Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
by Dava Sobel (1995)
2024 reads, 6/22
Some pre-reading before I attempt my next big novel, Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon.
Before the era of satellites and GPS, determining longitude at sea was quite a challenge, so much so that £20,000 (almost half a million in US dollars today) was to be awarded to the person that could come up with a reliable method for doing so. Longitude details the many attempts and final success of this quest.
Except for the meaty parts, this wasn’t the most interesting book, and I felt it could have been cut down a bit (although less than 200 pages is already pretty short). Regardless, it was a quick enough read and gave some great background on both astronomy and navigation in the eighteenth century.
“The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of time.”
If you’re interested, this 10-minute YouTube video summarizes the entire story pretty well.