Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
Written by Dava Sobel
Narrated by Kate Reading and Neil Armstrong
4/5
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About this audiobook
During the great ages of exploration, "the longitude problem" was the gravest of all scientific challenges. Lacking the ability to determine their longitude, sailors were literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Ships ran aground on rocky shores; those traveling well-known routes were easy prey to pirates.
In 1714, England's Parliament offered a huge reward to anyone whose method of measuring longitude could be proven successful. The scientific establishment--from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton--had mapped the heavens in its certainty 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 been able to do on land. And the race was on....
Dava Sobel
Dava Sobel is the internationally renowned author of ‘Longitude’ and ‘Galileo’s Daughter’. She is also an award-winning former science reporter for the ‘New York Times’ and writes frequently about science for several magazines, including the ‘New Yorker’, ‘Audubon’, ‘Discover’, ‘Life’ and ‘Omni’. She is currently writing a book called ‘The Planets’ for Fourth Estate. She lives in East Hampton, New York.
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Reviews for Longitude
1,789 ratings85 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sailors have been able to calculate latitude almost since men first set out onto the ocean. Calculating longtiude, on the other hand, is a technology that has only been perfected in the relatively recent past. Many of the famous explorers students whose names students now commit to memory set out with no reliable method of telling how far east or west they were, resulting in many deaths and extensive hardships for the crews involved.Dava Sobel's book details the story of the Longitude Prize enacted by the British Parliament, the bizarre and impractical solutions offered to win the prize, and the lifelong efforts of John Harrison, a man who finally fulfilled the conditions necessary to win the Longitude prize, but due to the prejudices and conflicts of interest of the commisoners charged with awarding the prize was never actually awarded the bounty, despite the backing of King George himself.The method for determining longitude is fairly straightforward. One must calculate the local time where one is, and compare it to the time at some known position, which is now always assumed to be Greenwich in the United Kingdom. The difference in the local time and the Greenwich time can be expressed in hours, minutes, and second, and then plotted on a globe, showing the longitude of the ship in question. The prime difficulty facing the aspirants for the Longitude Prize was how to determine Greenwich time when one was presumably hundreds or thousands of miles away.Astronomers, who favored methods using stellar and lunar observations, eventually settled upon a method that involved tracking the path of the moon across the sky, comparing its location to the locations of designated guide stars, and measuring the distance between the Earth and the moon. This method was complicated and difficult, and required massive numbers of celestial observations to be made before the required charts could be made to begin with. This method was also somewhat unreliable - on a cloudy night, one could not locate the stars needed, many days out of the month the moon is not visible (as it is located on the opposite side of the Earth), and so on.John Harrison, on the other hand, sought to build a very accurate clock. Once such a clock was set to, for example, London time, one could simply refer to the clock at noon local time, and dtermine by seeing how far away from noon the clock was how many minutes and seconds of arc one was from London. However, the clock would have to remain accurate over long periods of time, in humid conditions, and across a wide span of temperatures. When the Longitude Act was passed, clocks were not even accurate to within several minutes per day, and even an error of a couple seconds per day would cause the navigator to miscalculate a ships position by dozens or even hundreds of miles.The book describes Harrison's attempts to build such a clock, eventually settling upon an oversized watch. The book also describes the hostility many of the astronomers on the longitude board evaluating his submission had towards him. While Harrison was a tradesman, and a self-educated mechanician to boot (earning the derision of many of the highly educated aristocratic astronomers on the board), he was their competitor for the extremely lucrative board. under the guidance of successive Royal Astronomers, the board imposed more and more difficult obstacles to Harrison's watch, until in frustration he appealed directly to King George. Eventually, with the King's assistance, Harrison was awarded a prize by a special act of parliament. The obstinate longitude board never awarded the full Longitude Prize to anyone.Sobel has created a compelling story out of what could have been a rather boring event in history. In a roundabout way, Harrison's story explains to a certain extent why pirates and privateers were common before the 1800s, and vanished almost completely thereafter. One thing made clear (to me at least) is that many writers of historical fiction, or even fantasy, make sea travel in the pre-Longitude era too reliable, and too easy. It is probably the measure of the success of a technological advance that it becomes so prevalent and accepted that the difficulties faced in the days before are forgotten by the general public. On that score, Harrison's watch is one of the most significant technological developments in history.One nitpick I have is with the subtitle of the book. It seems to me that the longitude problem was not a scientific problem, but rather an engineering one. That failing aside, this is an excellent book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a fairly short (175 pages of text in trade paperback size) nonfiction account of the attempts to find a way to determine longitude at sea. It is primarily about John Harrison, inventor of the chronometer. There are no footnotes (intentionally by the author), but there is a two-page bibliography and four-page index.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Rhetorical armaments fully deployed in this little gem. It’s like a cameo with it’s fine detail in a tiny space. Remarkable really how Sobel has managed to do that with a subject where each page could be expanded into its own book. A very enjoyable introduction to the subject.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While this isn't normally a book I would have picked up when I read those cover summaries, for some reason, this really caught my eye and sparked a genuine interest in this part of maritime history.Historically accurate (I did a bit of research on a few points in the book), written nicely, and the fact that I've seen some of these clocks at The Clockmakers' Museum from my trip to London a few years back, definitely made it a page turner for me.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very enjoyable story about a rogue clock-maker who solved the longitude problem and made ocean going ships destination more accurate.I read this over a few months over break at work (its a short book). Its well written, with an interesting cast of characters, and has a well described history of longitude.Essentially, the problem is that its easy enough to figure out what latitude you are on (this can be figured from the stars), but longitude is a completely different story. Wrong guesses have doomed entire ships. Many people worked on it, and while using time was always a possibility, it would't work without a very accurate clock. So people went to the stars, and the moons on Jupiter, or even blowing off canons to indicate where the port was. But it wasn't until John Harrison, a rogue clock-maker, made his first clock (H-1) for navigation, that this problem was solved.Dava Sobel is so good at writing books about scientific discover - she manages to right a good story while keeping to the facts. This book is no different - the people involved come to life, from John Harrison, wary to give up his secrets, to the board who kept changing the rules of the longitude test because they didn't like an outsider winning the prize. Its also a short novel, and can be read in a few days.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As a previous reader noted in pencil a through the volume I read - illustrations please! Very readable, a nice calculation on what level of detail would keep a casual reader interested while fairly informed. A horologist would find this skimpy indeed, but such are not the intended audience.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A short, fascinating book about a topic that you wouldn't think all that interesting - longitude. The book looks at the historical challenge for sailors not being able to figure out what their longitude was while at sea, and the contest for scientists (or clockmakers as it turns out) to come up with an accurate method to determine longitude at sea.
I really enjoyed this read. I liked the debate between those who wanted to use the stars and those who wanted to develop an accurate clock that could keep perfect time at sea. I won't say more so I don't give away the story, but worth a read for anyone interested in the 18th century, the age of sail, or just a good story. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Well written and engaging as you traverse difficult content for the non-initiated.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The author tells about the search for a method to determine longitude, badly needed to safely navigate oceans. It aptly explains the two methods (by celestial bodies or by a ship-borne clock) that were developed, their advantages and disadvantages, and the inventions necessitated by each.The author mentions in their Acknowledgments that this book was expanded from a magazine article. Unfortunately, the book seemed overly long, and perhaps should have remained as a magazine article.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I found the story boring and tedious. The book is about the history of the development of methods for measuring longitude. The author did not provide sufficient information on the way in which the timepieces were to be used to measure longitudes. The book was heavy on history and weak on science. I would have been more interested in the details of how the clock mechanisms functioned and less on the rivalries of the inventors. There was some information provided that was interesting but it was bogged down by trivial facts. I recommend the book to an insomniac.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Simply excellent.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Not my thing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a brief and to-the-point narration of the history of the search for determining longitude and the struggles of John Harrison to build a clock that could withstand the motion, humidity, and temperature variations of sea voyages. This endeavor was so crucial to the exploration of the world that the Parliament offered a huge award for the creation of a method to determine longitude. What is nice about this book is that there are no deviations from the story - no detailed and ponderous history of navigation since the Stone Age, no biographies beyond what is pertinent to the story. Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Interesting account of one clockmaker's fight against an astronomy biased establishment during the quest for longitude. Ships could easily determine their latitude but longitude depended on knowing where they were in time relative to the time at a known location. They could relatively easily determine their local time at sea but would not know what GMT was for example. There were no clocks that could keep time accurately enough, especially considering the on board conditions that prevailed on the ships of the time. A huge reward was offered to anyone who could come up with a means of determining longitude and this was governed over by the Longitude Board. It was generally perceived that the answer lay in the heavens and it was a problem for the much respected astronomers of the time to solve. Step forward Mr Harrison and his clocks.
An enjoyable and informative quick read. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is the story of the development of a clock accurate enough to measure longitude while at sea. As someone who was almost completely ignorant of pre-GPS maritime navigation techniques, this was fascinating to me. I'd never given much thought to how one finds their location on the ocean where there are no landmarks save the heavens. The descriptions of the clocks were marvelous; now I want to run off to Greenwich to see them. Though maritime adventure stories don't interest me, the history of maritime technology certainly does. The difficulties faced at sea are so different from those on land, and the ingenious methods of overcoming them make for good reading.A note on the audio: Kate Reading is not my favorite narrator. Her stilted cadence has ruined more than one audiobook for me, to the point where I avoid listening to books she reads. However, I decided to give this nonfiction a chance, and it wasn't too bad. I think a lot of the problem in other books is her atrocious attempt at an American accent. Using her natural British accent here, it sounded much more natural. It also helped that there wasn't much in the way of dialogue.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5subtitled *The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time*Although this book was only 175 pages long, it took me longer than I expected it to, to get through it. This is probably due to the fact that there was much more *math* and mathematical detail than my non-math brain could process and rather than just skim and skip, I tried to get through it all. The story itself, of John Harrison and his valiant attempts at inventing an instrument that would accurately determine longitude, the most pressing scientific challenge of his time, was fascinating. He was treated so badly by the organization which sponsored the competition to award the inventor; it was truly shameful. I guess this aspect of human nature hasn't changed much over time. There are 2 quotes, one from the beginning of the book, and one from the very end, that I liked:"...Time is to clock as mind is to brain.. The clock or watch somehow contains the time. And yet time refuses to be bottled up like a genie stuffed in a lamp. Whether it flows as sand or turns on wheels within wheels, time escapes irretrievably, while we watch...when the mainspring winds down so far that the clock hands hold still as death, time itself keeps on. The most we can hope a watch to do is to mark that progress. And since time sets its own tempo, like a heartbeat or an ebb tide, timepieces don't really keep time. They just keep up with it, if they're able.""With is marine clocks, John Harrison tested the waters of space-time. He succeeded, against all odds, in using the fourth - temporal - dimension to link points on the three-dimensional globe. He wrested the word's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch."Sobel is a good storyteller. Her description, at the beginning of the final chapter, of standing on the prime meridian of the world and how it is lit up these days in Greenwich, at the Old Royal Observatory, makes me want to see it for myself.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another book length magazine article, but one I enjoyed very much. This traces the history of "the longitude problem", the need for sailors to know their location as they travelled across the globe. Calculations could be made using the moon and stars but they weren't accurate and this method was useless under cloudy skies. In 1714 England's Parliament offered a huge prize to anyone who could devise a device to measure longitude. So many useless ideas were proposed that the board managing the reward didn't even meet for 23 years. Then John Harrison, an uneducated clock maker, submitted his invention. Although championed by Edmund Halley and other astronomers and scientists, it took years for him to be recognized.This book is about that process, which had more twists and turns than you'd imagine, rather than about clock mechanics. I would have enjoyed learning about that but I can see it's outside the scope of this book. One thing I enjoyed was mentions of the longitude problem in popular culture - Gulliver's Travels mentions various impossiblities such as the discovery of perpetual motion and of the longitude, and one of the plates of Hogarth's The Rake's Progress shows a lunatic in an asylum writing a solution to longitude on a wall.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very slim book, I was able to finish it in only a few days. While I find that Sobel was a bit too enthusiastic about her subject, it was quite interesting and entertaining. It piqued my curiosity about exploration and map making. A very good holiday read since I spent more time cooking and eating than reading.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Story of lone genius John Harrison, who devised a way to measure longitude. Meticulous like its subject.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent and fast moving story on the invention of the chronometer and how this clock changed the world of navigation from dead reconing to scientific accuracy
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I found this so boring. I thought I would like it
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The quest to build the longitudinal clock, enabling sea traffic and perfecting the clockwork mechanism which European history hinged upon.
A quick and fascinating read. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Interesting read that details how the Prime Meridian came to be set in England and how a lone clock maker clashed with bureaucracy of the longitude commission.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Short, but interesting story about the development of the chronometer. I didn't understand all the technical stuff, but still thought this to be a fascinating account of the work, trials and tribulations that went into conceiving this important instrument.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I cannot know how accurate this book is, nor do I care too much. I enjoyed reading this book. It was a quick and easy read, and my interest was held the entire length of it. I felt like I learned much that I hitherto had not known and that is good enough for me. I have read that there are more exhaustive and accurate books, but do not care to look them up and read them. I recommend this book to any and all.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tore through my lovely new Folio edition. My old paperback was sent to me on Hawkbill from my grandparents after a trip to London.I've thought in my dotage I would work on model ships, but perhaps clocks would be sharper.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Finally got around to reading this one after finding it at a garage sale; it’s a little disappointing, considering the hype and TV-movie deal. The book developed from an article author Dava Sobel wrote for her college alumna magazine. She is, in fact, and excellent writer and this is a pleasant, if quick, read. It suffers by forcing the story of John Harrison into a very standard formula – self-taught genius versus the Establishment. This results in a focus on the personalities involved rather than the scientific problem. I suppose that’s inevitable in a popular book; my own prejudices desire some celestial mechanics illustrations and details on how the Harrison marine chronometers actually worked; I suspect if Ms. Sobel had asked me for advice she could have turned a New York Times bestseller into a quickly-remaindered engineering textbook. You can buy replicas; I don’t see a price anywhere but I suspect it falls in the “if you have to ask you can’t afford it” category. There’s an illustrated version of Longitude available; if it has more than just pretty marine landscapes it could be very good indeed.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is an engagingly written non-specialist account of the hunt during the 18th century for an accurate way to measure longitude, and thus more accurately track sea voyages between west and east. While latitude had been understood since antiquity and has an absolute meaning relative to the north and south poles, longitude is entirely relative and can in principle be measured from any artificial line connecting the poles. The hunt was turned into a race by the British Parliament's Longitude Act of 1714, establishing a Board to consider proposals to measure longitude accurately, with a top prize of £20,000 for anyone able to measure it to within half a degree of accuracy. Why such a high profile prize? Ignorance of longitude was very costly, including costing the lives of many seamen, including two thousand in one incident in 1707 when four warships ran aground off the Scilly Isles. Ignorance also cost economically as it meant marine trade routes had to follow a very narrow safe path which restricted commercial growth.The early years of the hunt for a solution were dominated on the one hand by greats such as Isaac Newton, John Flamsteed and Edmond Halley, and on the other hand, by numerous lesser players proposing theoretically ingenious but flawed and wildly impractical solutions, involving for example, anchoring fleets of ships at regular intervals across the ocean, which would fire signals at regular intervals so that passing vessels could measure their distance from land to east or west. Later on the race was a battle between the astronomers and the engineers, between those who saw the solution in the movements of the stars and planets and those who saw technology as the answer. In truth, both were partly right. The movements of celestial bodies had a part to play, but had in practice to be complemented by a mechanical device that could provide a practical and quick solution to the long standing problem. Step forward one of the unsung heroes of science and technology - John Harrison, master clockmaker, who rose from obscure and humble origins in Lincolnshire to become one of the great innovators of all time. He produced four progressively simpler and smaller timepieces, the last of which H-4 was the prototype for slightly later, smaller mass produced timepieces that in the hands of ships' captains were a contributory factor in the expansion of British sea power in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His arch rival was the Rev Nevil Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal, a man not above changing the rules of the race to suit the astronomers vs. the mechanics. While Maskelyne behaved shabbily, he did make his own considerable contributions to lunar observations as part of the solution, and was responsible for establishing Greenwich as the prime meridian from which longitude would be measured across the world thereafter. But Harrison is the hero of this story, a pioneer who, in the author's words, "With his marine clocks, ... tested the waters of space-time. He succeeded, against all odds, in using the fourth—temporal—dimension to link points on the three-dimensional globe. He wrested the world’s whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch."A good read, though some footnotes would be good and, even more so, a few diagrams and illustrations.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I wish I'd read this instead of the little book that was almost entirely text. The story, and the science, and the engineering, all make more sense now that I've paged through this one. I still can't recommend it though unless you're already geeky about historical navigation and clockmaking, though.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Who would have thought a perfect clock could be made in the mid 1700's? And that it could establish longitude perfectly? And that it took over a century for timepieces to be readily accessible? "Longitude" is a very readable book about a topic most people don't even know exists and it demonstrates once again how good ideas get buried under "established truths". (See "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn.)