Longitude Notes

It seems to me that the basic point and purpose for the book Longitude is to show all of the effort that went into the search for an effective way to find longitude. The book follows, in a mostly chronological way, the flow of knowledge towards the winner of the Longitude Prize. Originally there were a few creative ideas. The chronometer method and the astronomical observation methods were the two most promising, but there were also a few other more crazy methods like shooting cannons up into the air every few hours on stationary ships. These other more radical ideas quickly dropped out and the two main players came into view. Most of the book follows the story of John Harrison the father of the modern Chronometer and in fact the modern pocket watch.

Harrison is an incredibly interesting person to me because of how little formal training he actually had. He was a simple craftsman mostly working with wood who suddenly developed an interest in making clocks. Most of his innovations were seemed to be less planned out and more the result of simple trial and error. He had a great deal of common sense and was able to simply point himself in the right direction and go. It took him years between creating his clocks and as they got more complex and more accurate the longer it took him to perfect the techniques that he used to make them thus.

On the other hand you have most of the Royal Society of London. A group mostly of astronomers they greatly favored the astronomy method. Although it was eventually found impractical to try to measure the stars on the rough sea or when there are any clouds in the sky the iconic image of the sea captain measuring his location using a sextant still lingers in every young boy's heart.

The book actually got better as it went on. The rivalry between Harrison and Maskelyne was crazy. Some of the things that Maskelyne did to stop Harrison from winning when he had clearly already met all of the requirements and done them much better.

On a humorous side note, I really want to see the movie version of the book starring Jeremy Irons and Michael Gambon.