Longitude (2000– )

Jeremy Irons: Rupert Gould

Quotes 

• Muriel Gould : I want you to give up the clock.

  Rupert Gould : I will... when it's finished.

  Muriel Gould : Yes, I knew you'd say that. Silly of me, really.

• Rupert Gould : The watch beats five to the second, a slight recoil being perceptible at each beat, and goes for 30 hours. The plates are of brass, polished but not gilt. The pivot holes are jeweled as far as the third wheel, that is to say, those of the balance, staff, detente, contrate wheel, fly, fifth, fourth, and third wheels. The jewels are rubies, and the end stones diamonds. It is a masterpiece, weighing only slightly less than the brain that conceived it.

• Rupert Gould : Sir Frank, I'm not asking to mechanically alter the Harrison machines; I just want to bring them back to their proper condition. If they're left as they are much longer, I fear they may become unrecoverable. I know my qualifications appear unlikely; I can only plead that they're no more so than Harrison's own.

• John Harrison : You've seen how the watch has performed in the test. It's not perfect, but what if I could make it so? What if I could make a timepiece no bigger than the span of a man's hand, that could be taken to sea? Now wouldn't that be a practical solution?

  [cut to 20th century] 

  Rupert Gould : Harrison's fourth machine, by reason alike of its beauty and its accuracy, must take pride of place as the most famous chronometer that ever has been or ever will be made. But the journey from his third machine, which you see behind me, to his fourth (thank you), is one of the most extraordinary mysteries of horology. Faced as he was by a seemingly insuperable problem of centrifugal forces, Harrison took a daring and lateral leap. It is as though an aeronautical engineer suddenly ceased development on a new aircraft and instead adapted the technology to make his bicycle fly to France.

• Nurse Grace Ingram : They're going to kick you out soon, you know.

  Rupert Gould : Oh, they can't possibly. I'm feeling particularly mad at the moment.

  Nurse Grace Ingram : I don't think they cure that kind of madness here. What will you do?

  Rupert Gould : Don't know. Pitch a tent outside the gates, I suppose. Do you have any objections to life under canvas?

  Nurse Grace Ingram : Not more than... a couple of thousand.

• [on the BBC-TV show "Brains Trust"] 

  Rupert Gould : What makes a man great? A man may be great in his aims, or in his achievements, or in both, but I think that man is truly great who makes the world his debtor... who does something for the world which the world needs and which nobody before him has done or known how to do.