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Title: Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel ISBN: 0-14-025879-5 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.89 (206 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: In Search of Precision Timepieces
Comment: In the Age of Sail, the position of a ship had to be determined by a set of coordinates that corresponded with a grid of lines covering the planet. These lines, latitude and longitude, are still present on reproductions of the earths surface today- on just about any map you can find. Latitude can be determined by the stars in the sky, and their respective angles above the horizon. With latitude, the relative north or south position of a ship could be determined. Longitude was a much more difficult animal to capture and an important one, being the east and west position of a ship. Dead reckoning would work to a point, but with the trade of Europe riding the ocean an exact position was required to avoid expensive (in lives and material) wrecks at sea. Dava Sobel has written an account of John Harrison's quest to crack the riddle of longitude and claim the twenty thousand pound reward for doing so. While the astronomers were looking to the sky for an answer, Harrison believed he could find it within the mechanical gears of a watch.
This is a great book, a fast read and one that will be remembered. Concise and filled with knowledge that is both fascinating and taken for granted, Sobel has brought much needed light to a neglected corner of history.
Rating: 5
Summary: Tremendous tale of the era's ultimate scientific challenge
Comment: As exploration of the Earth reached its zenith, the most daunting problem for navigators was the inability to determine longitude - exact "horizontal" location on the globe, in navigational terms. After a devastating shipwreck off the coast of England - which resulted in thousands of lives lost - Parliament offered a stunning prize of 20,000 pounds sterling (the equivalent of perhaps $20 million today) to any person who could solve "the longitude problem".
Over six decades, John Harrison - an exceedingly clever "horologist" (timepiece builder) - defied the conventional scientific wisdom of an astrological solution to the problem. Building a chronometer suitable for both wide temperature ranges and the continual pitch and yaw of maritime travel proved exceedingly difficult. Yet Harrison's creative attempts were stunningly accurate and unbelievably durable. How he built these complex devices - and handled the politically incorrect nature of his approach - is the story of Longitude.
This is a wonderful, fast-moving read which covers a topic of surprising import.
Rating: 5
Summary: Nice Lean Account of Quest to Calculate Longitude at Sea.
Comment: For centuries, the inability to calculate longitude at sea doomed many a sailing vessel and its cargo. Unable to calculate their exact position, ships would run aground or miss their destinations entirely, leaving their crews to suffer and sometimes parish from starvation, scurvy, or infectious disease. By the 18th century, the lives and monies lost as a result of this inability to navigate properly had become such an obstacle to commerce and political ambitions that, in 1714, England's Parliament offered an extraordinary sum of money to anyone who could devise a method of reliably calculating longitude at sea. Dava Sobel's "Longitude" is the story of the approximately 60-year race to solve the longitude problem and its hero, a clockmaker from Yorkshire named John Harrison, who invented what we now call the chronometer. Ms. Sobel has written a short, very readable account of the technologies, personalities, and politics surrounding the quest for a solution to the longitude problem and its accompanying prize. The book owes its economy -only 180 pages- to the fact that the author doesn't attempt to place the longitude problem in a greater historical context or to say more than is necessary about the individuals who play a part in the story. "Longitude" concentrates on one story, which is the book's strength as well as a limitation. If the story intrigues you, there is more to be learned elsewhere about navigation at sea, the technology of the chronometer, John Harrison, and all the other grand personalities that inhabit this tale of discovery and the politics of science. But "Longitude" is a brisk, enjoyable account of the invention that solved a centuries-old problem and propelled Great Britain to global dominance.
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Title: Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel ISBN: 0140280553 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 31 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention That Changed the World by Amir D. Aczel ISBN: 0151005060 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 16 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Map That Changed the World : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0060931809 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester ISBN: 006099486X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: August, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Illustrated Longitude by Dava Sobel, William J. H. Andrewes ISBN: 0802775934 Publisher: Walker & Co Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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