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The true Story of a lone genius who solved the
greatest scientific problem of his time.
Longitude will be familiar to readers everywhere
as Dava Sobel's brilliant No.1 best seller, the elegantly written and fascinating
biography of a genius who solved the problem of how to measure longitude
accurately. This illustrated edition, which includes a lot of new material,
will delight all those who enjoyed Longitude, and want to know more, and
is certain to win Sobel even more readers throughout
the world.
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The gate clock at the Royal Observatory |
The Longitude Problem
The lines of latitude and longitude which criss-cross the globe had been
in use since the cartographer and astronomer Ptolemy plotted them on his
first world maps in the 2nd century AD. But while establishing latitude was
simple enough, the measurement of longitude meridians was an entirely different
matter.
 Put
simply, for a navigator to be able to plot his position on the seas accurately,
he had to be in two places at once to be able to tell the time at his starting
position and at wherever he was on the ocean. In the era of pendulum clocks,
so easily sent off-kilter by the motion of the ship, or by the temperature,
such precision was out of the question. And the results were disastrous:
mariners not only found themselves frequently lost at sea, but terrible
catastrophes occurred as land suddenly loomed and ships ran aground. As the
situation on the seas worsened, the British Parliament passed the Longitude
Act of 1714, naming a prize equal to a king's ransom for a "Practicable and
Useful" solution to the problem.
Enter John Harrison
English clock maker John Harrison,a mechanical
genius who pioneered the science of portable precision timekeeping,devoted
his life to the quest.He accomplished what Newton had deemed impossible:
he invented a clock that would carry the true time from the home port to
any remote corner of the world. Along the way, Harrison crossed swords with
the leading lights of his day, in particular the Astronomer Royal Nevil
Maskelyne, who employed a series of dirty tricks, to prevent Harrison from
claiming his prize money, and who marshalled the forces of the establishment
against him. Yet with no formal education or watch making training, Harrison
constructed a series of virtually friction-free clocks,impervious to rust,and
able to keep their moving parts perfectly balanced as the sea swelled about
them. A triumph of vision over ignorance, ingenuity and endurance over jealousy
and bigotry, John Harrison's story is one of the greatest in the history
of technology. This beautifully illustrated and sumptuously produced edition
of Sobel's engrossing account is a must for readers everywhere.
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