...
Show More
intriguing history. i learned something in every chapter.
Ease Reading-Find Your Next Favorite Book
The Longitude Prize
...
Show More
A Robert F. Sibert Honor Book
By the start of the eighteenth century, many thousands of sailors had perished at sea because their captains had no way of knowing longitude, their east-west location. Latitude, the north-south position, was easy enough, but once out of sight of land not even the most experienced navigator had a sure method of fixing longitude. So the British Parliament offered a substantial monetary prize to whoever could invent a device to determine exact longitude at sea. Many of the world's greatest minds tried -- and failed -- to come up with a solution. Instead, it was a country clockmaker named John Harrison who would invent a clock that could survive wild seas and be used to calculate longitude accurately. But in an aristocratic society, the road to acceptance was not a smooth one, and even when Harrison produced not one but five elegant, seaworthy timekeepers, each an improvement on the one that preceded it, claiming the prize was another battle. Set in an exciting historical framework -- telling of shipwrecks and politics -- this is the story of one man's creative vision, his persistence against great odds, and his lifelong fight for recognition of a brilliant invention.
By the start of the eighteenth century, many thousands of sailors had perished at sea because their captains had no way of knowing longitude, their east-west location. Latitude, the north-south position, was easy enough, but once out of sight of land not even the most experienced navigator had a sure method of fixing longitude. So the British Parliament offered a substantial monetary prize to whoever could invent a device to determine exact longitude at sea. Many of the world's greatest minds tried -- and failed -- to come up with a solution. Instead, it was a country clockmaker named John Harrison who would invent a clock that could survive wild seas and be used to calculate longitude accurately. But in an aristocratic society, the road to acceptance was not a smooth one, and even when Harrison produced not one but five elegant, seaworthy timekeepers, each an improvement on the one that preceded it, claiming the prize was another battle. Set in an exciting historical framework -- telling of shipwrecks and politics -- this is the story of one man's creative vision, his persistence against great odds, and his lifelong fight for recognition of a brilliant invention.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published October 13,2000
This edition
- Format
-
208 pages, Hardcover
- Published
-
October 13, 2000 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
- ISBN
-
9780374346362
- ASIN
-
0374346364
- Language
-
English
About the author
...
Show More
Joan Dash is a prizewinning author of biographies for young adults. Her early works, including A Life of One's Own: Three Gifted Women and the Men They Married, Summoned to Jerusalem: The Life of Henrietta Szold, and The Triumph of Discovery: Women Scientists Who Won the Nobel Prize, participate in the growing movement to bring to light the achievements of notable women in history. In The Triumph of Discovery, for example, Dash puts the spotlight on four women who have won the Nobel Prize since 1960; at the time of the book's creation, only ten Nobels had ever been awarded to women, including two to Marie Curie. Dash was praised for clearly elucidating the nature of these scientists' contributions, as well as placing their personal and professional life experiences in the context of their times. Perhaps most importantly, "the author communicates the excitement and satisfaction of a life in science," remarked Zena Sutherland in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books.
Readers also enjoyed
Community Reviews
Rating(4.3 / 5.0, 29 votes)
5 stars
16(55%)
4 stars
5(17%)
3 stars
8(28%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
29 reviews All reviews
...
Show More
Liked this one a bit better than Dava Sobel's version but still didn't go into enough detail on the science behind precision clock making.
...
Show More
this book probs deserved 2 stars, but i honestly did not like it that much to put two stars
...
Show More
Yes, it is a kid's book, but I learned a lot!
...
Show More
fabulous book about a problem I'd never even pondered before. Fun book written for children.
...
Show More
This is a clearly written book on the subject of the search to be able to find longitude (where you are side to side in the world, east or west of Greenwich Meridian) when at sea. The British offered a huge prize as incentive for people trying to solve the problem. Then they didn't want to pay it out to someone who qualified, John Harrison. Stipulated, he was the wrong class, was not the most pleasant person to deal with by far, etc, but he DID solve the problem. The Board elected to hand out the prize treated him disgracefully. Not all of it was Harrison's or his son's personality. One of their own class had another method he was pushing. Since he was the one who was to judge the Harrison invention, they seemed to have a point in saying he was biased against them. Eventually after a horrendous amount of time and idiotic conditions, they finally gave in. The younger Harrison managed to befriend George III and that pressure in Parliament did help to pressure the Board.
I am only giving this 3 stars because the writing didn't grip me with interest, even though it is a subject I'm interested in. The writing was clear, which can be hard to do on this subject. It just wasn't fascinating writing. More illustrations, in color, would have been helpful in keeping my interest as well. This would be a hard book to convince a kid to check out in the library unless the kid is already fascinated by the subject.
I am only giving this 3 stars because the writing didn't grip me with interest, even though it is a subject I'm interested in. The writing was clear, which can be hard to do on this subject. It just wasn't fascinating writing. More illustrations, in color, would have been helpful in keeping my interest as well. This would be a hard book to convince a kid to check out in the library unless the kid is already fascinated by the subject.
...
Show More
this is a young adult novel, so a quick read. i'm a fan of reading about early explorers and so this book about early navigation caught my eye. it was definitely interesting learning about the longitude prize as i hadn't heard of it or the problem before. however, the writing style was fairly annoying at times and i don't know if it was because the audience was young adult or not. since it's a true story and based on historical records, the author kept pointing out "well, we can't exactly know X" or "we don't really know what happened, but Y outcome occurred". and the truth is is that she had quite a lot of information and i felt it detracted from the story telling to keep pointing that out. there was something else about the writing style that i can't put my finger on either. overall, interesting subject though and i do like that she has written some other books on female scientists, which may be good for ada in a few years!
...
Show More
I really enjoyed this book. I think most of my seagoing exposure has been Napoleonic War time because I knew nothing about the discovery of Longitude or the piles of sailors dying of scurvy; both of which preceded that war. The writing and the pictures were fun. The Author did a good job explaining a difficult subject. As it overlapped historically with the book on scurvy I read previously, it was fun to recognize character of the time period, such as Lord Anson and Captain James Cook. It is a short read for a history book (less than 200 pages) and is written for a younger audience. Highly recommended.
Leave a Review