Rating: 
Summary: Informative!!
Review: The best thing about this book is that the author has managed to pack in an intersting tale of one of the most important inventions made in our time (the clock/watch) into a slick volume of just 150 pages. My Social studies didn't teach me anything about the importance of Longitude or clock. I guess, it is the same for most of us. But, when i visited GMT , the greenwich time in London, i was curious to understand this whole business of Longitude and how it came to shape the concept of timezones in our lives. This book answered it all . Don't be mistaken. THis is a hugely entertaining book and i think it is one of those books where we glean information about something which we have taken for granted in our lives. -raj
Rating: 
Summary: John Harrison--an extraordinary person
Review: John Harrison (1693-1776) spent his lifetime inventing and perfecting a series of timepieces to measure longitude. As Dava Sobel relates in her engaging narrative, "Longitude," until the 18th century sailors navigated by following parallels of latitude and roughly estimating distance traveled east or west. Ships routinely missed their destinations, often taking excessive time to arrive or succumbing to reefs off fogbound shores. Thousands of sailors and tons of cargo were lost. In 1714, England's Parliament offered £20,000 (the equivalent of about $12 million today) to anyone who provided a "practicable and useful" means of determining longitude. Countless solutions were suggested, some bizarre, some impractical, some workable only on land and others far too complex. Most astronomers believed the answer lay in the sky, but Harrison, a clockmaker, imagined a mechanical solution--a clock that would keep precise time at sea. By knowing the exact times at the Greenwich meridian and at a ship's position, one could find longitude by calculating the time difference. However, most scientists, including Isaac Newton, discounted a clock because there were too many variables at sea. Changes in temperature, air pressure, humidity and gravity would surely render a watch inaccurate. Harrison persisted. As Dava Sobel writes, he worked on his timepiece for decades, though he suffered skepticism and ridicule. Even after completing his timepiece, an instrument we now call a chronometer, in 1759, he underwent a long series of unfair trials and demonstrations. Ultimately he triumphed. Sobel, a science writer who contributes to Audubon, Life, Omni and other magazines, captures John Harrison's extraordinary character: brilliant, persevering and heroic in the face of adversity. He is a man you won't forget.
Rating:
Summary: An Unknown Genius, a Well Told Story
Review: Dava Sobel has produced a lean but complex story of one of the great scientific searches of the Enlightenment: the search for an accurate way to measure longitude, thus enabling accurate navigation. Its amazing to read of the many false starts and hilarious attempts to measure longitude, and it makes me wonder how many of our own attempts to solve thorny problems are just as off base. Just as entertaining is the story of how the problem was solved by a patient, hardworking genius, little known or regarded in his own time. This is a treasure to be reread many times, particularly when a seemingly impossible task confronts us.
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Summary: Amazing Research.
Review: Who would have thought the story of Longitude could be so interesting? To be accurate, this is the story of the invention of a tool to measure longitude accurately - oftentimes, literally, a life or death proposition in the early 18th Century. Life or death because ships, unsure of their position, would crash into reefs. Other ships would literally have sailors on board dying of disease or dehydration, because the captains did not know where they were, and where, more importantly, local islands or land masses could be found. After a particular gruesome tragedy off the Coast of England, which could have been avoided if the Captain could have measured Longitude correctly, a reward was issued by Parliament for anyone who could develop a tool to perform this task A special committee was set up to review ideas and suggestions about how this task could be completed. And while there were many attempts, few of them had merit. Most scholars had concluded that only a map of the stars could solve this problem, if one could be accurately drawn. On land, these maps could be drawn. On the oceans, accurate maps were hard to draw, were inaccurate, and, for the most part, of little value. Most scholars thus concluded that the secrets of Longitude, on the oceans, could not be solved. Perhaps that is why a "common" working man, albeit a skilled laborer, had to solve this problem. His name was John Harrison. John Harrison, a clock maker, was able to do something that no one else in the world could do.
He applied for the grant, and was awarded a partial prize. But this was not the end of the story. Instead of adopting his proven technology, petty rivalry, jealously, and (most likely) class snobbery delayed the adoption of his clocks for sixty years. Ironically, the King himself, got involved in the struggle, on the side of John Harrison. Longitude is a story of science and history. It is also part detective story. It is filled with passion and amazing details about the time and the people surrounding this story. Written with an elegant and poetic flair, it is a beautiful trip to another time and place. Dava Sobel has done a wonderful job. The only problem I had, which was small, is as this book switches from a novel about finding a solution to Longitude to a novel about the struggle to have Harrison find recognized, the story dragged on a little bit too long and the focus definitely changed. I enjoyed the science sections better. A small criticism, but a fair warning. Overall, however, Longitude is a quick read and I highly recommend it. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: A compelling mix of history and science.
Review: A compelling mix of history and science, which is very readable to the layperson but might be less interesting for a hard-core horologist. This book is short and deftly written to illustrate the haphazard nature of navigation in the days before longitude could be properly measured. It must have taken great courage to sail the seas when even the most minor miscalculation could imperil the lives of the entire ship's company. The irascible Mr. Harrison is able to make strides in the technologies of horology, which were unprecedented. However his own temperament mixed with the politically infighting of the Board of Navigation was able to impede these improvements for many years. The fact that Harrison was one of the yeoman class rather than the aristocracy was to cost him many years of extra endeavor. . It was also refreshing to not have to deal with the endless drama of Rupert Gould the Naval Officer recovering from a nervous breakdown who the restores the clocks in the early part of the 20th century. The few pages devoted to him are interesting but not integral to the story. This is more a book about corporate politics than it is about the intricacies of timepieces. As such I enjoyed this short history of a large subject.
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Summary: Longitude
Review: Longitude, The True Story of a Lone Genius who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, more commonly known as just Longitude, is the story of John Harrison as well as the longitude problem itself, it is written by Dava Sobel. The longitude problem is the difficulty of finding longitude at sea. Latitude was always easy to find by observing the stars. However, longitude presented a problem as there was no known way to know how far east or west you were. This problem caused numerous problems throughout the whole of history and there was great incentive to discover a solution. Many sailors had died from miscalculations of longitude. The way to figure longitude is through a calculation of the difference of the local time and the time of the homeport and multiplying by 15 degrees and also dividing the minutes and seconds by four to discover the exact minutes and seconds of arc. This was impossible to do because there was no accurate way to know the time of the homeport while you were at sea. One main event led to the creation of the Longitude Act of 1714, in which British Parliament promised a king?s ransom of £20,000 to anyone who proposed a practical solution to the longitude problem. There were two different methods that people used to attack this problem, lunar placement and the mechanical solution using clocks. John Harrison was a carpenter as well as a self-taught watchmaker. Longitude is an extremely well written book that does an excellent job of describing the heroism of John Harrison while at the same time giving enough background so that you could understand the significance of his deeds.
John Harrison was completely self-taught in the matters of watch making and his uneducated mind created innovative new technology in his area without so much as a week of formal education. While little is known of Harrison?s early life, we do know that he was poor, was the eldest of his siblings, and had no education beyond borrowing a textbook from the local priest. It seems that he was inquisitive by nature and it helped him in the future. He created his first pendulum clock before he was 20, seven years later he was asked to construct a clock in a local church bell tower. This clock showed his first step towards the sea clock, he built his clock so that it would not need lubrication, ?For lubricants got thicker or thinner as temperatures dipped or soared over the course of a voyage, making the clock run faster or slower as a result ? (p. 70). The accuracy of his pendulum clocks erred less than a second in a whole month in comparison to the normal minute every day, this was due to various improvements that Harrison made in typical designs for clocks. These innovations helped the clocks withstand heat changes as well as get rid of excess friction. These improvements prepared John Harrison to build clocks that would travel and not lose or gain very much time. With every clock Harrison made he improved various things and tried to make it better and smaller than before, while he was not always successful with the latter goal. Harrison was dissatisfied with any error or thing that could be improved, he would never settle for less than his best. He was driven and despite his little education was intelligent and refused to give the world any less than the most innovative and accurate work.
In being so driven he turned down an opportunity to be evaluated for the prize from the British Longitude Board, formed by the Longitude Act, because he thought that the clock was not worthy and needed improvement. John Harrison was persistent in his effort to not only make a clock worthy of the prize but also to receive his prize once he had created a clock to his liking that suited the requirements. In regards to H-1 (his first clock) he told the Longitude Board, ?It showed some ?defects? that he wanted to correct. He conceded he needed to do a bit more tinkering with the mechanism.... ...he would produce another timekeeper. An even better timekeeper. And then he would come back to the board and request an official trial on a voyage to the West Indies.? (Page 83) So he went back to the drawing board and spent the next four years creating H-2, which was followed with another 29 years and three more clocks. While H-5 was actually a copy of H-4 it was itself unique. This copy was ordered as a way to postpone and hopefully deny the payment due to Harrison for his solution to the problem. The Board of Longitude was convinced that any mechanical solution to such a problem was ludicrous. However, at the time any other solution seemed impossible. The board believed that the only possibility worth looking at was astronomical and required years upon years of observations, little skill, and about four hours to do the calculations (this time was later reduced to 30 minutes). When the astronomer royal changed as well as the board members, Harrison lost all major support he?d had and all the persons who were relevant, and most of those that weren?t, were reluctant if not down right against giving Harrison any monetary reward and were not going to even mention the possibility that they should give him the whole £20,000. He petitioned and fought and wrote letters for more years than most people cared to listen to him. This method proved useful and got him the recognition he deserved, even if it was posthumously.
John Harrison dedicated his whole life to the solution of the longitude problem and the improvement of clocks, during his long life he displayed the drive and determination that he was not going to settle for better than before, he wanted his best. John Harrison spent almost 20 years on H-3 making it better and smaller and improving it. This work was unnecessary because there is evidence that the actual construction and creation of the device took only a few of those years. Also, his first clock would have sufficed and more than satisfied the requirements to win first place as set out by the Longitude Act in 1714. However, he was not satisfied with this work and asked the Board of Longitude to give him £500 and two years to work and told them that he would create a better timekeeper, and of course he did.
The whole proportions of the work that John Harrison did is well displayed and is described in a way that even the most ignorant person could realize the heroism of this carpenter turned watchmaker. The heroism is apparent and before I read it I was skeptical of the magnitude of the project, as well as the necessity. Now, however, I am thoroughly convinced that if there were more people with the ingenuity, perseverance, and confidence of John Harrison, the world would be much improved and farther advanced. Dava Sobel leaves no doubt in the reader?s mind that John Harrison was indeed a watchmaker of heroic proportions. This book inspires hope in the human race as a whole and was excellent writing. Longitude is a book that was hard to put down and was interesting in its entirety. While I was uninformed as to the whole longitude problem prior to opening the book, within moments of beginning to read I realized the difficulty and conflict involved in solving this problem.
Rating: 
Summary: Litmus Test for the Two Cultures
Review: In a better world long ago, when good education consisted of both "humanistic" and scientific learning, no editor in his right mind would have touched this book, which tells about an invention without describing it. As it is, the book can be sensibly used to test people. It would take much leniency from one of even very limited technical/scientific culture not to react vehemently against it. Those who like it are excellent proof that C.P. Snow was right in stating that there are two cultures (and never shall the twain meet).
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best longitude book
Review: I read "The Quest for Longitude" before I read this book. "The Quest for Longitude" is a MUCH better book about John Harrison and the work he did to develop an accurate clock which could be used shipboard. The Quest for Longitude has many more illustrations and goes into detail on the clocks as well as the people involved. It's a really good tale and deserves better than Sobel's efforts. If you're interested in the story of finding longitude shipboard, get "The Quest for Longitude" instead of this book.
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Summary: Fascinating book.
Review: This is truly a both fascinating and interesting book. It tells us of the great quest to find the longitude accurately. Later on, it recounts the achievments one man who had to fight against prejudice and who won in the end.
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Summary: An Intriguing Look At A Forgotten English Genius
Review: Dava Sobel writes a spellbinding account of the life of John Harrison which gracefully touches all the bases with regards to his invention of the marine chronometer. However, she does it in such a terse fashion that by the end of this slender volume you find yourself yearning for more details. How did Harrison meticulously construct his choronometers? How did he acquire his knowledge of various woods and their properties? Alas such questions remain unanswered. Yet this remains an intriguing look at Britain's "Age Of Enlightenment", which reveals how an undistinguished rural clock maker eventually made some connections with prominent scientists and engineers belonging to the Royal Society. Eventually it becomes a poignant human drama when Harrison is robbed of his prize, only to receive partial compensation for his achievement.
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