Sobel ranks right up there with Mark Kurlansky for writing detailed, fascinating accounts of historical technology. Calculating longitude had bedeviled mariners for centuries. To do so required an extremely accurate timepiece.John Harrison thought he could solve the problem. The book is a nice comb...
A nicely narrowed focus on a specific problem and the person who solved it. Entertaining and informative.
What a fascinating book. Latitude was relatively simple to determine. Longitude proved such a difficult problem that wihtout its solution the British Empire would not have succeeded.
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