Longitude is a remarkable achievement. The recipe for sales success in international book sales rarely contains such unpromising ingredients as these – an obsessive carpenter’s son from Yorkshire, an intractable navigational problem and a lot of clocks. Yet Longitude succeeds in weaving a narrative full of clashing of ideas, intriguing personalities, bizarre anecdotes and at its heart a tale of the little guy challenging the Establishment.

The story is one that has long been familiar to both naval historians and lovers of clocks, two introspective groups who had failed to bring it to a wider public. Enter Dava Sorbel , with a journalist’s nose for a good story, and the flare to tell it well. This is a page turner that makes what could be a mire of mechanical and mathematical detail simple, easy to follow and enjoy by anyone, whether they are confirmed landlubbers or have a previous interest in the sea.

From a purest point of view the book does have its faults. Sorbel’s understandable desire to tease a cracking yarn from the history leads her to be partial in choosing her facts. She is unfairly hard on the Halley/Maskylene method of calculating longitude, for example, which worked too, and had the big advantage of only requiring equipment that already exist onboard ships (a good compass, a sextant and a trained navigator). It is small wonder that an unproven machine, full of cogs and springs was viewed with suspicion.

It is also only with hindsight that it is clear the marine chronometers was the right solution. The copy of H4 that Cook used on his second voyage cost £450 and took a skilled watch maker several years to make. To give an indication of cost, building a frigate at the time cost about £14K. Given each ship would need several chronometers (to check against each other), at the time of Harrison’s death, it was still not a practical solution for most vessels. It was those that came after Harrison, especially Thomas Earnshaw, who perfected and then mass produced reliable chronometers.

But that is the grumpy naval historian part of me speaking. The author of popular naval fiction part can only applaud a wonderful book.

The first half of Longitude is extremely exciting and informative. I even got teary in some places as Sobel concisely told us about doughty figures of the past and how ingenuity and persistence surmounted obstacles natural and political to carry forward the human cultural project. The subject itself is certainly worthy of this sort of treatment, even though the success of this sort of book, not to mention the way it has been publicized and repackaged, before long makes all the "forgotten moment", "unsung hero" phrases (not that I am accusing this edition of using these words - I'm too lazy a reviewer today to actually check the wording!) rather overblown and out of date. Perhaps I should be thanking Sobel for educating us all instead of grumbling. Anyhow, that's a minor quibble.

The second half of Longitude is less exciting, less informative, less well organized (several passages are suddenly out of chronological sequence for no apparent reason) and rather repetitive, which is especially galling in such a slim volume. The Lone Genius himself also fades from the pages so anticlimactically that I had to go back and find out what had happened to him...

Perhaps having been excessively positive about some other books I am now over-compensating. Perhaps this work simply is not quite as good as everyone thinks, despite the laudable effort. Having read it I do want to revisit Greenwich, though.

A popular account rather than super in-depth scientific writing, but it's so bingeable and readable (along the lines of Mary Roach’s nonfiction writing). I didn’t know anything whatsoever about this topic beforehand -- like, I knew that sextants are navigation tools used on ships but what are they?? -- and yet I wound up totally riveted to this story of obsessive perfectionist John Harrison in the 1700s and his attempts to invent a chronometer (a marine timekeeping device), and his battles with astronomers royal (!), including the ~villainous~ Nevil Maskelyne. Some of the conflict is likely exaggerated a bit to make the tale more dramatic, more cinematic, but I was still utterly drawn in, particularly in how this strange chapter in history touches on human ingenuity, invention, seafaring, the stars, scientific pursuits, and competition between countries.

It made me interested all over again in watchmaking, too, and I still want to take a beginner's watchmaking class from the Horological Society of New York -- I was planning on doing it before, yanno, pandemic.

My main complaint is that this book could have been a bit longer; I'd have gladly read more on this subject, particularly since Sobel's writing was so enjoyable. Some photographs and diagrams would have helped, too, particularly when she was closely describing a painted portrait of Harrison, or the chronometers themselves (the most important thing!!). Especially because the chronometers are SO COOL. See this review or this Atlas Obscura page for some photos.

Cool stuff, and fun book club discussion too. I just love the sea, y'all. Devoured this whole book in about two sittings.

An interesting read about the competition between astronomers and horologist to discover an accurate means of helping sailors at sea find a precise reference to their longitudinal location without which many ships were lost at sea or crashed into rocky coastlines miles off course. A somewhat technical read with numerous astronomical references so brushing up on lunar patterns and astronomical terminologies may help in understanding some of the passages. It’s a short book, but it took a bit to look up references and theories of famous mathematicians, astronomers, and horologist of the 16th and earlier centuries.

Some of this was interesting and some of it not so much. It was ok. 3 stars even

3.5 stars

Dava Sobel has written a very accessible account of a genius who prevailed against the odds. It's concise, absorbing and packed full of fascinating details and interesting characters. A perfect history book for the general reader, and as enjoyable as any novel.

The subtitle says it all, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. That lone genius was John Harrison (1693-1776) a self taught clock maker. Over 40 years, he invented and produced four increasingly precise and compact chronometers capable of accurately measuring time over a long, rough sea voyage. By comparing the chronometer's time to local sun time, a navigator could precisely measure longitude. Prior to his invention there was no accurate way of measuring longitude and many lives were lost due to catastrophic miscalculations.

In 1714 the British Parliament offered a reward to whoever could solve the longitude problem with a prize of £20,000 for the winner. At that time astronomy was seen as the best route to a solution despite being time consuming and difficult.

You might think that Harrison's incredible devices would be unanimously welcomed. Alas, no. He was forever battling vested interests until eventually, and after decades, King George III intervened.

John Harrison's marine timekeepers are on display at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London and are well worth seeing...

https://www.rmg.co.uk/royal-observato...

4/5

Interesting story. Reasonably written. Possibly a model for a certain kind of non-fiction book, the type with very long sub-titles that are meant to cast light on a very short main title, the whole presumably being the original elevator pitch that the author made to the publisher. This one is all about the late 18th century watch maker, John Harrison, who builds a series of highly accurate watches in an attempt to win a prize for a device to be able to establish longitude at sea. Nice, does what it says on the tin type book. In the tradition of praising people whose work made it possible to do things a little better - in this case navigate across seas using a map.

The title of the book sounds boring but it's really a super interesting and quick read, featuring shipwrecks and pirates, neck and neck competition, greed, corruption and progress. I love books about innovations that revolutionized life in their time but that we today take for granted. This book increased my sense of awe for the Lords glory in His creation especially the parts about astronomy (even though some of it went over my head).

Really lovely and very interesting reading. Everybody knows about longitude but I guess not so many know the struggles and fights behind the tries to 'conquer' it, including myself.

John Harrison was a genius of his times; beside the fact that he produced the first accurate marine watches for calculating longitude, his pieces are works of art:

H1



(http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/behind-...)

H3



(http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/behind-...)

And the masterpiece, H4, completed in 1759:



(http://prints.rmg.co.uk/art/520153/ma...)

The book is written on everyone's understanding, full of new historical facts (for me). It was a pleasure and it takes just a few hours to get it done; totally worthy of your time.

A fascinating story of how a great puzzle of the time was solved. How the inventor went about it is intriguing. He did what great people do: he did what they should couldn't be done. By inventing a clock that would work at sea precisely, he allowed sailors to navigate accurately outside of sight of land for the first time in history!

The story of this guys life and work is not that interesting but what IS extremely interesting is how important the hunt for a solution to measuring longitude was and now we don’t ever think about it! It was like if the space race went on for like 200 years. Everybody in Europe was obsessed with measuring longitude and today we’re like whatever we have google maps but back in the day they just like….guessed? And kept crashing into stuff because they were always wrong? Amazing.

But Dava. Why did you have to lick Captain Cook’s boots like that. Literally she included a poem that says the last face he saw when he died was that of a savage like ???? And then she said “he tried to be rly nice to the Hawaiians but they still murdered him” STOP RIGHT THERE. Longitude is cool but also was used for evil so maybe we could hear a bit about that.