This little book is a gem. Less than 200 pages but a fascinating story. It is almost unfathomable in this age when it seems that practically everyone has a GPS device in their car, an iPhone, and a personal computer that there was a time when if you set sail you depended on luck or the grace of God to arrive at your destination once you were out of sight of land. All the explorers of the age, Babloa; Magellan; Drake, "all got where they were going willy-nilly".

In the 18th century "the wealth of nations floated upon the oceans". No ship had a reliable means of establishing her precise location. As a result an unknown number of ships and sailors were lost. It became a great quest to discover a solution to the longitude problem. It would be on par to trying to discover the cure for cancer today. Nations offered huge purses for a solution. Notable among these was the British Parliament's Longitude Act of 1714 naming a prize of several million dollars in today's currency.

Such prizes brought out the crackpots but there were basically two different legitimate schools of thought towards a solution. On the one side were the astronomers. On the other side were the horologists. The clockmakers. Among the later was John Harrison. Harrison had no formal education or apprenticeship. There is a story that as a child he came down with smallpox and was given a watch to amuse himself while recovering. There is some dispute on this as at that time a watch was both rare and expensive. None the less Harrison became a self taught clockmaker. He was a craftsman and an innovator.

Harrison's efforts in solving the longitude problem gave us the chronometer. He built four different clocks in his quest to solve the longitude problem all the while some of the worlds leading astronomers, including Edmund Halley, were mapping the stars in their effort to solve the problem. I am not sure how many people know about this chapter in our history. It is a story of navigation, astronomy, and clockmaking.

I'm not quite sure how to classify this book - history, biography, scientific treatise. But I found it intriguing and educational. It had never occurred to me how different latitude and longitude are. Since ancient times, seafarers had understood how to measure latitude (concentric circles parallel to the equator) based on the angle of the sun and the time of year. But longitude (circles which intersect at each pole - used to measure east/west distance) is much more of a challenge. Determining a position requires much more sophisticated astronomical measurement and calculation. Or, it requires very accurate measurement of time.

In 1707, the British Parliament offered a prize equal to several million of today's dollars for an accurate and useful way to determine longitude. A tremendous race began with scientists and inventors determined to claim fame and fortune. Most focused on refining the astronomic method, but some believed the problem would only be solved by developing an extremely accurate timekeeping device. Since clockmaking was in its infancy, this challenge resulted in great innovation, and that's the core of this book's fascinating story. The hero is John Harrison, an English clockmaker, who devoted his life to the quest and eventually won the bulk of the prize.

He was one of just two survivors who washed ashore, after their fleet hit the rocks of Scilly and more than two thousand men went to their watery graves in just minutes. He was barely conscious but alive. He was Sir Clowdisley, the admiral of the tragic fleet, and he had mistakenly steered his ships to disaster. One of his sailors tried to call attention to the upcoming catastrophe...but was immediately hanged. Inferior seamen were not allowed to keep their own calculations of maritime reckoning, not in 1707. Karma had the last laugh, as the Admiral went to his own reckoning. A beachcomber found the bedraggled officer...and immediately murdered him for the ring on his finger.

So begins this book's quest to tell the story of the desperate need to solve the problem of finding longitude while at sea. One group of scientists believed the moon and the stars held the secret, while another group focused on clocks. John Harrison was the nondescript genius who found the answer, but then had to spend the rest of his years fighting the establishment to get the recognition and the reward.

This book ended much too quickly. It's a bit of a whirlwind through the entire period, and I really wished for more background on each character. But, a good ride is a good ride. Amazingly, Harrison's first three clocks continue to tick centuries later, which is quite an achievement. Were he alive today, he would surely be part of the Google workplace.

Book Season = Winter (when the Atlantic is most angry)

Longitude is by definition a smaller story than Sobel's equally enjoyable Planets, but contains the same in-depth research, beautiful writing, fascinating historical incidents, memorable (and generally obscure) characters, and incidental humor that made Planets such a pleasure.

While focused on the amazing career of John Harrison, Sobel also introduces a solid cast of supporting characters, all of whom are worthy of having their own stories told; and while I thoroughly enjoyed the tale of Sir Cloudesley Shovell for the way his career so quickly and totally crashed and burned - well, crashed and drowned would be more like it - the true second star of this book was Commander Rupert Gould, who suddenly pops up in the last chapter a full century after Harrison's death to almost single-handedly rescue Harrison and his devices from total obscurity.

My sole complaint is that the book would have really benefited from illustrations - but excellent pictures of all of Harrison's chronometers can be found on Google images, as well as a dorky-cool photo of Galileo's bizarre celatone.

UPDATE, 01/2019: A-ha! So it turns out that there is indeed a sister version of Longitude that does have pictures: The Illustrated Longitude (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...) which, in her introduction, Sobel explains was the result of so many readers commenting (i.e., complaining) about the lack of maps, photos, drawings and any other illustrations which would have earned her original book that elusive 5th star.

And not ONLY that, but turns out there's also a 2000 BBC/A&E miniseries version starring Jeremy Irons and Micheal Gambon, (aka Batman's Alfred and Prof. Dumbledore, although apparently both known for a few other roles as well)! How did I not know that??

ANYWAY...have just found both these items in our local library (the book "Donated By a Patron"); and so while I'm not going to reread the whole book, I'll definitely spend a couple of evenings watching the movie and looking at pictures and just generally revisiting this fascinating and oh-so-well-told story. So thanks, Dava Sobel, William Andrewes (provider of illustrations and captions) , BBC, A&E - and of course you too, generous Loudoun County Library Patron!

Longitude tells the incredible story of John Harrison, an 18th century clock maker who entered into a contest to create the first clock (chronometer) capable of withstanding the rigors of a sea voyage so that mariners could determine their correct longitude at sea. When the organizers of the contest balked at awarding Harrison the prize money, he took his fight to court. A spellbinding tale that reads more like a suspense thriller. Great for lovers of science, history, sea adventures, and underdogs who find the courage to take on the system.

Longitude offers a general overview of the development of scientific methods for the determination of longitude, but the primary narrative emphasis focuses on the biography of John Harrison, the brilliant English innovator who pioneered the art and science of marine chronometry.

Among other positive attributes, the text contains entertaining anecdotes involving notable personalities, as well as brief outlines of several early schemes proposed as solutions to the question of finding one's longitude. Stories of maritime misadventure highlight the fatal consequences related to the historical lack of adequate navigational information.

Because Dava Sobel writes with popular appeal in mind, this book does not describe the particular mathematics related to the calculation of longitude, except in basic terms. Longitude instead concentrates on extolling the exceptional genius of Harrison and his mechanical wonders, and on the tribulations forced upon Harrison by his rivals. Nonetheless, the inclusion of photographs or schematics would have been useful to the reader in understanding Sobel's descriptions of various devices and concepts; unfortunately, such visual aids are lacking here, other than a few small inset images on the book's dust jacket.

Aside from providing a good sketch of the life and work of John Harrison, this book serves as an accessible summary of the early history of the titular aspect of global positioning.

Longitude is a quick, enjoyable read, although readers are cautioned against expecting a thoroughly technical discussion of the subject.

Concise synopses of the same material presented in this book can be heard in these podcast episodes:
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2017/0...
https://www.missedinhistory.com/podca...

Longitude is a sheer delight of a popular history of technology. Up until the 18th century, half of navigation was done by chance. Finding latitude is easy, simply take the angle between the horizon of the sun at noon or Polaris at night, adjust for the date, and you know where you are relative to the equator. But longitude is a different matter. Ships wandered in the great oceans, crews riddled with scurvy, or crashed into rising cliffs. The British government offered a prize of 20,000 Pounds, equivalent to millions of dollars today, for a solution to the longitude problem. Meanwhile, finding longitude was ridiculed as an impossible quest, on par with perpetual motion and squaring the circle.

Serious approaches to longitude centered on time. If you knew what time was at some fixed point, a home port, and could compare it to local time, then 1 hour of difference in time corresponded to 15 degrees of longitude. But keeping track of the time simply was not possible with contemporary clocks which gained or lost whole minutes in an hour on land. Shipboard conditions, with constant motion, dampness, and temperatures ranging from sweltering tropics to arctic gales, made the problem seem impossible.

Sobel follows the story of the man who cracked it, a self-taught clockmaker from Yorkshire named John Harrison. Harrison developed the first chronometer, a clock which kept accuracy to within seconds under harsh maritime conditions. But Harrison's triumph was bedeviled by official opposition. The men who made up the longitude board were mostly astronomers, and they believed that the problem must be solved by reference to a celestial clock, either eclipses of the moons of Jupiter, or the position of the moon relative to major stars. British astronomer royal Nevil Maskelyne refused to accept a 'mere mechanic' had cracked the problem, instead preferring a method based on the moon.

After a decades long struggle, an elderly Harrison was awarded the money by Parliament, though not the prize. Chronometers were very expensive, ten times as expensive as an almanac of lunar ephemera, and navigators used lunar methods for decades. Harrison became the victor in the eyes of history. His chronometers are treasured artifacts. GPS, that omnipresent locator, relies on satellites and ultra-precise clocks. Longitude captures the spirit of the great age of exploration, and the taming of the leviathans in the blue spaces on the maps, in the best possible way.

An epic 40 year struggle!

Dava Sobel, like Simon Winchester or Canada's Pierre Berton, has clearly mastered the art of writing history in a form that is not only informative but, perhaps more important, is also compelling and entertaining.

In eighteenth century Europe, although scientists had long wrestled with the problem, sailors had no method of determining their longitude. The economic losses and the loss of life was so staggering that finding a solution to the problem was elevated to the almost legendary level of finding the Holy Grail or the Fountain of Youth. In the Longitude Act of 1714, the British Parliament offered a prize of 20,000 pounds (equivalent to several million dollars today) to anyone who found a "practicable and useful" means of determining longitude.

One need look no further than the list of stellar minds that were applied to the problem (and failed to find the solution) - Tycho Brahe, Christian Huygens, Robert Cooke, Edmund Halley, Galileo and Vincenzo Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren - to appreciate the almost insurmountable difficulty that this issue presented to the navigators of the day.

LONGITUDE presents the story of John Harrison, a self-taught Yorkshire clockmaker, who struggles alone to raise the art of clock making to unheard of levels of accuracy. The story of his ultimately receiving the prize from Britain's Board of Longitude is a dramatic, inspiring and heart-rending portrayal of 40 years of perseverance and struggle against political shenanigans and skullduggery as well as personal feuds, jealousy and outright espionage and sabotage.

From Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell's catastrophic loss of over 2000 lives when his fleet crashed at Land's End in 1707 to the refurbishment of Harrison's prize-winning chronometer for posterity in 1833, Dava Sobel has brought this small but important piece of the 18th century to life in a way that few other writers could manage. Two thumbs up for a thoroughly enjoyable piece of non-fiction writing!

Paul Weiss

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 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!

If you are expecting 200 pages of mechanical drawings and equations, or even a detailed explanation of how Harrison's clock worked, you're out of luck. Likewise, if you're expecting a a blow-by-blow account of his inventions and dealings with the Board of Longitude, you are also going to be disappointed.

However, if you are looking for an interesting, fast read about the problems of calculating the longitude of a point on earth and how these were eventually solved, you have come to the right place.

This is popular science-history - a tale of people and personalities as well as inventions and discoveries. Sobel's writing is accessible and her verve carries the reader along in the same way as reading a good novel. In just over 200 pages, there isn't much in the way of detail - but the reader does come away with a broad-brush overview of what the problem was, the reasons why it was so intractable, the various methods for solving it, and why the problem was solved in the way it was.

I do find it interesting, though, that Sobel didn't comment that one of the early, wacky 'solutions' proposed - that of anchoring ships at strategic points in the oceans and having them fire off flares that passing ships could then use for position fixes - has come full circle. Only now we have satellites and radio signals instead of ships and flares, and Harrison's clocks (and the chronometers that followed) may themselves become obsolete eventually.

Some people really geek out on the history of science and innovation, especially that magical era at the dawn of the age of reason and the industrial revolution. I'm that sort of geek, so this book was just perfect for me.

The longitude problem was one of the biggest scientific problems facing humanity in the early 1700s. The British government posted a large reward — the equivalent of millions of dollars. The Longitude prize was a forerunner to modern innovation prizes like the X Prize for launching a manned spacecraft into orbit, and the Orteig prize for a direct flight across the Atlantic (won by Charles Lindbergh).

Longitude and latitude are coordinates for naming a location on the globe. Latitude identifies North-South position (for example, Canada and Mexico are at different latitudes) while longitude identifies East-West position (for example, Japan and California are at different longitudes).

Ships were traveling all over the globe by the 1600s, but they could only determine their latitude (by observing the stars) while at sea. Longitude was just a guess. So you'd have the clumsy situation of a fleet of ships traveling someplace and sailing back and forth along the latitude trying to find the island they were looking for. Unlucky guesses could result in many deaths.

It's hard to imagine this today, but solving the longitude problem would be equivalent in modern times to landing on the moon or curing cancer.

This book documents the half century that the one man who eventually solved it, and along the way he made horology (clock engineering) into an important and respected craft. His struggles are not just technical, but also political and personal.

I liked the writing style (curt, it lets the drama of the events speak for themselves) and the chapters are a perfect bite-sized length.