During the Age of Sail, the inability to measure the East-West position or longitude of a ship at sea was one of the era's greatest scientific challenges. Thousands of sailors perished and ships with cargo destroyed as a result of inaccurate positions. So important was the challenge that in the 18th century, the British Parliament offered more than £20,000 (over $3 million today) to solve the problem and improve upon dead reckoning - or the process of estimating the value of any variable quantity by using an earlier value and adding whatever changes have occurred in the meantime - that was prevalent at the time.
While much of the scientific community searched for an answer through astronomical observations, a self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker named John Harrison worked on a solution based on precise synchronized timekeeping.
In 1761, after more than 30 years of work and improvement upon three chronometer prototypes, Harrison produced his Fourth Marine Chronometer, known as H4. Using H4, navigators such as James Cook, were able to safely grow global commerce and the exchange of ideas.
Today, innovation, discovery, and productivity are hampered by another significant challenge - the efficient, cost-effective and scalable storage, computation and exchange of information. Data centers that lack reliability, scale, energy efficiency, access to robust communications networks or are located in increasingly obsolete locations are hampering future growth of the digital economy.
H5 Data Centers represents the next generation of data center design, operations, capital investment, and geographic locations to help our customers navigate effectively through the Information Age.