My dad recently loaned me his copy of a fascinating 2007 book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time after I saw it on his nightstand and was curious. It is a short but impactful book on a historic scientific mystery I knew nothing about: “the longitude problem.”
We take it for granted with GPS that we always have at our fingertips the exact location of any place on Earth. But 200 years ago, this was not the case. Seafaring vessels navigated the open ocean essentially blind to where they were going, hoping for the best in their trans-oceanic voyages. Numerous disasters instances of ships run aground or lost at sea highlighted the need for a reliable solution for navigation on the open ocean.
Latitude was not the problem, since this could be determined based on the angle of the stars and the ship. Longitude, determining how far east or west you are, was a nearly impossible problem to solve at the time due to the inaccuracy of maritime instruments and timekeeping mechanisms. Numerous royal scientific societies offered large rewards to anyone who could engineer a solution to this scientific conundrum.
One man and his son, John Harrison and George Harrison, made it their life’s work to take on this challenge. Longitude tells the tale of their pursuit of a way to accurately keep time at sea and thus the ability to calculate longitude accurately.
Longitude is a short book, only 200 pages, but each chapter is filled with historical anecdotes of how challenging this longitude problem was to solve and the various unsuccessful attempts made at solving it. It is accessible to those unfamiliar with any naval history (like me), and does a wonderful job of painting a picture of what life was like for sailors back in the 1700’s and 1800’s.
The story of John Harrison is fascinating, and I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I love learning about how the knowledge we take so for granted today came to be so this book was exactly my style. It is light enough to be enjoyed over a long weekend or by the pool, but the subject is weighty enough to pique your interest in other scientific mysteries and how there were solved. I highly recommend this book!
