| Description |
216 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm |
| Contents |
1. Imaginary lines -- 2. The sea before time -- 3. Adrift in a clockwork universe -- 4. Time in a bottle -- 5. Powder of sympathy -- 6. The prize -- 7. Cogmaker's journal -- 8. The grasshopper goes to sea -- 9. Hands on heaven's clock -- 10. The diamond timekeeper -- 11. Trial by fire and water -- 12. A tale of two portraits -- 13. The second voyage of Captain James Cook -- 14. The mass production of genius -- 15. In the meridian courtyard |
| Summary |
The Illustrated Longitude recounts in words and images the epic quest to solve the thorniest scientific problem of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Throughout the great age of exploration, sailors attempted to navigate the oceans without any means of measuring their longitude: All too often, voyages ended in total disaster when both crew and cargo were captured or lost upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall. Thousands of lives and the fortunes of seafaring nations hung on a resolution |
|
To encourage a solution, governments established major prizes for anyone whose method or device proved successful. The largest reward of pound!20,000 - truly a king's ransom - was offered by the British Parliament in 1714. 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. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, imagined and built the unimaginable: a clock that solved the problem by keeping precise time at sea, called today the chronometer. His trials and tribulations to win the prize throughout a forty-year obsession are the culmination of this remarkable story |
| Notes |
Originally published: Longitude. New York : Walker, 1995 |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Harrison, John, 1693-1776.
|
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Longitude.
|
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Longitude -- Measurement -- History.
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Chronometers -- History.
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Clock and watch makers -- Great Britain -- Biography.
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| Genre/Form |
Biographies.
|
| Author |
Andrewes, William J. H., 1950-
|
|
Sobel, Dava.
|
| LC no. |
98019858 |
| ISBN |
0802713440 |
|
