and Science, vol.