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Jan 01, 2011

Mahlon rated it:

In Longitude, Dava Sobel chronicles the world's quest to tame time. In 1714, the English Parliament passed the longitude act. It established the Board of Longitude and offered a prize of 20,000 pounds to anyone who could find a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship's longitude. In particular Sobel highlights John Harrison's pursuit of the prize. She traces the arc of his career, and details the innovations of each of his subsequent entries (H1-H5) Unfortunately, eve More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Mar 02, 2010

Peter added it

I first read Longitude, by Dava Sobel, just after I finished high school, and I devoured it in a sitting or two. It was the first non-fiction book, I think, that I really couldn't put down.

The (true) story is great: legendary historical figures like Isaac Newton, Galileo, James Cook, King George III; scientific conundrums; innovative engineering; a ransom of millions at stake; and a humble, lone man competing against oppressive and manipulative big-wigs.

Background: Lat More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2012

Reenie rated it:

As far as popular science writing, or popular history of science writing (take your pick) goes, I've read better books. 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). High stakes (both in terms of the potential benefits to be had from being able to use longitude, and in terms of the reward More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 29, 2008

David rated it:

I'm not quite sure how to classify this book - history, biography, scientific treatise. But I found it intriguing and educational. It had never occurred to me how different latitude and longitude are. Since ancient times, seafarers had understood how to measure latitude (concentric circles parallel to the equator) based on the angle of the sun and the time of year. But longitude (circles which intersect at each pole - used to measure east/west distance) is much more of a challenge. Determining a More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 03, 2007

Emily rated it:

To quote an esteemed LC history professor on the technical difficulties of pre-modern navigational technology: "Nowadays, you'd refer to that as being lost. But they actually thought they could get somewhere." Shortly after people discovered that the world was round and wanted to sail around it, they realized that they had no way of telling how far they'd gone and how close they were to where they wanted to be, as opposed to how close they were to the Bermuda Triangle, for example, o More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2009

William rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 04, 2008

Elaine rated it:

A short little history of the various attempts to solve the longitude problem. I have encountered this same story briefly before in a book I read last year, The Mapmakers by by John Noble Wilford, but this book focuses more exclusively on John Harrison and his battle for getting his highly accurate chronometers accepted by the English Parliament as an acceptable method for determining longitude.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Stephanie rated it:

Again, a great book you can learn a lot from. Who has ever really thought about what effect the lack of a way to find longitude caused for sailors - first chapter you read about one ship that fought a storm for two months, thought they were 200 miles west of where they were, sailed north and then west, gave up after 4 days and sailed east only to realize a week later that they were within an hour of thier destination before they turned around. I love the connections this book makes- because they More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 05, 2011

Paleomichi rated it:

Quando sono andata a Greenwich mi sono innamorata della storia della longitudine, e al bookshop ho comprato il famoso libro "Longitude", di Dava Sobel. Ho iniziato a leggerlo pochissimo tempo dopo, ma non ci ho capito molto e l'ho lasciato perdere. Poi, ritrovandolo in italiano, l'ho ripreso in mano.
Il libro racconta la storia del calcolo della longitudine, che finisce con diventare la storia degli orologi moderni, e del loro inventore, Harrison. La storia è bellissima, ma il libro non More...

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Jan 16, 2012

Sylvia rated it:

The most interesting part of this book is its history lesson: until the mid-1700s, the most difficult scientific problem in centuries of seafaring was the inability to measure longitude. Without knowing longitude, sailors had no reliable way of knowing where they were, resulting in lives, ships, and fortunes routinely lost at sea. So great was the need for a solution that the English parliament put up a bounty of £ 20,000 (multi-million dollars in today’s currency) for anyone who could solve the More...

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Jul 30, 2011

Vince added it

This is a great book for the summer, as it is a short read and covers the historic effort to claim the £20,000 prize offered by the British Parliament for a simple and practical method of determining longitude on the sea. As Brittania expanded her maritime trade, privateering, and naval conflicts in the 18th century, Parliament established the Longitude Act of 1714, establishing a board to examine the problem and review submissions from innovative citizens. Too many ships were being lost due t More...

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Jul 28, 2011

Frank rated it:

This brief and popular history of the search for a practical method of finding a ship’s longitude focuses on the life and work of a self-taught clockmaker from Yorkshire named John Harrison (24 March 1698-24 March 1776). Even well past the great age of maritime discovery, there was no credible way for a mariner to know his longitude; latitude was easily computed through celestial observa- tion, but longitude meant time: as the earth spins through its twenty-four hour day, position relative to so More...

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May 16, 2011

Laala rated it:

“He wrestled the world’s whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.” — Dava Sobel, Longitude

This book came as part of a set of nonfiction I’d bought, and to be honest, I doubt I would have heard of it (at least at the point at which I read it) otherwise. It chronicles the longitude problem and the inspiring tale of John Harrison. It’s completely engrossing. It’s simple enough to explain — back in C17, sailors had tremendous difficulty with navigation. They cou More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 12, 2009

Zoe rated it:

As the subtitle suggests, this is the story of the man, John Harrison, who came up with a workable method for finding longitude while at sea. He did this by means of a clock, while many other people favoured an astronomical solution, and there's some interesting description of the conflict between the two groups, which was probably increased by the fact that there was a huge monetary prize associated with finding a solution. I enjoyed reading about the eighteenth-century scientific community.
More...

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Dec 01, 2009

Debbie rated it:

"Longitude" is an enjoyable, easy-to-read and understand overview of the events surrounding "the longitude problem," including the various solutions proposed, the political and scientific rivalry involved in the quest for the prize, and the scientific advances that occurred in pursuit of the solution.

The book doesn't really go into depth on how the clock was created. Apparently no one really knows how John Harrison solved each challenge in keeping perfect time whi More...

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Oct 03, 2009

Ken-ichi rated it:

Old review from 2005.

Since my fondest wish is to sail the high seas of the 19th century, I need to learn how to find myself without GPS. I also love this cover: a violent sea dashing ships to splinters, and, from on high, a man, in a wig, with a clock, come to deliver the poor dogs from ignorance. Interesting story, filled with many an odd character. Made me want an olde time pocket watch. I was actually constantly thinking of Hicksville while I was reading this book, and the Captai More...

5 comments like

May 30, 2009

Trilby rated it:

This is a fascinating account of the quest for a way to calculate one's relative east-west location on the globe and John Harrison, the genius clockmaker who figured it out. As with so many scientific breakthroughs, an effective method wasn't developed overnight. For over a century, scientists worked from different premises using different methods before one method became widely used. As always, politics played a large role into who got the credit and/or financial reward for the inventions. H More...

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Aug 26, 2008

Phil rated it:

John McCain says let's offer a $300M prize to the first person to develop an automobile battery that delivers comparable automotive power at 30% of current costs. Dumb idea? Well...hardly original or with a good track record. Read this account of John Harrison and the living nightmare he endured for decades in claiming the prize offered by parliament in the 18th century after he successfully developed the chronometer, a device that would allow ships at sea to determine longitude.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 27, 2010

Tyson rated it:

After reading the front cover of Longitude and reading a couple reviews of the book online, I was expecting the story to be centered on the protagonist, John Harrison. I was misled. Just to clear things up, I understand that it is not a fictional story, but Sobel does a fantastic job at taking history and facts and presenting her research to lectors in an engaging narrative. So, why was I misled? It seems that even Sobel believed, or maybe it was her publisher, that Harrison is the main characte More...

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Feb 03, 2012

Steve rated it:

I saw a few books for free on Amazon by Dava Sobel, and they were highly rated, so I grabbed them. One was Longitude, which caught my eye as an interesting problem to solve. I had assumed that sailors had used sextants for hundreds or even thousands of years to calculate their positions at sea. Knowing how to get their latitude and longitude from the stars. However that’s not the case. It wasn’t until the late 1700s that they had a reliable way to do this.

This book goes through the var More...

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Dec 07, 2009

Jennifer rated it:

Take a look around. Everything that surrounds us -- except nature -- was created, invented by humans. The computer, calculator, oven, microwave, fork, knife, spoon, table, chair, everything solves a problem and eases (and sometimes complicates) our lives. Even the way that we understand the world had to be discovered and named by us like the periodic table of elements, the theory of relativity, latitude and longitude.

Latitude and longitude. Two very important imaginary sets of lines More...

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Dec 04, 2007

Cheri rated it:

A terrific little book. I really enjoyed Dava Sobel's writing which is sparse, but evocative. I found myself rooting for the lowly clockmaker and horrified when he was robbed for so many years of his prize. Outside of the personal story, (which is engrossing) the information about the problem of longitude was fascinating. It really makes you think about all of the things that science and mathematics have given us, that we take for granted.

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 19, 2010

Matt rated it:

This one falls under that underrepresented category of books recommended to me by strangers in the locker room at the gym, which makes a certain kind of sense because it definitely sets out to scratch that weird boyish itch of needing to know how they do that. In this case, the question was how do we know how big the world is, and that sort of progressed to how longitude is measured, and then this book.

It's a good story, though there are reasons it hasn't been told before now-- for o More...

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Oct 25, 2009

Abe rated it:

A terrific biography of John Harrison, the eighteenth century horological genius who invented the chronometer (an accurate timepiece which allowed navigators to reliably fix their longitude anywhere in the world). Sailors had been determining their latitude (north-south position) by observing the heavens since ancient times, but longitude (east-west position) was always a different story (since the earth is in constant motion toward the east and there is no fixed reference point in the sky). Har More...

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Aug 22, 2010

KOMET rated it:

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 determine longitude, Parliament offered a monetary prize to anyone who could develop and perfect an instrument to accurately determine longitude.

Sobel, in her book, describes the eff More...

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Aug 11, 2011

Zo added it

Add John Harrison to the list of neglected geniuses who with no formal higher education and a blue-collar background, solved the most perplexing scientific/maritime/commerce problem of 200+ years. For a brief 175 pages, expect to be mesmerized by a topic that you probably never spent more than 30 minutes of your life thinking about- how do you accurately and reliably measure longitude and why is this so damn important? There is a thriller built into the story in terms of how jealousy, rigid thi More...

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Oct 30, 2010

Jay rated it:

Longitude: Now in a handy, 177-page book format!

This was quite an interesting read, and the style reminded me quite a bit of Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World's First Computer and The Speckled Monster in the way it was written. While it was all fact, Sobel wrote in a slightly fictiony type manner. She approached each historical figure like they were a character in a novel.

If you're looking for a historical read, but you're not quite into drab, non-fic More...

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Jan 19, 2012

Kerrie rated it:

In this day of GPS and crystal-clear satellite images on Google Maps, it's hard to imagine an era when people didn't know where they were or where they were going. I had no idea that even as late as the 17th century, there was no way to measure longitude (latitude was not a problem) and it makes the success of the preceding maritime explorers all the more amazing.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and unlike The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 23, 2011

Gary rated it:

This is a competent history of an important technological turning point in human history: the invention of accurate and reliable time keeping devices. What we now call a watch or a chronometer, a reliable indication of the precise time through mechanical means, is something that's taken for granted. In the 18th century, the idea of such a device was considered near the realm of fantasy. Clocks existed, but they were considered to be little more than amusing contraptions. But so what? Why was acc More...

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Jan 22, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

I remember seeing a special on the clocks of Harrison several years ago on what may have been the History Channel. I had always kept the bits and pieces of the story tucked away in my mind, waiting for something to bring them into the light again. While at a large book sale at on of the local libraries, I came upon this little gem. I was surprised to see that it was exactly on the subject of those bits of information I had tucked away.

A little while later I had read it, and enjoyed t More...

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