A fourth-dimensionalist.
“Having heard the half-baked bids to find longitude in the sound of cannon blasts, in compass needles heated by fire, in the moon’s motion, in the sun’s elevation, and what-else-have-you, Thacker developed a new clock ensconced in a vacuum chamber and declared it the best method of all: ‘In a word, I am satisfied that my Reader begins to think that the Phonometers, Pyrometers, Selenometers, Heliometers, and all the Meters are not worthy to be compared with my Chronometer.’ Thacker’s witty neologism is apparently the first coinage of the word chronometer. What he said in 1714, perhaps in jest, later gained acceptance as the perfect moniker for the marine timekeeper.”
Dava Sobel, Longitude (1995).
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