Illustrated Longitude

Amazon.com
Dava Sobel's Longitude tells the story of how 18th-century scientist and clockmaker William Harrison solved one of the most perplexing problems of history--determining east-west location at sea. This lush, colorfully illustrated edition adds lots of pictures to the story, giving readers a more satisfying sense of the times, the players, and the puzzle. This was no obscure, curious difficulty--without longitude, ships often found themselves so far off course that sailors would starve or die of scurvy before they could reach port. When a nationally-sponsored contest offered a hefty cash prize to the person who could develop a method to accurately determine longitude, the race was on. In the end, the battle of accuracy--and wills--fought between Harrison and arch-rival Maskelyne was ruthless and dramatic, worthy of a Hollywood feature film. Longitude's story is surprising and fascinating, offering a window into the past, before Global Positioning Satellites made it look easy. --Therese Littleton


From Library Journal
Sobel's 1995 volume attracted a large audience, an unusual feat for a historical science title. Her text describes John Harrison's development of the chronometer, an instrument that measured time exactly while at sea and allowed mariners to calculate longitude for the first time and accurately navigate. This handsome edition is profusely illustrated with numerous annotated photos and paintings of the players and the machinery that led to the chronometer's creation.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
When Dava Sobel's Longitude was published to universal acclaim in 1995, readers voiced only one regret: that it was not illustrated. Now, William Andrewes, the man who organized and hosted the Longitude Symposium that inspired her book, has joined Dava Sobel to create a richly illustrated version of her classic story. The Illustrated Longitude recounts in words and images the epic quest to solve the thorniest scientific problem of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Throughout the great age of exploration, sailors attempted to navigate the oceans without any means of measuring their longitude: All too often, voyages ended in total disaster when both crew and cargo were captured or lost upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall. Thousands of lives and the fortunes of seafaring nations hung on a resolution. To encourage a solution, governments established major prizes for anyone whose method or device proved successful. The largest reward of £20,000-truly a king's ransom-was offered by the British Parliament in 1714. The scientific establishment-from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton-had been certain that a celestial answer would be found and invested untold effort in this pursuit. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, imagined and built the unimaginable: a clock that solved the problem by keeping precise time at sea, called today the chronometer. His trials and tribulations to win the prize throughout a forty-year obsession are the culmination of this remarkable story. The Illustrated Longitude contains the entire original narrative of Longitude, redesigned to accompany 178 images chosen by Will Andrewes: from portraits of every important figure in the story to maps, diagrams, and photographs of scientific instruments, especially John Harrison's remarkable clocks. Andrewes's elegant captions emphasize the scientific and historical events surrounding the images, and they tell their own dramatic story of longitude, paralleling and illuminating Dava Sobel's memorable tale.


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In Longitude (originally published in 1995), Dava Sobel invented a new genre of popular historical writing: the short "biography" of a single, relatively obscure discovery in science, technology, or medicine. She deftly sketched the problem—out on the trackless ocean, how could sailors tell where they were? They could figure their latitude (how far north or south of the equator they were) from the angle of the sun or stars above the horizon, but calculating just how far east or west was much trickier. It was not until the 18th century that instrument-makers could produce the technology that allowed navigators to accurately pinpoint their ship's position. The compelling tale of John Harrison's struggles to get his invention of the chronometer acknowledged and rewarded carried readers over the humps of technical explanations. But many readers longed for pictures to augment Sobel's explanations. For this handsome illustrated edition, Sobel has the ideal collaborator in William J. H. Andrewes, the curator of Harvard's Collection of Historic Scientific Instruments; and the designer and publisher have done full justice to their choices of images. Unlike the original, this won't fit in your pocket, but it is the perfect companion for armchair admirals. Anyone teaching history, geography, astronomy, or earth sciences will find it invaluable. A must-buy for all libraries. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1995, Walker, 216p. illus. bibliog. index., Ages 15 to adult.


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