longitude the true story of a lone genius

One man, John Harrison, in complete opposition to the scientific community, dared to imagine a mechanical solution-a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. Thousands of lives and the increasing fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Andrewes's elegant captions and sidebars on scientific and historical events tell their own story of longitude, paralleling and illuminating Sobel's memorable tale.The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of one man's forty-year obsession to find a solution to the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-'the longitude problem.'Īnyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that 'the longitude problem' was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. It contains the entire original narrative of Longitude, redesigned to accompany 183 images chosen by William Andrewes- from portraints of every important figure in the story to maps and diagrams, scientifc instruments, and John Harrison's remarkable sea clocks themselves. The Illustrated Longitude brings a new and important dimension to Dava Sobel's celebrated story. Harrison's trials and tribulations during his forty-year quest to win the prize are the culmination of this remarkable story. By contrast, John Harrison imagined and built the unimaginable: a clock that told perfect time at sea, known today as the chronometer. The scientific establishment- from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton- had been certain that a celestial answer would be found and invested untold effort in this pursuit.

The largest reward of 20,000- truly a king's ransom- was offered by Britain's Parliament in 1714. To encourage a solution, governments established prizes for anyone whose method or device proved successful. Thousands of lives and the fortunes of nations hung on a resolution to the longitude problem. All too often throughout the ages of exploration, voyages ended in disaster when crew and cargo were either lost at sea or destroyed upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall.

The Illustrated Longitude recounts in words and images the epic quest to solve the greatest scientific problem of the eighteenth and three prior centuries: determining how a captain could pinpoint his ship's location at sea. A fully illustrated edition of the international best-seller Longitude.

Longitude the true story of a lone genius