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 360 Degrees Longitude written by John Higham and published by Easton Studio Press, LLC. This book was released on 2012-07-17 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much more than a travel narrative 360 Degrees Longitude: One Family’s Journey Around the World is a glimpse at what it means to be a “global citizen”—a progressively changing view of the world as seen through the eyes of an American family of four. After more than a decade of planning, John Higham and his wife September bid their high-tech jobs and suburban lives good-bye, packed up their home and set out with two children, ages eight and eleven, to travel around the world. In the course of the next 52 weeks they crossed 24 time zones, visited 28 countries and experienced a lifetime of adventures. Making their way across the world, the Highams discovered more than just different foods and cultures; they also learned such diverse things as a Chilean mall isn’t the best place to get your ears pierced, and that elephants appreciate flowers just as much as the next person. But most importantly, they learned about each other, and just how much a family can weather if they do it together. 360 Degrees Longitude employs Google’s wildly popular Google Earth as a compliment to the narrative. Using your computer you can spin the digital globe to join the adventure cycling through Europe, feeling the cold stare of a pride of lions in Africa, and breaking down in the Andes. Packed with photos, video and text, the online Google Earth companion adds a dimension not possible with mere paper and ink. Fly over the terrain of the Inca Trail or drill down to see the majesty of the Swiss Alps—without leaving the comfort of your chair.
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 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 Greenwich Time and the Longitude Official Millennium Edition written by Derek Howse and published by Philip Wilson Publishers. This book was released on 1997 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich has been revised to coincide with the Millenium. Color illustrations and updated text tell the story of Greenwich from its foundations in 1676 to its present status as Longitude 0°, the world's Prime Meridian for measuring longitude and time. The book covers the importance of longitude for navigation and traces the history of Greenwich Time, the basis of universal time-keeping. The book is co-published with the National Maritime Museum, where Derek Howse was the former Head of Navigation and Astronomy.
Download or read book Determination of the Difference of Longitude Between Washington and Paris written by United States Naval Observatory and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 128 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 Longitude and Latitude with Attitude written by Rufus McGaugh and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-10-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rufus McGaugh knew early on that he wanted to see the world-all of it. And, later on, he did just that.Longitude and Latitude, with Attitude chronicles Rufus's 49 years of travels around the globe to every country in the world. It relates his experiences, both harrowing and humorous, in entertaining and amusing (sometimes even instructive!) vignettes.Rufus, a Vietnam vet who was awarded the Purple Heart in 1970, became a Vietnam vet against the war, got a college degree, and taught social studies at Brownell Middle School in the affluent Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe for 39 years. During that time-and before and after-he spent his summers, vacations, and retirement fulfilling a life-long dream to travel to every corner of the Earth. He has visited countries near and far, well known and obscure (including the closed regimes of North Korea and Libya). He has met interesting people, seen fascinating sights, and observed unusual events.He has been hassled by the authorities in Russia (twice in one day). He was arrested-and later stalked by a leopard-in Zimbabwe. He met Miss America (well, Miss South Carolina) in Vietnam, outfoxed (or so he thought) a tailor in Hong Kong, and broke both arms bicycling in Cuba.Longitude and Latitude, with Attitude is the unpretentious, often comic, frequently informative chronicle of these and other adventures and misadventures he experienced on his journeys. Other wanderers like him-and armchair travelers everywhere-will be captivated by it. The lively writing is supplemented by more than 50 pictures that inveterate photographer Rufus has taken in the course of his trips.
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 When the Whales Leave written by Yuri Rytkheu and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fable of an indigenous Arctic people “offers profound considerations about stewardship of and people’s relationships to the natural world” (Publishers Weekly). Nau cannot remember a time when she was not one with the world around her: with the fast breeze, the green grass, the high clouds, and the endless blue sky above the Shingled Spit. But her greatest joy is to visit the sea, where whales gather every morning to gaily spout rainbows. Then one day, she finds a man in the mist where a whale should be: Reu, who has taken human form out of his Great Love for her. Together these first humans become parents to two whales, and then to mankind. Even after Reu dies, Nau continues on, sharing her story of brotherhood between the two species. But as these origins grow distant, the old woman’s tales are subsumed into myth—and her descendants are increasingly bent on parading their dominance over the natural world. Buoyantly translated into English for the first time by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse, this new entry in the Seedbank series is at once a vibrant retelling of the origin story of the Chukchi, a timely parable about the destructive power of human ego—and another unforgettable work of fiction from Yuri Rytkheu, “arguably the foremost writer to emerge from the minority peoples of Russia’s far north” (New York Review of Books). “We have so little intimate information about these Arctic people, and the writer’s deep emotional attachment to this landscape of ice (today melting away under global warming forces) makes every sentence seem a poetic revelation.” —Annie Proulx
Download or read book Longitudes and Attitudes written by Thomas L. Friedman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's leading observer of the international scene on the minute-by-minute events of September 11, 2001--before, during and after . As the Foreign Affairs columnist for the The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman is in a unique position to interpret the world for American readers. Twice a week, Friedman's celebrated commentary provides the most trenchant, pithy,and illuminating perspective in journalism. Longitudes and Attitudes contains the columns Friedman has published about the most momentous news story of our time, as well as a diary of his experiences and reactions during this period of crisis. As the author writes, the book is "not meant to be a comprehensive study of September 11 and all the factors that went into it. Rather, my hope is that it will constitute a 'word album' that captures and preserves the raw, unpolished, emotional and analytical responses that illustrate how I, and others, felt as we tried to grapple with September and its aftermath, as they were unfolding." Readers have repeatedly said that Friedman has expressed the essence of their own feelings, helping them not only by explaining who "they" are, but also by reassuring us about who "we" are. More than any other journalist writing, Friedman gives voice to America's awakening sense of its role in a changed world.
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 Encyclopaedia Britannica written by Hugh Chisholm and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 1090 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.
Download or read book Kendall s Longitude written by John Bendall and published by Austin Macauley. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maritime navigational tools could find latitude, but finding longitude remained elusive until Harrison developed the reliable sea clock, H4. Building on H4's success, Kendall made a series of nautical timekeepers, K1, K2 and K3. This is the story of the K2 timekeeper; its adventurous voyages, the people it touched, and its place in history. K2's first voyage, accompanied by the young Nelson, was nearly its last in the crushing Arctic ice. The next two expeditions saw it survive kidnappings, nautical intrigue, and gunpowder plots of the American revolutionary wars. The slave coasts of Africa followed. Bligh took K2 on the Bounty, but lost it in a fight with the mutineers in 1789. It was recovered by an American Quaker from Nantucket, only to be stolen by the Spanish. It rode on mules along the Andes before sailing into the Opium Wars. K2 finally returned to Greenwich in 1963. DRAMATIC, THREE NATION 'STORY OF TIME'
Download or read book Latitude Longitude and Direction written by Julia J. Quinlan and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2012-01-15 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains the concepts of latitude and longitude as well as the purpose of the compass rose on a map.
Download or read book Longitude by Wire written by Richard Stachurski and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, Richard Stachurski chronicles the amazing tale of discoveries made by American scientists as they worked to solve the life-threatening quandry faced by mariners of having accurate navigational charts, and to develop a precise method of measuring longitude.
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.
