Longitude-One of The Greatest Scientific Problems

Longitude by Dava Sobel delves into all aspects of solving the longitude problem. It gives you a
great understanding of how difficult the problem was and how important it was to solve. The book talks about how people would use solving the longitude problem as a saying that was unachievable.

The longitude problem was the fact that sailors could not figure out the east-west position on the earths surface which would make sailing incredibly easier.

The cover of Longitude

For solving the longitude problem parliament was offering a lot of money to whoever solved the problem so as you would expect many people wanted to solve the problem but there was perhaps no man as devoted to solving the problem as John Harrison. Harrison spent much of his life working to solve the problem. He was a perfectionist which in this case was a very good thing. He created 4 devices to solve the longitude problem, each device better then the next. The devices were called H-1, H-2, H-3, and H-4. On just H-3 alone he spent 18 years.

By reading Longitude I not only feel that I have a deeper understanding of the problem but also a much deeper understanding of Harrison himself. The book has a great balance between factual information about how the devices worked and character and time period descriptions.

While reading Longitude I was almost always interested. It was written in a way that would keep you interested. There were some parts that I did not understand because the ideas behind them were very complicated but for the most part Dava Sobel created a book that would keep you wanting to to know more even in the most factual bits. I very much enjoyed reading Longitude.

Discovering a solution to something as important as the longitude problem is great thing to know about. It was a huge discovery in science and made traveling by ocean much easier. John Harrison is one of the greatest scientists of all time. He was entirely devoted to his work and not for money but for the sake of science.

A video about John Harrison

http://www.thegreenwichmeridian.org/tgm/articles.php?article=9

H4