68 pages • 2 hours read
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
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Overview
Dava Sobel’s best-selling book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time tells the story of the 18th-century contest to find a precise way to locate a ship at sea, the clockmaker who built the first timepiece that could do so, and his battle with the astronomers whose alternate method competed for the winning prize. Replete with sea disasters, brilliant scientists, and scheming politicians, Longitude won numerous awards and was twice adapted for television. The 2010 paperback edition forms the basis for this study guide.
Plot Summary
Maps of the Earth are crisscrossed with horizontal lines of latitude and vertical lines of longitude. These lines help travelers locate themselves on the planet. Latitude has always been easy to reckon: Sailors simply note how high or low the sun, moon, and stars are in the sky and use that to determine how far north or south they are. Longitude—one’s location east or west on the Earth—is hard to determine, and for much of human history sailors routinely were delayed, lost, or shipwrecked for lack of knowing it.
Early attempts to solve this problem had mixed results. Galileo and others reasoned that sailors could use Unlock all 68 pages of this Study Guide Plus, gain access to 8,900+ more expert-written Study Guides. Including features:
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By Dava Sobel
