Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

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Clocks, meanwhile, would have helped reckon longitude if only they were more accurate—those of the era could lose 15 minutes a day—and pendulum clocks, the best available, lost their accuracy at sea from changes in weather and rolling ships. The scientific establishment-- from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton-- had been certain that a celestial answer would be found and invested untold effort in this pursuit.

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the

I imagine the ’90s might’ve been the perfect moment to reflect back on a time when extreme accuracy in measuring time was a pipe dream ranked among human flight and space exploration. The UK government also issued the Longitude Act and established the Board of Longitude, offering big reward to people who could find a solution, but these efforts were in vain. Better yet, the clock didn’t need lubrication, which prevented it from deviating when lubricating oil became thicker or thinner due to changes in temperature. It examines whether plants have the senses of sight, smell, touch, hearing, proprioception, and even memory, and helps us comprehensively understand plants’ inner world. Longitude is a tremendous tale of battling scientists and the perseverance of hard work, brilliance, and humility through political intrigue and greed.

In the ’90s, most seafaring vessels switched over to satellite-based computerized navigation systems. Instead of observing through the telescope by night, the women could analyze the stars in daylight on glass photographic plates. She is unfairly hard on the Halley/Maskylene method of calculating longitude, for example, which worked too, and had the big advantage of only requiring equipment that already exist onboard ships (a good compass, a sextant and a trained navigator). Indeed, the entire Age of Exploration was carried out without any of those explorers ever knowing where they were.

Longitude by Dava Sobel | Waterstones

She was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022 "for outstanding writings covering many centuries of key developments in physics and astronomy and the people central to those developments". Over the years, his chronometers were tested in actual ocean voyages, proving their merit, which should’ve settled the issue and won Harrison his prize money. When he was 19 years old, a clergyman lent him a treasured textbook, a handbook of natural philosophy copied by a mathematician at Cambridge University.

The European continent was plunged into years of darkness marked by starvation, vengeance, ethnic cleansing, and civil war. He replaced all the parts that needed lubrication with lignum vitae, a tropical hardwood that exudes its own grease. It was Ptolemy in ‘ Geographia’, written in the 2nd century, who contributed the concept of a co-ordinate system based on the imaginary lines of latitude and longitude, for accurately plotting any spot on the surface of earth.

Longitude Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary

Roughly one-quarter of the many letters I received after the publication of Longitude complained that the book contained no pictures, maps, or diagrams. Dava Sobel records the background and each step of this pioneering invention in an easy to read form, by guiding the reader through a tumultuous story of the sheer determination and relentless pursuit for perfection from a self made man and the obstructions, unkempt promises and villainy he had to face from some of his jealous contemporaries. H. Andrews, and he does an excellent job of bringing color and added insight to an already colorful story.The book is about John Harrison's long, bedeviled question to built an incredibly accurate time-piece that could resist the vagaries of the sea. The story of his ultimately receiving the prize from Britain's Board of Longitude is a dramatic, inspiring and heart-rending portrayal of 40 years of perseverance and struggle against political shenanigans and skullduggery as well as personal feuds, jealousy and outright espionage and sabotage. Breezily written and full of fascinating characters and facts, here's a science book as enjoyable as any novel.

Longitude By Dava Sobel - Fratello Watches 【F】 Book Review: Longitude By Dava Sobel - Fratello Watches

A rise or fall in barometer pressure, or the subtle variations in the Earth's gravity from one latitude to another, could also cause a clock to gain or lose time. Spain's Philip II offered a prize for the discovery of a solution to the problem of the longitude in 1567; Philip III increased the prize in 1598. As one of the most influential nonfiction classics about Ebola, it’s been translated into more than 30 languages and sold all over the world. In 1714, Parliament offered a purse worth 20,000 Pounds (millions today) to anyone who could solve the longitude problem.The Board of Longitude consisted of government officials, naval officers, and scientists from both astronomy and mathematics. Later, Cassini, an Italian astronomy professor, produced a more elaborate astronomical ephemeris, and people successively developed new decent observation instruments. All too often throughout the ages of exploration, voyages ended in disaster when crew and cargo were either lost at sea or destroyed upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall. One degree of longitude equals four minutes of time the world over, although in terms of distance, one degree shrinks from 60. As organizer of the original “Longitude Symposium” at Harvard in 1993, Will had edited and illustrated The Quest for Longitude, which contained the complete text of all the technical papers delivered at that three-day event, plus pictures galore.