Longitude
by Dava Sobel, William J. H. Andrewes, Irene Aldasoro Katarain · first published 1995
84% recommend14% neutral2% critical
Why HN recommends it
Short, quick-reading history of John Harrison's decades-long quest to build a clock accurate enough to solve navigation at sea; engaging for engineers and anyone curious about timekeeping.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of one man's forty-year obsession to find a solution to the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day--"the longitude problem." Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives and the increasing fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. One man,
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Favorites that I read in 2018: * Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep) * Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4806.Longitude) * Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As…
on “Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?” ↗An excellent history of the problem of longitude is detailed in the book 'Longitude' by Dava Sobel. There are great stories about the clocks leading up to the creation of H4, and many more details on the "injustice" that John Harrison felt. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4806.Longitude
on “The crazy ideas which failed to solve the longitude problem [video]” ↗The best non-fiction I have read in the past 25 years is * Longitude, by Dava Sobel.
on “The 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years” ↗…this year, that you felt you were pretty good at, having won some student awards, devoting yourself to it full time…and then getting rejected over and over until 2019." This reminds me of the "Story of Longitude" where John Harrison spent decades of his life in search of his prize (the first "X-Prize"?), and everyone is betting against him. How could a self-educated clockmaker beat the best minds of the day?…
on “Ang Lee and the uncertainty of success” ↗Just get her a copy of this: https://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-... :)
on “Astrolabe: Shipwreck find 'earliest navigation tool'” ↗The book “Longitude” by Dava Sobel is an excellent telling of this story. And there’s a movie adaptation too.
on “A Great Prize, a Long-Suffering Inventor and the First Accurate Clock (1956)” ↗…a feature: they built a very precise temperature sensor out of two silicon oscillators. I finally got around to reading the excellent Logitude by Dava Sobel (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4806.Longitude) and to a lay-person this sounds like a similar principle that Harrison applied to design the bimetallic strip used to preserve the accuracy of his clocks in the face of temperature changes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimetallic_strip).…
on “Fixing a Tiny Corner of the Supply Chain” ↗…eventually managed to read it. Much more enjoyable that I expected it to be, even given the fact that much of the material is well-known already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational - Longitude follows John Harrison's fascinating, painful and lengthy quest to win the Longitude Prize by creating a clock that was accurate enough to determine longitude at sea. Dava Sobel is a great writer and makes…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite books of 2010?” ↗If you're interested in the historical setting of Longitude (and why it's in Greenwich to begin with), I highly recommend Dava Sobel's _Longitude_: http://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-P...
on “Why the Greenwich meridian moved” ↗…as keeping time" Keeping time has been a difficult problem for... well, as long as we've tried keeping time. For an interesting historical account on past difficulties, you might check out the book "Longitude" [1]. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-P...
on “What does it take to make Google work at scale?” ↗There is an excellent book about "the Longitude problem" that details John Harrison and the invention of high precision chronometers: http://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-P... Great short book for any engineer.
on “Naval Academy reinstates celestial navigation” ↗Incidentally, the book "Longitude", by Dava Sobel is a fun read about John Harrison and how timekeeping was critical for navigation of long distances at sea at the time.
on “Clockmaker John Harrison vindicated 250 years after ‘absurd’ claims” ↗This is the approach the British and several other governments took for finding a reliable way to find the longitude of a ship at sea [1]. Dava Sobel's Longitude is an interesting but quick read about the problem and John Harrison's eventual solution. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards
on “A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue” ↗For some of the folks here that are interested in nav, its history, human factors and the development of accurate lat long navigation, the following two books are gems: Longitude by Dava Sobel And Fate is the Hunter by Ernest Gann.
on “The Voyage of the Kon-Tiki Misled the World About Navigating the Pacific (2014)” ↗If the history of timekeeping for navigation sounds interesting, check out the book (and movie) “Longitude” by Dava Sobel. It’s an incredible and largely-forgotten story.
on “Time.gov was upgraded today” ↗