Longitude: The Greatest Scientific Problem Of His Time

Longitude is not a topic that most people pay attention to today. In the 1700s, the topic of longitude was very much talked about by many scientists and ship captains. The story of how longitude came about is told in Dava Sobel’s book, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. The discovery of longitude played an important role in fulfilling/satisfying the need for ships to cross the Atlantic safely and more accurately. One can say that Columbus began the Age of Exploration when he took his voyage across the Atlantic in the 1400’s. Many Europeans were curious and wanted to explore this New World that Columbus had discovered. Columbus himself didn’t know how to properly navigate that is

Many governments of many different countries began to fund programs to help find it. On July 8, 1714 Queen Anne funded the Longitude Act; this act establishes a blue ribbon panel of judges. There was also another group of scientist who was funded by the government to solve longitude problem. The importance of finding out Longitude was so big that as Sobel stated, “Board of Longitude perhaps the world’s first official research-and-development agency…By the time it finally disbanded in 1828, it had disbursed funds in excess of 100,000” (p.54,55).
Unlike latitude where it was already figure out longitude was very much needed to sail through the Atlantic. The problem ships were getting lost. They were getting wrecked. Sailors were relying on latitude to get to their destination. But latitude was not enough. Ships did not manage to get where they wanted to go. Ships got wrecked. But why was solving Longitude so difficult? Solving the longitude problem was difficult because there was no way of traveling through the Atlantic and getting lost without a