Lost at sea

Time Galleries, Royal Observatory, Greenwich

The story of time is generally well told at the Royal Observatory's new galleries, although it takes some tricky physical and intellectual navigation, says Sharon Heal

It's usual to start a story at the beginning, but that's not what it feels like at the new Time Galleries at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. It may stem from the problem of creating galleries in historic buildings, and having more than one story to tell, but the search for the new galleries left me confused.

To get to the galleries you have to go through the apartments of John Flamsteed, the first astronomer royal. But there is nothing to suggest to first-time visitors, who have dutifully followed the signage, that this isn't where the new bit begins - and there were some perplexed-looking visitors wondering around the apartments searching for the Time Galleries when I visited.

The apartments have a historic house feel and there is little in the way of interpretation so it is possible to move through this section, up through the Octagon Room, with its fabulous views over London, and down the other side to the new galleries relatively quickly.

The aim when you reach the Time and Longitude gallery is to uncover the people and the technology that solved the navigational riddle of longitude. Although time and longitude are both abstract concepts, the clear and concise introductory panel helps to explain why the struggle to crack longitude was so important in 18th-century Britain.

The story starts with the Shovell disaster: in 1707 four Royal Navy frigates went down off the Isles of Scilly with the loss of 1,500 sailors. The tragedy happened partly because it wasn't possible to produce accurate charts or navigate at sea without longitude. The incident resulted in a petition from ships' captains and the public, and in 1714 the government was forced to act, offering a prize of £20,000 to anyone who could determine longitude at sea to within half a degree.

There is a good balance of simple and more hi-tech interactives in the gallery. For example, to explain why a pendulum clock won't work at sea, there is a cut-out ship with a pendulum onboard - if you push a button the ship sways from side to side and you can hear how the ticking becomes irregular as the movement increases.

Objects and audiovisuals sit happily together in this gallery especially in the section on John Harrison, the working-class carpenter who solved the longitude problem by designing a clock that worked at sea. A number of Harrison's prototype timekeepers are on show and the subtle lighting and unobtrusive display means that they can be appreciated for their aesthetic beauty - gleaming brass and fine details - as well as their contribution to navigation.

Strategically placed in between the chronometers is a series of audiovisuals that tell Harrison's story. His desk is recreated, with a number of instruments and objects projected on to it. Touch one and it leaps into action (for example, the stopper comes out of a bottle of seasickness remedy and spills over the desk - Harrison was a chronic sufferer while trailing his chronometers at sea), the chosen object then hovers above a scroll, which unfurls to reveal the narrative.

This interactive really works: it is classy and it holds the attention for much longer than a more straightforward touchscreen display would. And it doesn't feel gimmicky - even when a spider occasionally scuttles across the desk.

Not everything is as good - the LED displays that flash up random facts (the £20,000 prize money would have bought 20 million loaves of bed) are hard to read and seem irrelevant - but this is offset by the strength of the story and the objects. William Hogarth's print of the Longitude Lunatics - people driven mad in the search for longitude and the desire to win the prize money - richly illustrates the longitude fever that struck Britain.

The displays and interactives are set into banks of dark brown panelled wood, presumably to represent the interior of a ship. It's possible that visitors may miss this connection and the main effect is a bit ugly.

Downstairs the Time and Greenwich gallery is based on three themes: use it, share it and measure it. These are logical enough but you don't immediately see the intro panels that explain the themes when you descend into the gallery.

Faced with a room packed full of cases and graphic panels it's easy to lose the plot here. And the colour coding, if you can decipher it (orange for local time; red for national time; blue for global time, and so on) doesn't necessarily help. But the rich array of objects is enough to keep interest alive.

Next it's outside, up the stairs and across the courtyard to the Great Equatorial Building for the Time for the Navy gallery. I found this less interesting although the sheer scale of some of the objects is impressive - as are their names: Pond's Newtonian Zenith Sector and Airy's Transit Circle.

Lastly is the Time and Society gallery that looks at the role of everyday timekeeping. Here the gallery seems to come up against the problem of too much stuff, too many themes and not enough space.

Each of the display cases is packed not only with objects but also words -quotes, interpretation, graphic panels and labels (there were more than 60 labels in one longish case). Headlines and sub-headings shout for attention and it's difficult to know where to turn first.

It takes a bit of time to digest the themes: natural time (using the stars or the position of the sun), mechanical time (the development of instruments to measure time), timetabled time (alarm clocks, clocking -in and timetables) and time for the masses (wristwatches and, bizarrely, military timers) but with patience they become clearer.

The last touch is a section where visitors are invited to explain when time stopped for them - which results in an eclectic range of comments that include the death of Princess Di and the rather witty 'every day at work'.

While it's understandable that the new galleries should concentrate on time, as it is relevant to the collection and the site, it would have been nice to see some of the bigger questions addressed - but perhaps space dictated that they could not be.

It's ironic, considering the subject matter, that the galleries are both physically and intellectually tricky to navigate. The size is deceptive - like the famous time machine the galleries seem much bigger on the inside than they appear on the outside - which is, perhaps, a good thing, considering the amount of information and objects that are on display.