By Dava Sobel
Somebody alive within the eighteenth century might have recognized that “the longitude challenge” used to be the thorniest clinical issue of the day—and have been for hundreds of years. missing the facility to degree their longitude, sailors during the nice a long time of exploration have been actually misplaced at sea once they overlooked land. millions of lives, and the expanding fortunes of countries, held on a resolution.The medical institution of Europe—from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton—had mapped the heavens in either hemispheres in its definite pursuit of a celestial resolution. In stark distinction, one guy, John Harrison, dared to visualize a mechanical solution—a clock that may preserve unique time at sea, whatever no clock had ever been in a position to do on land. Longitude is the dramatic human tale of an epic medical quest, and of Harrison's forty-year obsession with development his excellent timekeeper, recognized this day because the chronometer. filled with heroism and chicanery, it's also a desirable short heritage of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking, and opens a brand new window on our global.
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Extra resources for Longitude: the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time, Volumes 0-2
Sample text
And it was in the arena of mapmaking that the ability to determine longitude won its first great victory. Earlier maps had underestimated the distances to other continents and exaggerated the outlines of individual nations. Now global dimensions could be set, with authority, by the celestial spheres. Indeed, King Louis XIV of France, confronted with a revised map of his domain based on accurate longitude measurements, reportedly complained that he was losing more territory to his astronomers than to his enemies.
The sky turns day to night with a sunset, measures the passing months by the phases of the moon, and marks each season’s change with a solstice or an equinox. The rotating, revolving Earth is a cog in a clockwork universe, and people have told time by its motion since time began. When mariners looked to the heavens for help with navigation, they found a combination compass and clock. The constellations, especially the Little Dipper with the North Star in its handle, showed them where they were going by night—provided, of course, the skies were clear.
The Equator marked the zero-degree parallel of latitude for Ptolemy. He did not choose it arbitrarily but took it on higher authority from his predecessors, who had derived it from nature while observing the motions of the heavenly bodies. The sun, moon, and planets pass almost directly overhead at the Equator. Likewise the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, two other famous parallels, assume their positions at the sun’s command. They mark the northern and southern boundaries of the sun’s apparent motion over the course of the year.
