Longitude
Sometimes all it takes is one man. One man who believes and endeavors. One man who will go against the grain, no matter the odds. In her book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time, published by Walker and Co. in 1995 with 184 pages, Dava Sobell portrays the difficulty of cultivating a means with which to accurately measure lines of longitude in a way many people may never have thought about. Today, it is taken for granted the effort that was put into longitudinal lines. And to shed light on the subject, Sobell has reconstructed a bit of the past. In doing so, she has placed most of the focus on the man responsible for our understanding of longitude today. A man who nearly single-handedly created an accurate measuring system for longitude and developed large advancements in clockwork.You may be pondering how the two could be related, but the beauty of longitude is that time measures longitude, and so began John Harrison's work. The problem of finding a measuring system to accurately measure longitude persisted up to and into the eighteenth century, where it reached the pinacle of its debate. It was during this century in which t
In her book, Sobell portrays the timeline of the development of the chronometer in a way that intrigues the reader. The rather short chapters keep the subject concise without too many unwanted details, but long enough to allow a depth of understanding of each topic. Also, the language was not so technical as to make the book tedious to read. This allowed me to sit down and read large portions of the book at a time. I also enjoyed the inclusion of the humorous methods attempted for longitude, such as the wounded dogs; and the inclusion of such shady characters as Maskelyne only seemed to make this book read almost as a story, instead of a historical account. Many men may have made the chronometer what it is today, but all of these men stood on the shoulders of a man before them. One man. A single man against all odds and all criticism...believing in himself, and his ideas. John Arnold, however, produced hundreds of high quality chronometers. Being a naturally inventive man, almost to a fault, Arnold produced many different designs and improved much upon the now aging H-4 design. This man was even able to reduce the size of his device enough to truly be called a "pocket" chronometer. Meanwhile, nearly simultaneously, another approach was being developed for the same purpose. This method used the Moon and its relative distance between celestial bodies. This lunar method had required many years to perfect, and only became reliable with the advent of Hadley's quadrant, an instrument that used mirrors to measure the distances between the heavenly bodies. This instrument, combined with a detailed star chart, allowed a navigator to accurately predict one's longitude. By now Kendall, Mudge, Arnold, and Earnshaw had all received awards for their respective accomplishments. The lunar method of
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Approximate Word count = 1223
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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