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Finding an accurate and practical method of determining longitude took centuries of study and invention by some of the greatest scientists and engineers. Determining longitude relative to the meridian through some fixed location requires that observations be tied to a time scale that is the same at both locations, so the longitude problem ...
The principle is straightforward, but in practice finding a reliable method of determining longitude took centuries and required the effort of some of the greatest scientific minds. A location's north–south position along a meridian is given by its latitude , which is approximately the angle between the equatorial plane and the normal from ...
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time is a 1995 best-selling book by Dava Sobel about John Harrison, an 18th-century clockmaker who created the first clock (chronometer) sufficiently accurate to be used to determine longitude at sea—an important development in navigation.
Longitude by chronometer is a method, in navigation, of determining longitude using a marine chronometer, which was developed by John Harrison during the first half of the eighteenth century. It is an astronomical method of calculating the longitude at which a position line, drawn from a sight by sextant of any celestial body, crosses the ...
John Harrison (3 April [O.S. 24 March] 1693 – 24 March 1776) was an English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of how to calculate longitude while at sea.
In the early 1700s, a series of maritime disasters occurred, including the wrecking of a squadron of naval vessels on the Isles of Scilly in 1707. [7] Around the same time, mathematician Thomas Axe decreed in his will that a £1,000 prize be awarded for promising research into finding "true longitude" and that annual sums be paid to scholars involved in making corrected world maps.
A highly important breakthrough for the accurate determination of longitude came with the invention of the marine chronometer. The 1714 longitude prize offer for a method of determining longitude at sea, was won by John Harrison, a Yorkshire carpenter. He submitted a project in 1730, and in 1735 completed a clock based on a pair of counter ...
Since local apparent time could be determined with some ease, the problem centred on finding a means of determining (or in the case of chronometers, keeping) the time of the reference place when one is far away from it. For details of the efforts towards determining the longitude, see History of longitude.