Dava Sobel's Longitude Essay

In the novel Longitude written by Dava Sobel and published by Walker, recaps the story of the true story of navigation history changing. This Popular Science novel draws attention to readers who take pleasure in historic events and scientific discoveries, much like many other works of Sobel. Dava Sobel was famous for her popular exhibitions of scientific topics, such as Longitude. In the last 14th century, the great lack of longitude calculations was a drastic battle for captains and their crew, and Britain was vulnerable to anyone to fix the problem. Clockmaker John Harrison seeks to triumph the contest of best clock in order to claim the prize. Though his grand amount of expertise, he must go through the challenges in order to win. The

This started the British to promise the reward to whoever would solve the problem. Sparking the inventors urgency to find the link to track longitude, they begin to experiment. Newton and Halley proposed the watch-based solution wasn’t the finest way in order to succeed. Many possibilities were given for the search. Astromomers and other people used the stars as a way to track and the moons route, which showed much potential. But to use this lunar solution involved much knowledge of the stars, which nobody had. An example of a scientist, Galileo, failed the attempt of using Jupiter’s moons as a clock, for it was too complex as well. Fifty years of assumptions and research was made in each works. Creators had problems like Galileo, creating a brilliant discoveries and maps, but being too complicated to finish. The five earliest contestants, Thacket, Newton, Halley, Flamsteed, and the Board of Longitude, were the only ones to obtain more accurate solutions to the problem of longitude, but none seemed to deliver the final product. Introducing to John Harrison, his passion toward clock making was a grand surprise at this time. For one that lived farther away than most inventors, his learning skills and research upon machinery and