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 The Illustrated Longitude written by Dava Sobel and published by Paw Prints. This book was released on 2008-10-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new illustrated edition of the best-selling Longitude chronicles the tale of the eighteenth-century inventor John Harrison, who created the chronometer and, in the process, saved thousands of lives and great fortunes. Reprint.
Download or read book Illustrated Longitude written by Dava Sobel and published by Penguin Canada. This book was released on 2003 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fully illustrated edition of the international best-seller "Longitude." "The Illustrated Longitude" recounts in words and images the epic quest to solve the greatest scientific problem of the eighteenth and three prior centuries: determining how a captain could pinpoint his ship's location at sea. All too often throughout the ages of exploration, voyages ended in disaster when crew and cargo were either lost at sea or destroyed upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall. Thousands of lives and the fortunes of nations hung on a resolution to the longitude problem. To encourage a solution, governments established prizes for anyone whose method or device proved successful. The largest reward of 20,000-- truly a king's ransom-- was offered by Britain's Parliament in 1714. The scientific establishment-- from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton-- had been certain that a celestial answer would be found and invested untold effort in this pursuit. By contrast, John Harrison imagined and built the unimaginable: a clock that told perfect time at sea, known today as the chronometer. Harrison's trials and tribulations during his forty-year quest to win the prize are the culmination of this remarkable story. "The Illustrated Longitude" brings a new and important dimension to Dava Sobel's celebrated story. It contains the entire original narrative of "Longitude," redesigned to accompany 183 images chosen by William Andrewes-- from portraints of every important figure in the story to maps and diagrams, scientifc instruments, and John Harrison's remarkable sea clocks themselves. Andrewes's elegant captions and sidebars on scientific and historical events tell their own story of longitude, paralleling and illuminating Sobel's memorable tale.
Download or read book Longitude written by Dava Sobel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-11-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the forty-year effort of John Harrison to invent the chronometer, the first instrument able to keep accurate time for navigational purposes.
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 Discovery of Longitude The written by Joan Marie Galat and published by Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-09-14 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientific discovery changes the world! Discover the fascinating story behind one of the most important changes to nautical navigation in this nonfiction book for young readers. More than 300 years ago, explorers wandered the seas using unreliable maps. What they needed to know was the longitude of their locations, but for that they needed accurate time keeping. Unfortunately, no accurate source of time measurement at sea existed. In 1714 the British government decided to offer a reward to anyone who could solve the problem. Learned men and great thinkers alike tried unsuccessfully to work out a solution. They declared it unsolvable! Carpenter John Harrison was intrigued; he thought he might have a solution. He worked for years to design a clock that functioned accurately at sea, even though no one believed he could do it. Even after his timepiece was demonstrated effective at sea, he was still not acknowledged for his ingenious solution. It took many years and intervention by the king to grant Harrison the recognition and reward he deserved for solving the problem of how to accurately track longitude and for winning the British government prize. The book offers a detailed map of the world at that time and includes the advancements in the use of longitude since then.
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 Longitude Prize written by Joan Dash and published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2000-10-13 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of John Harrison, inventor of watches and clocks, who spent forty years working on a time-machine which could be used to accurately determine longitude at sea.
Download or read book There s a Map on My Lap written by Tish Rabe and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cat in the Hat introduces beginning readers to maps–the different kinds (city, state, world, topographic, temperature, terrain, etc.); their formats (flat, globe, atlas, puzzle); the tools we use to read them (symbols, scales, grids, compasses); and funny facts about the places they show us (“Michigan looks like a scarf and a mitten! Louisiana looks like a chair you can sit in!”).
Download or read book Galileo s Daughter written by Dava Sobel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by a long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of Galileo's daughter, a cloistered nun, Dava Sobel has written a biography unlike any other of the man Albert Einstein called "the father of modern physics- indeed of modern science altogether." Galileo's Daughter also presents a stunning portrait of a person hitherto lost to history, described by her father as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me." Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's grand public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was about to be overturned. In that same time, while the bubonic plague wreaked its terrible devastation and the Thirty Years' War tipped fortunes across Europe, one man sought to reconcile the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic with the heavens he revealed through his telescope. With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Dava Sobel's previous book Longitude, Galileo's Daughter is an unforgettable story
Download or read book Longitude written by Dava Sobel and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2011-04-28 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest: the search for the solution of how to calculate longitude and the unlikely triumph of an English genius. With a Foreword by Neil Armstrong.
Download or read book Smooth and Rough written by Lisa Bullard and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2006 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A digital solution for your classroom with features created with teachers and students in mind: - Perpetual license - 24 hour, 7 days a week access - No limit to the number of students accessing one title at a time - Provides a School to Home connection wherever internet is available - Easy to use - Ability to turn audio on and off - Words highlighted to match audio Provides an introduction to concepts of smooth and rough, comparing some animals that are rough with some animals that are smooth.
Download or read book Sea Clocks written by Louise Borden and published by . This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Harrison worked tirelessly for over 40 years to create a perfect clock, so that sailors could accurately work out their location at sea. Illustrated throughout, Borden's story highlights the drama, disappointments and successes that filled Harrison's quest to invent the perfect sea clock.
Download or read book Time and Navigation written by Andrew Kenneth Johnston and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you want to know where you are, you need a good clock. The surprising connection between time and placeais explored inaTime and Navigation- The Untold Story of Getting from Here to There, the companion book to the National Air and Space Museum exhibition of the same name. Today we use smartphones and GPS, but navigating has not always been so easy. The oldest "clock" is Earth itself, and the oldest means of keeping time came from observing changes in the sky. Early mariners like the Vikings accomplished amazing feats of navigation without using clocks at all. Pioneering seafarers in the Age of Exploration used dead reckoning and celestial navigation; later innovations such as sextants and marine chronometers honed these techniques by measuring latitude and longitude. When explorers turned their sights to the skies, they built on what had been learned at sea. For example, Charles Lindbergh used a bubble sextant on his record-breaking flights. World War II led to the development of new flight technologies, notably radio navigation, since celestial navigation was not suited for all-weather military operations. These forms of navigation were extended and enhanced when explorers began guiding spacecraft into space and across the solar system. Astronauts combined celestial navigation technology with radio transmissions. The development of the atomic clock revolutionized space flight because it could measure billionths of a second, thereby allowing mission teams to navigate more accurately. Scientists and engineers applied these technologies to navigation on earth to develop space-based time and navigation services such as GPS that is used every day by people from all walks of life. While the history of navigation is one of constant change and innovation, it is also one of remarkable continuity. Time and Navigation tells the story of navigation to help us understand where we have been and how we got there so that we can understand where we are going.
Download or read book Latitude and Longitude written by Rebecca Aberg and published by Children's Press(CT). This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The popular Rookie Books expand their horizons - to all corners of the globe! With this series all about geography, emergent readers will take off on adventures to cities, nations, waterways, and habitats around the world...and right in their own backyards.
Download or read book The Glass Universe written by Dava Sobel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From #1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel, the "inspiring" (People), little-known true story of women's landmark contributions to astronomy A New York Times Book Review Notable Book Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Economist, Smithsonian, Nature, and NPR's Science Friday Nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award "A joy to read.” —The Wall Street Journal In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades—through the generous support of Mrs. Anna Palmer Draper, the widow of a pioneer in stellar photography—enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight. Their ranks included Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid who went on to identify ten novae and more than three hundred variable stars; Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system that was adopted by astronomers the world over and is still in use; and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard—and Harvard’s first female department chair. Elegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, The Glass Universe is the hidden history of the women whose contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.
Download or read book John Harrison and the Quest for Longitude written by and published by . This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Harrison and the Quest for Longitude, in a revised and updated edition, is a fascinating account of the life and achievements of John Harrison, the man who designed and built the first accurate marine chronometers. Inspired by the prize offered in 1714 to provide a solution to the problem of determining longitudinal position at sea, John Harrison - a carpenter by trade - set out to develop portable clocks that would rival even the most precise watches of the time. His famous 'H' timepieces went on to revolutionise sea travel and save many thousands of lives. Now housed in the collection of Royal Observatory Greenwich, they are milestones in clock- making history. Beautifully illustrated with images that showcase the intricate detail and mechanisms of the timepieces,John Harrison and the Quest for Longitudetells the story of one man driven by the need to solve one of the greatest practical problems of his time.
