1999 Timekeeping
This stamp from the Royal Mail’s
Millennium Series was part of a set of four jointly called The
Inventors’ Tale which paid tribute to the work of British
inventors. Designed with classical understatement by the
incomparable David Gentleman, the stamp’s theme is the
development of accurate timekeeping and its relation to
navigation. It shows the Greenwich Meridian as a red line
extending across a globe of the Earth and onto a clock face
which symbolizes John Harrison’s last and most accurate
chronometer, H4. This clever juxtaposition of clock and Earth
underlines the link between time and longitude, which is
embodied in the role of Greenwich as the world’s prime
meridian for navigation and timekeeping. A modified version of
this design was to reappear in 1999 December in the Millennium
Timekeeper sheet.
The Inventors’ Tale set was released
on 1999 January 12. The other advances commemorated were:
26p, James Watt’s development of
steam power (1999/47); 43p, Henry Fox-Talbot’s
photographic experiments (1999/46); and 63p, Alan
Turing’s work on computers (1999/45).
The Timekeeping stamp was numbered
“Millennium 1999/48”, even though it was the first
of the Millennium series of stamps issued in 1999 – the
numbers actually counted down from 48 to 1 throughout the year.
Stanley Gibbons no. 2069