Download or read book Longitude written by Dava Sobel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-07-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, John Harrison, in complete opposition to the scientific community, dared to imagine a mechanical solution-a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking, and opens a new window on our world.
Download or read book Finding Longitude written by Richard Dunn and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Official publication of the National Maritime Museum's exhibition "Ships, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for Longitude". 300 years ago, amidst growing frustration from the naval community and pressure from the increasing importance of international trade, the British government passed the 1714 Longitude Act. It was an attempt to solve one of the most pressing problems of the age: how to determine a ship's longitude (east-west position) at sea. With life-changing rewards on offer, the challenge captured the imaginations and talents of astronomers, skilled craftsmen, politicians, seamen and satirists. This beautifully illustrated book is a detailed account of these stories, and how the longitude problem was solved. Highlights of the book include: * Foreword by the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees. * Specially commissioned photographs of the National Maritime Museum's collection. * A new description of the collaborations and conflicts in a tale of technical creativity, scientific innovation and hard commercialism. From the same publisher as Dava Sobel's Longitude, Finding Longitude tells a new story of one of the great achievements of the Georgian age, and how it changed our understanding of the world.
Download or read book The Theory and Practise of Finding the Longitude at Sea Or Land To which are Added Various Methods of Determining the Latitude of a Place and Variation of the Compass with New Tables written by Andrew Mackay and published by . This book was released on 1793 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Theory and Practice of Finding the Longitude at Sea Or Land written by Andrew Mackay and published by . This book was released on 1793 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The theory and practice of finding the longitude at sea or land to which are added various methods of determining the latitude of a place and variation of the compass with new tables written by Andrew Mackay and published by . This book was released on 1801 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ships Clocks and Stars written by Richard Dunn and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tale of eighteenth-century invention and competition, commerce and conflict, this is a lively, illustrated, and accurate chronicle of the search to solve “the longitude problem,” the question of how to determine a ship’s position at sea—and one that changed the history of mankind. Ships, Clocks, and Stars brings into focus one of our greatest scientific stories: the search to accurately measure a ship’s position at sea. The incredible, illustrated volume reveals why longitude mattered to seafaring nations, illuminates the various solutions that were proposed and tested, and explores the invention that revolutionized human history and the man behind it, John Harrison. Here, too, are the voyages of Captain Cook that put these revolutionary navigational methods to the test. Filled with astronomers, inventors, politicians, seamen, and satirists, Ships, Clocks, and Stars explores the scientific, political, and commercial battles of the age, as well as the sailors, ships, and voyages that made it legend—from Matthew Flinders and George Vancouver to the voyages of the Bounty and the Beagle. Featuring more than 150 photographs specially commissioned from Britain’s National Maritime Museum, this evocative, detailed, and thoroughly fascinating history brings this age of exploration and enlightenment vividly to life.
Download or read book The Theory and Practice of Finding the Longitude at Sea Or Land to Whic are Added Various Methods of Determining the Latitude of a Place by Andrew Mackay in Two Volumes written by and published by . This book was released on 1793 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Practical Method for Finding the Longitude and Latitude of a Ship at Sea by Observations of the Moon written by Robert Waddington and published by . This book was released on 1763 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A practical introduction to finding the Longitude at sea by lunar observations also to spherics and nautical Astronomy etc written by Thomas EVANS (Lieut. R.N.) and published by . This book was released on 1817 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Finding Longitude How ships clocks and stars helped solve the longitude problem written by National Maritime Museum and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2014-07-10 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recommended for viewing on colour device. Official publication of the National Maritime Museum's “Ships, Clocks and Stars” exhibition.
Download or read book Brief and Simple Methods of Finding the Latitude and Longitude written by Alfred Challice Johnson and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Lost Art of Finding Our Way written by John Edward Huth and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before GPS, Google Earth, and global transit, humans traveled vast distances using only environmental clues and simple instruments. John Huth asks what is lost when modern technology substitutes for our innate capacity to find our way. Encyclopedic in breadth, weaving together astronomy, meteorology, oceanography, and ethnography, The Lost Art of Finding Our Way puts us in the shoes, ships, and sleds of early navigators for whom paying close attention to the environment around them was, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Haunted by the fate of two young kayakers lost in a fog bank off Nantucket, Huth shows us how to navigate using natural phenomena—the way the Vikings used the sunstone to detect polarization of sunlight, and Arab traders learned to sail into the wind, and Pacific Islanders used underwater lightning and “read” waves to guide their explorations. Huth reminds us that we are all navigators capable of learning techniques ranging from the simplest to the most sophisticated skills of direction-finding. Even today, careful observation of the sun and moon, tides and ocean currents, weather and atmospheric effects can be all we need to find our way. Lavishly illustrated with nearly 200 specially prepared drawings, Huth’s compelling account of the cultures of navigation will engross readers in a narrative that is part scientific treatise, part personal travelogue, and part vivid re-creation of navigational history. Seeing through the eyes of past voyagers, we bring our own world into sharper view.
Download or read book The Theory and Practice of the Longitude at Sea written by Samuel Dunn and published by . This book was released on 1778 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Method of Finding the Longitude at Sea written by William Wales and published by . This book was released on 1794 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Looking for Longitude written by Katy Barrett and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-17 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why make a joke out of a niche and complex scientific problem? That is the question at the heart of this book, which unearths the rich and surprising history of trying to find longitude at sea in the eighteenth century. Not simply a history on water, this is the story of longitude on paper, of the discussions, satires, diagrams, engravings, novels, plays, poems and social anxieties that shaped how people understood longitude in William Hogarth’s London. We start from a figure in one of Hogarth’s prints – a lunatic incarcerated in the madhouse of A Rake’s Progress in 1735 – to unpick the visual, mental and social concerns which entwined around the national concern to find a solution to longitude. Why does longitude appear in novels, smutty stories, political critiques, copyright cases, religious tracts and dictionaries as much as in government papers? This sheds new light on the first government scientific funding body – the Board of Longitude – established to administer vast reward money for anyone who found a means of accurately measuring longitude at sea. Meet the cast of characters involved in the search for longitude, from famous novelists and artists to almost unknown pamphleteers and inventors, and see how their interactions informed the fate of longitude’s most famous pursuer, the clockmaker John Harrison.
Download or read book Subject Index to the Catalogue of the Library of the Institution of Civil Engineers published 1895 written by Institution of Civil Engineers (Great Britain). Library and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An introduction to the lunar method of finding the Longitude in a ship at sea etc written by Samuel DUNN (Professor of Mathematics.) and published by . This book was released on 1790 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
