Rating: 
Summary: great but difficult book
Review: Mr. Sobel really knows his stuff unfortunately for the mathematically challanged this book was a slow read. However it is such a fascinating story that one just kept going. It is well worth the time and thinking needed. Of course I am sure there are those who are fluent in algebra, geomety and calculus and who will giggle and finish it in one reading. It is to Sobels' credit that even the math defecient can enjoy his endeavor.
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Summary: Interesting history of 18th century science and navigation
Review: This book records the history of determining longitude (i.e. east/west position) at sea. This may seem to be something of a trivial issue at first glance. However, centuries ago, ships, cargo and men were frequently lost because captains could not accurately determine their location. To gain an appreciation of how difficult the longitude problem was to solve, compare it to our modern efforts to develop a cure for cancer.The man who "solved" (he died before his clocks were mass produced but his pioneering efforts were absolutely crucial) the problem was a carpenter and a watchmaker named John Harrison. His watches were among the most accurate in the history of time keeping. When he heard of the Longitude Act (the British government established a prize to anyone who could invent a usable and practical way of finding longitude at sea), Harrison set to work. His clocks were tremendously innovative; he solved the problems that plagued previous clocks on sea voyages (e.g. the metals in the clock would expand when in tropical climate and contact in Europe; these changes would render the clock unreliable). Harrison once built a clock that was almost entirely built of wood (with the exception of some brass parts); this clock never needed lubrication! In the competition to win the £20,000 (roughly equivalent to several million modern American dollars), there were many quacks who advanced their various ideas but there emerged two dominant methods which vied for success. The clock method (How does this work? "To learn one's longitude at sea, one needs to what time it is aboard ship and also the time at the home port or another place of known longitude - at the very same moment. The two clocks enable the navigator to convert the hour difference into a geographical separation." Pages 4-5). However, this required a very precise clock and all clocks of the day were incapable of such precision. The other approach relied on the movement of the Moon relative to other celestial bodies. The astronomical approach continued to be championed by much of the scientific elite but it initially required four hours of calculations to determine longitude (this was eventually reduced to 30 minutes) and one had to have a clear sky (in order to see the Moon etc..) The Board of Longitude (which functioned as the Government body to determine who is to win the prize and give out grants to prospective men) subjected Harrison's various watches (he made four different ones, all different. The first three were very large and the last was about 5 inches in diameter) to many tests including observation at Greenwich Observatory, sea trials, disassembly before a panel of experts, reassembly and so on. I found the intrigues of the various scientists interesting; it is not a phenomenon limited to the 20th century by any means. Harrison was looked down upon because he was what was called a "Mechanick," (i.e. a tinkering engineer) and the highly educated, academic astronomers did not think such a man capable of solving the vexing problem of longitude. I have an interest in ships and their role in European empire building (e.g. the Dutch, French and British empires) and commerce and through reading this book I gained an appreciation of just how vital this piece of technology was to navigation in an age where radio and GPS were simply unavailable. Also, the idea of a Government sponsoring scientists to solve scientific problems (i.e. the concept of grants) seems to be pioneered here. What not 5 stars? The technical descriptions of the mechanisms Harrison invented were difficult to visualize; some diagrams or even actual pictures of the devices would have been very helpful. I would also have liked to see some pictures of the various scientists involved.
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Summary: The Origin of the Phrase---Promise You the Moon.
Review: . ******************************** A short but a fascinating book on the story of finding a solution to the problem of establishing longitude at sea. Establishing latitude is relatively easy; one simply measures the angle the sun makes to the horizon. The problem of longitude eluded mankind for ages. In 1714, the British government posted a prize for the first man to develop an accurate and reliable means of establishing longitude at sea. This started one of the most important technological races in history. On one side were the astronomers who believed that the answer lay in the heavens. On the other one man who felt he could develop an accurate timepiece. The author relates some of the horrify miscalculations that resulted in ships being unable to establish their positions accurately. In one example, Admiral Sir Clowdisly Shovell's fleet of five ships were returning from Gibraltar when four of his five ships struck the rocks of the Scilly Islands with a loss of over two thousand men. This was one of literally hundreds of horrifying instances, where ships were lost because they lacked information on their longitude. Then need for a mean of establishing longitude was critical. Galileo found a method for determining longitude, using the Jovian moons that worked well on land, but not on the unsteady platform of a ship at sea. He did however, pave the way for astronomers that followed. These eventually found a way to find position based on the motions of the moon. This method was extremely complicated and time-consuming. The research for a means to find longitude using the Moon took longer than expected and ultimately proved to be impractical for use at sea. In the meantime, a genius of a man, John Harrison, refined the timepiece, a method out of favor politically, because Sir Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley dismissed this as a practical means. Unfortunately, the astronomers that followed continued to support this view. Harrison single-handedly found a means of establishing Longitude by developing an accurate timepiece that could maintain it's accuracy and withstand the variations of temperature, humidity, and shock. This book is primarily about Harrison and his efforts to develop an accurate timepiece, which ultimately proved successful. Later other timepieces followed created by other men who perfected mass-production of these timepieces. The story of Harrison is a magnificent triumph of a single man who stubbornly held fast to his beliefs and succeeded in accomplishing his goal in a lifetime. If you are a navigator, and interested in celestial navigation this is a must read book. If you love history, you will love this book. ******************************** Conrad B. Senior, S/V ECHO
Rating: 
Summary: a disappointment
Review: This is a fascinating topic, with some fascinating protagonists, but at least in the paperback edition (is there a difference?)the author fils to really engage us. The opening chapter is a nice college essay on the topic that basically contains the rest of the book, and I found myself constantly saying "Hey, you already told us that" for the next hundred plus pages. There is lots of florid prose about how evil and conniving some folks were, but we never really get a feel for them. I suspect that the author either 1) could have used a good editor or 2) got edited to death in order to fit some sort of page limit. As a result there are lots of teasers & some gratuitous statements (WHY for instance do we have to hear in a one-liner that the man who cleans the clocks at the end of the book had a difficult personal life?)& one walks away wondering what one missed.
Rating: 
Summary: No more 'dead reckoning'
Review: Where in the world am I? It's a question easily answered by most of us today - a quick check of an atlas, road map or if we are really confused - we ask someone. Back in the 18th Century though it was a question that had life or death implications. For European mariners who ventured far west or east of their home ports, the ability to tell how near or far they were to home or destination became a matter of 'dead reckoning' - basically an educated guess. It was called 'dead' for a reason as errors in calculating longitude by sight would frequently cause ships to rip themselves apart on land that was not supposed to be there. The search for an accurate means of determining longitude was spread over three centuries and had beaten the brightest minds of Europe. Longitude as a concept had been known about for a long time and it was even known that time and it's measurement was the critical factor. What science knew then about longitude can be summarized as follows: A spherical earth is equally divided into 360 degrees. A solar day (time sun takes to complete 360 degrees of earth) is 24 hours, so 1 hour equals 15 degrees and 1 degree distance is eqivalent to 4 minutes. At the equator every 1 degree travelled east or west is 60 nautical miles. The issue then was not what constited a degree or even how many miles seperated degrees but the problem remained one of knowing simultaneously, the time where you were and also at a known longitude. An indicator of how serious this subject was taken was that England passed the Longitude Act of 1707 and offered a huge financial prize in order to find a useful means for determining longitude. Along came a simple clockmaker - John Harrison, unschooled in the sciences, neither astronomer nor mathematician, not a member of any of the great academies and unsophisticated in the ways of Parliament. If you like an underdog an outsider or the common man then Harrison is your guy. The solution was supposedly to be found in reading the celestial map of the heavens and plotting the stars and planets, not in crude mechanical devices. The answer was thought to lie in the minds of men like Huygens and Newton not with a common uneducated clockmaker. Harrison was persistent if nothing else and he kept perfecting his timepieces and eventually developed a chronometer that was given a sea test on November 18, 1871. It kept accurate enough time, not losing or gaining more than 3 seconds in a day, which over the known length of the trip from Portsmouth to Jamaica, provided a measure of longitude accurate to within a 1/2 of a degree or 30 miles. The old man had won! - but wait. The academy of sciences said it was a fluke, he had to prove it again. What Sobel's book does so well is give us a clear description of the man John Harrison. The history surrounding this great scientific quest and the how it came to be seen as such an intractable problem and why the scientists had such a hard time accepting Harrison's solution is also explained. The problems and prejudices he faced were more to do with the fact that his solution demanded of the 'elite' of Europe - a new way of thinking and acceptance of others. As such it was more than a scientific solution it was more akin to a social revolution.
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Summary: Great history of science
Review: This book, in my mind, is one of the best examples of truly superb history of science for laymen. It describes the problem clearly, it covers a problem that we can all understand, and one that had fundamental repurcussions for our world, and then it goes on to discuss its solution with wonderfully readable detail. I thought this book was great on a number of levels- social history (insight into the relevant British cultural context), technological history, and the coverage of a great invention. I mourn the passing of the golden age of design and engineering- everything is now electronic, with very few intuitive mechanical things left, and this book is a wonderful celebration of of an age when brilliance meant the creation of wonderful physical objects.
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Summary: Cast your hook to the bookshelf!!
Review: This is no verbose, cerebral, scholarly put-to-sleeper! Sobel draws you in and makes you (imagine this) want to know how a little clock stopped the world in its tracks. Or, in this case, if you don't mind my being glib, put the wind in our sails. Here you get the low-down dirty in a skinny, little fox of a book. You'll be absolutely ANCHORED to your armchair and won't come up for modern day air 'til you've digested this mighty minnow. ***Shipwrecks, mayhem, murder, scandal, sickness at sea (and how sauerkraut saved sailors' lives), superstition, smart men who didn't know it all, and the underdog "country-bumpkin" who did! They tried to hold him back, but Harrison wouldn't be denied the most prestigious and, unfortunately, most forgotten honor in one of the greatest competitions ever put to man. Most of his competitors tried to map the stars. Instead, Harrison thought of the practicality of literally putting space and time in our hands. And, all of this just so we'd know where the heck we're rowing to! Relive it all again. Anyone can read this-EVERYONE should. You don't have to be a science wizard to get it. Get it, you MUST!
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Summary: Fascinating Chronos
Review: This is a remarkable book, which can only be credited for delivering, very readably, what it promises, that is, The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, i.e. how to calculate accurately ones position in open sea / or elsewhere for that matter. regards, martyn_jones@iniciativas.com
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Summary: A magnificent book.
Review: Dava Sobel has deftly weaved an engaging tale of technical genius, political clout, and individual perseverence. Her clear and light-hearted style make this fantastic history very accessible and enjoyable to read. True to its inspiration, Longitude is elegant and extraordinarily illuminating. Readers will find this short book very worthwhile.
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Summary: An incredible story--and true!
Review: The story that fills the pages of this book is a fascinating tale of the integration of the most abstract scientific endeavors and a practical "real world" problem of the post-Renaissance age. But Sobel's recounting of the tale goes beyond the fascinating facts themselves. With wonderfully enticing language and presentation, she seamlessly weaves together all of the disparate strands of intellectual enterprise--the work of Galileo, Newton, Halley, Flamsteed, Harrison, and others. I especially enjoyed the connection of Harrison's chronometer to the voyages of Cook, Captain Bligh, and even Darwin's Beagle! More important, I was deeply touched by Sobel's explicit admiration for the work of Harrison and the other scientists of his age. She clearly gives the reader a sense of reverence for genius; to see achievement proudly presented in this way seems all too rare today. Also, the contrast of Harrison against Maskelyne was extremely well presented. I felt nothing but disgust at the political machinations which impeded Harrison's well-deserved recognition and reward. I strongly recommend this book for anyone who seeks in their literature the presentation of heroic characters, masterful achievements and a vision of the human mind at its pinnacle of excellence. The fact that this story is true makes it even all the more worthwhile.
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