Longitude

Product Information

I can see why it is appealing for stories, and for works of popular history: our ability to turn history into a biography boils away our dislike of dates and dry facts and lets us focus on the relationships and motivations of the characters. Navigational accuracy was paramount, yet the elusive concept of determining longitude plagued sailors and explorers, leading to countless shipwrecks and lost lives.

Newton died in 1727, and therefore did not live to see the predecessor of the modern day chronometers become a reality.This is a book about a self-taught village clock-maker who created a whole new breed of amazingly precise chronometers, which enable the accurate measurement of longitude, and the fight he had with astronomers to get his solution recognised (and rewarded). However, due to his own desire to create a perfect chronometer and to machinations of opponents, who favored a stellar clock approach, his first contraption sailed in 1736 on a trial voyage to Lisbon aboard H. The answer lay in always knowing what time it was at an agreed-upon zero-meridian, as well as aboard the ship (by setting the local clock to noon when the sun was directly overhead). In 1998, The Illustrated Longitude was published, supplementing the earlier text with 180 images of characters, events, instruments, maps and publications. This increased the likelihood of short rations, [3] scurvy or starvation leading to poor health or even death for members of the crew and resultant risk to the ship.

There’s also a lot about the jostling for position among the various men who wanted to claim credit (and a large financial reward) for solving the longitude problem. It just so happened, too, that later on in his life he became the Astronomer Royal, and therefore a member of the Board of Longitude. libras, el equivalente a varios millones en la actualidad, estableciéndose así el Decreto de la Longitud de 1714.But this is also a human interest story of an odd difficult man, a homespun insular genius, who faces the complex scientific society of eighteenth century England.