TITLE: Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time AUTHOR: Dava Sobel DATE PUBLISHED: 2005 FORMAT: Hardcover ISBN-13: 9780802714626 __________________________ DESCRIPTION: "Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known tha...
In the 18th century, plenty of ships were lost at sea due to not knowing their longitude and either going massively off course, or hitting rocks and islands that appeared when sailors had veered off course.The quest to find a means around this led to a large bounty being offered by various heads of ...
Finding the latitude in the 17th century was straightforward, but finding the longitude was extremely difficult. This compromised the safety of all seafarers, and in one particular incident around 200 lives were lost of the Isles of Scilly.The admiralty of the day decided to set up a Longitude board...
I can't remember if I read the book first or saw the television series first, but some combination of the two was like a long, calm, very safe ocean voyage.
Read about 80% and I'm just not feeling it. Interesting subject matter, but it's a slow read. It felt like the race to discover a lunar method for determining the longitude was happening in real time.
This is a great book. It's one of the excellent historical non-fiction books that is really well written and interesting, even if you're not normally interested in the subject. I can honestly say I have never once wondered about how longitude is determined, or why it matters. Until I read this book,...
This is another one I wish I could give 3 1/2 stars. It's stronger in the first half than the second half. But I usually read fiction, so this is a bit out of my comfort zone anyway. And Sobel does a good job of allowing for that - bridging the gap between intellectual types and people (like me) who...
Dava Sobel ably tells the story of John Harrison's lifelong quest to develop an instrument capable of determining longitude in all climes. In response to a tragic sinking which took place close to the English coast early in the 18th century, owing to the inability of a ship's captain to accurately d...
Fascinating book! I never realized that figuring out longitude was such a big problem. There is lots of scientific info in the book, but it's not so technical I couldn't understand it.
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