Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

English language

Published May 11, 2007

ISBN:: 9780007790166

(2 reviews)

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time is a best-selling book by Dava Sobel about John Harrison, an 18th-century clockmaker who created the first clock (chronometer) sufficiently accurate to be used to determine longitude at sea—an important development in navigation. The book was made into a television series entitled Longitude. In 1998, The Illustrated Longitude was published, supplementing the earlier text with 180 images of characters, events, instruments, maps and publications.

5 editions

hsubu reviewed Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel

Review of 'Longitude' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Short, crisp, and quite enjoyable history of the longitude problem. As a help to understand the mechanical devices described in this book, I looked at videos and animations of Harrison's chronometers available online. That helped a lot in understanding the scale of achievement of John Harrison. The author does not attempt to make a "what happened at the end?" mystery out of this story. The summary of what happened is stated right at the beginning. The author instead engages the reader by providing the context of the times, the details of the challenges, and so on. This approach works quite well.
Those of you who work in engineering will find the technology development challenges described in this book quite relatable!

Aneel reviewed Longitude by Dava Sobel

Review of 'Longitude' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

A fairly light but informative history of the British Longitude Prizes, focused on the development of the marine chronometer. I read the illustrated version, which I thought added a lot.