Reads like a thriler ( )

I like Dava Sobel's topics, but never her writing.  ( )

A really superior book. It explains the problems which mariners had in establishing their longitude at sea, and how the problem was solved by John Harrison, a carpenter turned clockmaker, whom developed the first marine chronometer accurate enough at sea to allow navigators to establish their longitude accurately. Mariner's could finally safely plot their course at sea by using both longitude and latitude to determine their true position in the vast ocean. Dava Sobel, also the author of The Planets, wonderfully plots a course through Longitude that discloses not only the science of navigation, but also delves into the intrique involved in Mr. Harrison trying to claim his prize for solving the longitude problem from the Longitude Committee. She explains the ambitions of all the participants and why it became difficult for John Harrison to claim his prize. This is a story of geography, science, astronomy, navigation, clock making and intrigue that is skillfully told by an artist in her craft of writing. Definitely BUY this book. ( )

Despite the fact that it took me forever to finish this book (not because it is long or boring, just lots of other things got in the way...other books...), I really enjoyed it! I found the developments discussed in relation to solving the "finding longitude at sea" problem very fascinating. It wasn't overly technical, nor overly simplified. Good sciency read. It had some rather surprisingly humorous elements as well. ( )

Read in a single evening, a Christmas gift from Joanne Shea. Sobel wrote a journalistic account of the quest for the Longitude prize, and the tricks that the Royal Astronomers played on William Harrison, the inventor of the first chronometer that did not vary with wave motion at sea. The astronomers would have prefered a method based on the position of the moon among the fixed stars, and resorted to every delaying tactic to avoid paying the prize to a mere technician. ( )

This has been on my "to read" list forever. Finally, I went to a talk given by Dava Sobel and knew I had to read it; her speech was interesting and in layman's terms. The book is the same; interesting without being overly technical. It is a fascinating story of 18th century discovery and seafaring, and the competition among clockmakers and astronomers to discover the very important key to determining longitude at sea. A grand prize was at stake and there was a bit of old-fashioned skullduggery that kept the prize from being awarded to a deserving inventor until late in his life. Now on to reading Ms. Sobel's book on Galileo's Daughter! ( )

An interesting review of John Harrison's work to create the first martine timepiece and to solve the Longtitude problem. It was a interesting story, well told, but lacked detail. ( )

This is an exceptionally well-told scientific tale, but the best part isn't even in the book.
It lies in the use of the story as a metaphor for leadership. Perhaps Stephen Covey's term "Principle - centered Leadership" says it best.
The visionary leader sees the progress and success of his enterprise (the longitude) in terms of an objective standard (the clock), rather than checking it against some reaction in the immediate vicinity, e.g. the approval or disapproval of the masses (like latitude, with its measurably longer or shorter days).

A less familiar face of the Enlightenment: the story of John Harrison (1693-1776), one of the great clockmakers of all time, revealing how precise timekeeping became essential for British naval power. Admirably vivid & compact. ( )

http://www.shelfari.com/athomescience... ( )

What a great little book!: Just to prove that the most wonderful stories can be produced from true life, this science book for the layman tells the irresistable tale of John Harrison, winner of the English Parliament's prize for the determination of longitude in 1770.This is a tiny book in the paperback version, and makes for a rapid but extremely satisfying read. Political intrigue, fascinating science and excellent incidental anecdotes abound. (My favourite occurs right at the beginning - the tale of a haughty admiral who has an uppity sailor hanged for daring to question his navigation, and who receives his comeuppance in the most deliciously ironic way.... and it's all true!)Most of all, it brings into focus the concept of a "life's work" - John Harrison's dogged faithfulness to producing the world's most accurate chronograph in a practical, portable package. The sheer thought of spending 19 years perfecting just one variation of it is inconceivable; that he spent over 40 years refining his concept to the eventual prizewinning piece just boggles the mind.This is a delightful read.

An interesting little book that has been sitting unread in my library for far too long. Anyone interested in either the history of science or in maritime history should try Sobel's description of how Harrison came to build the first really accurate chronometer. There was adventure, feuding between the clockmakers and the astronomers, and a great deal of legal wrangling. There was even a bit of espionage. Not only do I recommend this slim volume but I will probably give her other book on my shelves a try.

Dava Sobel is one of the greatest science writers of our time. She can turn the seemingly pedantic quest of a watchmaker in England to solve the Longitude problem into a rich tapestry of intellect and intrigue. John Harrison, with his series of four nautical clocks, managed to eschew hundreds of years of astronomical research to create a simple and elegant solution to a problem that caused countless deaths throughout history. This book is definitely worth a read. ( )

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.

I would have enjoyed reading a bit more about the actual science, too. This is a pretty light and quick read--actually a bit too light for my liking. Sobel mentions various improvements that increased the accuracy of clocks, but I felt like most of the descriptions of the inner workings of clocks were a bit too vague to really give me an understanding of what goes on in there. For example, we learn that "the grasshopper escapement--the part that counted the heartbeats of the clock's pacemaker--took its name from the motion of its crisscrossed components. These kicked like the hind legs of a leaping insect, quietly and without the friction that had bedeviled existing escapement designs." This is all that's said about it, so it wasn't at all clear to me how exactly an escapement worked, and I would have liked to know.

Still, this was a fairly informative book, and probably worth reading, even if it's not anything outstanding. A lot of people will probably be grateful for the fact that Sobel doesn't go into more scientific detail. ( )

I won't claim to be able to explain or review this book. I think I understood about 1/2 of it, but it was short, and well written. It's the story of the development of the chronometer and the discovery and standardization of measuring longitude for sailors at sea. There is political intrigue, some history, and lots of technical science. If you're a sailor, and do any celestial navigation, you'll probably love it.

I wish there had been a few diagrams, and illustrations....I think it would have helped a lot. ( )

A history of the solution to finding the longitude of ships at sea (and also cartographers on land) to a degree of accuracy. Explains how easy it was for sailors to figure out their latitude but how poor their methods for calculating longitude were and what the costs were in terms of ships, treasure, and men lost. An interesting book that is a very quick read. ( )

I enjoyed this book. If you are into history, then the history of marine chronography is for you. Dava Sobel gives us a good look and the physical, and, probably more difficult issue, the political problems encountered in finding a timepiece that would fix the longitude for sea captains.

A good read. Recommended. ( )

Sailors have been able to calculate latitude almost since men first set out onto the ocean. Calculating longitude, on the other hand, is a technology that has only been perfected in the relatively recent past. Many of the famous explorers whose names students now commit to memory set out with no reliable method of telling how far east or west they were, resulting in many deaths and extensive hardships for the crews involved.

Dava Sobel's book details the story of the Longitude Prize enacted by the British Parliament, the bizarre and impractical solutions offered to win the prize, and the lifelong efforts of John Harrison, a man who finally fulfilled the conditions necessary to win the Longitude prize, but due to the prejudices and conflicts of interest of the commissioners charged with awarding the prize, was never actually awarded the bounty, despite having the backing of King George himself.

The method for determining longitude is fairly straightforward. One must calculate the local time where one is, and compare it to the time at some known position, which is now always assumed to be Greenwich in the United Kingdom. The difference in the local time and the Greenwich time can be expressed in hours, minutes, and second, and then plotted on a globe, showing the longitude of the ship in question. The prime difficulty facing the aspirants for the Longitude Prize was how to determine Greenwich time when one was presumably hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Astronomers, who favored methods using stellar and lunar observations, eventually settled upon a method that involved tracking the path of the moon across the sky, comparing its location to the locations of designated guide stars, and measuring the distance between the Earth and the moon. This method was complicated and difficult, and required massive numbers of celestial observations to be made before the required charts could be made to begin with. This method was also somewhat unreliable - on a cloudy night, one could not locate the stars needed, many days out of the month the moon is not visible (as it is located on the opposite side of the Earth), and so on.

John Harrison, on the other hand, sought to build a very accurate clock. Once such a clock was set to, for example, London time, one could simply refer to the clock at noon local time, and determine by seeing how far away from noon the clock was how many minutes and seconds of arc one was from London. However, the clock would have to remain accurate over long periods of time, in humid conditions, and across a wide span of temperatures. When the Longitude Act was passed, clocks were not even accurate to within several minutes per day, and even an error of a couple seconds per day would cause the navigator to miscalculate a ships position by dozens or even hundreds of miles.

The book describes Harrison's attempts to build such a clock, eventually settling upon an oversized watch. The book also describes the hostility many of the astronomers on the longitude board evaluating his submission had towards him. While Harrison was a tradesman, and a self-educated mechanic to boot (earning the derision of many of the highly educated aristocratic astronomers on the board), he was their competitor for the extremely lucrative board. Under the guidance of successive Royal Astronomers, the board imposed more and more difficult obstacles to Harrison's watch, until in frustration he appealed directly to King George. Eventually, with the King's assistance, Harrison was awarded a prize by a special act of parliament. The obstinate longitude board never awarded the full Longitude Prize to anyone.

Sobel has created a compelling story out of what could have been a rather boring event in history. In a roundabout way, Harrison's story explains to a certain extent why pirates and privateers were common before the 1800s, and vanished almost completely thereafter. One thing made clear (to me at least) is that many writers of historical fiction, or even fantasy, make sea travel in the pre-Longitude era too reliable, and too easy. It is probably the measure of the success of a technological advance that it becomes so prevalent and accepted that the difficulties faced in the days before are forgotten by the general public. On that score, Harrison's watch is one of the most significant technological developments in history.

One nitpick I have is with the subtitle of the book. It seems to me that the longitude problem was not a scientific problem, but rather an engineering one. That failing aside, this is an excellent book. ( )

Presented by Norman S Hewitt in 1997
Harrisons' chronometer

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. ( )

Story of lone genius John Harrison, who devised a way to measure longitude. Meticulous like its subject. ( )

Very interesting story - I know something of the era from other sources, but there's a lot of criss-crosses I hadn't noticed. Harrison's travails (both from Maskelyne and from his own perfectionism) are...interesting - Sobel presents the information well but I never felt drawn in - it never became a story to me. Which is not bad, it is more of an information book than a story one. I was reading it in bits while traveling, and I'd like to re-read it later and catch some more details. I also got The Longitude Prize at almost the same time, and am looking forward to reading that - same subject, but (presumably) a slightly different angle on on it, which should be illuminating. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1055454.ht...

Sobel's book is a simple biography of John Harrison and his efforts to build a practical chronometer for the purpose of calculating longitude. We get a great deal about the bureaucratic politics which Harrison had to deal with, at one point invoking King George III directly on his own behalf. It is an interesting enough tale, told well; Sobel succeeds in making the 18th century personalities appear just like us.

Having said that, I was not completely satisfied. Sobel's heroic portrait of Harrison makes little reference to religion and almost none to the wider impact of the longitude question on politics and vice versa; it is 'Whiggish' in that the "solution of the greatest scientific problem of his time" is presented as both desirable and ultimately inevitable. It is entertaining enough but not especially profound. ( )

Quick but very interesting read

Reviewed Sept 2004

Always interesting to read the real stories behind things we take for granted. I never really gave any thought to longitude or latitude and frankly had to read the first chapter several times to understand it. After finishing I was frustrated that several questions were not answered. How were they able to measure the accuracy of a clock to within seconds when you could not be sure of the accuracy of either timepiece? And if a ship carrying a "tested" watch were to port at night would they have to wait till noon next day for a accurate reading by the sun? I don't have a clear enough background to understand for this subject.

15-2004 ( )