The Illustrated Longitude: Illustrated Edition Book

When Dava Sobel's Longitude was published to universal acclaim in 1996, readers voiced only one regret: that it was not illustrated. Now William Andrewes, the man who organised and hosted the Longitude Symposium that inspired her book, has joined Sobel to create a richly illustrated version of her classic story. The Illustrated Longitude recounts in words and images the epic quest to solve the world's thorniest scientific problem of the 17th and 18th centuries. Throughout the great age of exploration, sailors attempted to navigate the oceans without any means of measuring their longitude. All too often, voyages ended in total disaster when both crew and cargo were captured or lost upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall. Thousands of lives and fortunes of seafaring nations hung on a resolution. To encourage a solution, governments established major prizes for anyone whose method or device proved successful. The largest reward, of £20,000, was offered by the British 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. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, imagined and built the unimaginable: a clock that solved the problem by keeping precise time at sea, today called the chronometer. His trials and tribulations to win the prize throughout a 40-year obsession are the culmination of this remarkable story.Read More