Product Description

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 quest for a solution had occupied scientists and their patrons for the better part of two centuries when, in 1714, the Parliament upped the ante by offering a king's ransom (20,000) to anyone whose method or device proved successful. Countless quacks weighed in with preposterous suggestions. The scientific establishment throughout 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, brilliance and the absurd, it is also fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation and clockmaking. Through Dava Sobel's consumate skill, Longitude will open a new window on our world for all who read it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #223725 in Books
• Published on: 1998-06-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 189 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The thorniest scientific problem of the 18th 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. --Amazon.com

Financial Times
Dava Sobel has written a gem of a book...one of the best reads for the non-scientific writing to come along for many a moon."

Daily Mail
"A true life thriller, jam-packed with political intrigue, international warfare, personal feuds and financial skullduggery."

Customer Reviews

Anniversary edition of a surprise best seller
Dava Sobel's description of the search for an accurate means to measure longitude was a surprise best seller when first published. This latest, celebratory edition is prefaced by an introduction by Neil Armstrong. Does it add to the package?

Sobel took what was once an intractable problem - finding a means to work out precisely where you are - and turned it into a very readable account, making the history and science readily accessible to a popular readership. Working out latitude is not particularly difficult - the equator is a fixed point and observation of sun, stars, and length of day make it relatively easy to determine how far north or south you are.

But longitude? Because the earth spins (more or less) on a north/south axis, the two poles act as fixed points in space. There are no such fixed points on the equator - every point on the equator undergoes a complete revolution every twenty four hours. Longitude has always been problematic, and for the seafarer, that problem could easily prove fatal.

The solution came in the creation of clocks which would keep good enough time at sea, and the man responsible for their invention, Harrison, emerges from Sobel's book as a determined, driven man.

It's a fascinating little book, written in a highly accessible style. It's quite a quick read. It's a highly enjoyable read. It's also a stimulating read, and must have encouraged a few people to delve further into history and science.

But does it deserve a new edition? Well, the cachet of Armstrong's introduction is a reminder that long distance sea travel was once as dangerous as current space travel. It's unnecessary. Sobel's story is exciting enough, and will absorb you with or without an introduction. It remains an excellent little volume and a worthy publishing success - maybe it's time you read it again!

Make time to read this
While Longitude is, on the surface of it, a book about scientific endeavour, its appeal is due to the story of a man's struggle against the prevailing thought of the time and the board set up to judge the award for the discovery of a method of determining longitude which was full of people with vested interests. The determination and drive of Harrison is awesome; if it was a novel you would find it difficult to believe. This is arguably the one book that has driven the much quoted trend towards science based books. While the media asks if this signals renewed interest in things scientific, the real answer is more likely that stories such as this are successful because they are about real people with real obstacles to overcome. Well worth a read; it won't take you long!

Enjoyable, but only part of the picture.
This is an enjoyable book, but it is a pity that in making a good tale, the author has given such an unbalanced account. The Harrison chronometer was far from being the "solution" to the Longitude problem that Sobel implies. When Captain Vancouver sailed from England to the Pacific North West of America in the 1790's his two Harrison chronometers were showing times forty five minutes apart by the time he got there, making them useless. The "lunar distance method" gave the necessary correction. Captain Cook and his officers used lunar distances successfully in Australia, and when Joshua Slocum made his famous single handed voyage around the world, he carried a cheap alarm clock rather than chronometers because he used lunar distances. Enjoy the book, but look further, and look beyond crude hero and villain stereotypes!