problem of longitude
... For the next seventy years another common man would stand up in the face of snobbery and scepticism to solve the problem that cost Shovell and his me so dearly. Longitude. ... The earth as we know it is divided up into lines of longitude and latitude. Longitude being the lines running vertical from pole to pole like the segments of an orange and latitude the lines starting at the equator and working there way up and down the earth parallel to one another. ... Longitude on the other hand is strictly a man made concept. There is no natural prime meridian, nothing fixed or constant for which to work off and it is this which caused it to be the greatest problem of its time. ... The sun would tell there latitude and time, the compass their direction but as to longitude once sight of land was lost one mans guess was as rood as the next. After the 1707 disaster parliament under increased pressure from all sides passed a longitude act offering a reward of £20,000, a small fortune at the time to any man who could present “ a practical and useful means of determining longitude”. To find longitude is quite easy providing you have two vital things, the exact time at the point of venture and the exact time at the current location. Each hour of difference accounts for fifteen degrees longitude. Finding the time at your current location was no problem. ... The problem came when one needed to know the time at your point of venture. ... Meanwhile the kings bounty had raised the longitude problem to the forefront of peoples minds. ... At this stage Harrison turned his full attention to marine clocks realising that it was in longitude that he could make his name famous. ... Finally in the summer of 1730 he set off to London to present his ideas before the Board of Longitude. ... Impressed by what he saw and heard Halley sought to help even though he knew the board of longitude would not welcome a mechanical answer to what it saw as an astronomical question. ... The captain greatly impressed gave Harrison a letter praising the clock and six days later the board of longitude sat for the first time since its creation to judge this wonderful machine. ... He would then uses the difference in time to find the longitude. ... But while Halley had had an open mind and welcomed all solutions to the longitude problem Bradley felt little affinity for anything outside astronomy. ... The next morning as Madeira came into sight Captain Digges proclaimed “he would buy the first longitude timekeeper that William and is father put up for sale” . ... The problem of longitude was one that touched some of the greatest names of science ever and yet it was a carpenter who solved it.