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Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel
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Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day―and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives, and the increasing fortunes of nations, hung on a resolution.
The scientific establishment of Europe―from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton―had mapped the heavens in both hemispheres in its certain pursuit of a celestial answer. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solution―a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest, and of Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking, and opens a new window on our world.
- Sales Rank: #80234 in Books
- Brand: Walker & Company
- Published on: 1995-11-01
- Released on: 1995-11-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.70" h x .88" w x 4.78" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 224 pages
Features
Amazon.com Review
The thorniest scientific problem of the eighteenth century was how to determine longitude. Many thousands of lives had been lost at sea over the centuries due to the inability to determine an east-west position. This is the engrossing story of the clockmaker, John "Longitude" Harrison, who solved the problem that Newton and Galileo had failed to conquer, yet claimed only half the promised rich reward.
From Publishers Weekly
While sailors can readily gauge latitude by the height of the sun or guiding stars above the horizon, the measurement of longitude bedeviled navigators for centuries, resulting in untold shipwrecks. Galileo, Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley entreated the moon and stars for help, but their astronomical methods failed. In 1714, England's Parliament offered #20,000 (equivalent to millions of dollars today) to anyone who could solve the problem. Self-educated English clockmaker John Harrison (1693-1776) found the answer by inventing a chronometer?a friction-free timepiece, impervious to pitch and roll, temperature and humidity?that would carry the true time from the home port to any destination. But Britain's Board of Longitude, a panel of scientists, naval officers and government officials, favored the astronomers over humble "mechanics" like Harrison, who received only a portion of the prize after decades of struggle. Yet his approach ultimately triumphed, enabling Britannia to rule the waves. In an enthralling gem of a book, former New York Times science reporter Sobel spins an amazing tale of political intrigue, foul play, scientific discovery and personal ambition. BOMC and History Book Club selections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
YA?Opening with a chapter that outlines what follows, Sobel whets readers' appetites for hearing the colorful details of the search for a way for mariners to determine longitude. In an age when ships' stores were limited and scurvy killed many a seaman, missing a landfall often meant death?as, of course, did running aground. Sobel provides a lively treatment of the search through the centuries for a ready answer to the longitude problem, either through using lunar tables or through making an accurate clock not subject to the vicissitudes of weather and ocean conditions. Her account includes not only scientific advances, but also the perseverance, pettiness, politics, and interesting anecdotes that figured in along the way (it wasn't limes, for example, that first prevented scurvy on English ships, but sauerkraut). A pleasing mixture of basic science, cultural history, and personality conflicts makes this slim volume a winner.?Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Mighty companion to "drawing The Line" by Edwin Dnason and "Mason & Dixon" by Thiomas Pynchon:
By Clifford L. Baker
I first read the Danson book, thinking this was the book Mark Knopfler based his "Sailing to Philadelphia" on. Afterwards I learned it was the Pynchon book that birthed the song. Longitude offers descriptive history of clocks and astronomy as two methods for finding longitude, which was so sought after for British shipping and sailing. Having traveled to London, I spent one day visiting the Royal Observatory in Greenwich after reading these books. Returning home after that experience, I was urgently wanted to re-read both books again.
Sorbel writes enthusiastically and holds attention without including extraneous detail which might bog down the reading, and after reading Longitude the second time- now I want to go back to the observatory and also to the clock museum in Guildhall, which I did not see.
The science of positioning on the Earth is fascinating and anyone who finds global positioning and astronomy intriguing should read this book
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
An absolute joy to read!
By VickChick
Although I stumbled across this book after I had seen the television production based on it back in the mid nineties, starring Michael Gambon and Jeremy Irons, I didn't actually buy it and read it until I had watched the show again on Amazon recently. It's disappointing that there are no illustrations or photographs of Harrison's marine clocks, save the illustration of H-4 on the cover of the electronic edition of the book. But despite that the book was a pure joy to read and I appreciated the author's use of humor in her writing, which to me makes any book just that much better to read, even though it is indeed a rather serious subject. My hat goes off to Dava Sobel for making the subject of longitude extremely interesting to read about.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Fun little book about the historical difficulties in pinpointing a ship's location
By Jeff Walden
Suppose you wanted to figure out where you were on earth. You could make a fair guess at your north-south location between the North Pole and South Pole -- that is, you could determine your latitude -- by waiting for the sun to reach its highest point, then determining the angle from the horizon to the sun, then doing a bunch of math. But where you are on an east-west line -- that is, to determine longitude? This is much harder.
This book tells the story of longitude and how the problem of determining longitude was solved. It begins with a particularly disastrous British naval accident in 1707, after which Parliament established an X-Prize of sorts for methods to accurately determine longitude, to be administered by a Board of Longitude. The story then follows the two methods contending for the prize: those based upon examination of the positions of astronomical bodies, and those based upon accurately tracking the time at one's home port. (Knowing the time in, say, Greenwich would provide the time offset to a known longitude. From there simple division into twenty-four hours would reveal longitude of precision determined by the timekeeping method.) The story particularly follows John Harrison, the eccentric autodidact who built the first truly accurate seaborne clocks, and his efforts to win the prize; but it also tracks the efforts of the leading scientific minds toward an astronomical method. Behind all this lie the politics of the Board of Longitude, in particular its excess of faith in astronomical methods, and disdain for chronometric methods, as the latter took the clear lead.
This book is a popular account of the problem of longitude: if you're looking for an academic account of the story, look elsewhere. (And perhaps be wary of too easily accepting its assertions as fact: Wikipedia claims that the book unhesitatingly repeats a couple myths concerning the 1707 naval disaster, suggesting that perhaps not all facts this book relates are certainly so.) For that it remains entertaining throughout, giving a nice survey of story and its developments. It's definitely worth a read to get an idea of how ship-based navigation worked in a time before GPS and modern communication aids, and accurate clocks on every wrist (or phone, these days) -- which is to say, not always well.
A few complaints about the Kindle edition specifically. That foreword by Neil Armstrong touted on the cover? No, not yours -- it's not here. And some of the end bits mention illustrations of various clocks encountered in the book -- illustrations not in this edition. (In fact there are no images here beyond the cover image. I can't tell if that's a limitation of the Kindle edition, or of the original book [particularly as some reviews here discuss an illustrated version], so I can't hold it against the Kindle edition specifically. Either way it's a minor gripe you should be aware of.)
In closing I'll say one thing: I'll never see the card with the sextant on it in the 7 Wonders Game board game quite the same way again.
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