Longitude
Subtitle: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Published: October 1, 1996
Language: eng
Number of pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9780140258790
First sentence: Once on a Wednesday excursion when I was a little girl, my father bought me a beaded wire ball that I loved.
Description: The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of one man's forty-year obsession to find a solution to the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day--"the longitude problem."

Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives and the increasing fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. One man, John Harrison, in complete opposition to the scientific community, dared to imagine a mechanical solution-a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. 

Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking, and opens a new window on our world.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgements; label: 1
title: Imaginary Lines; label: 2
title: The Sea Before Time; label: 3
title: Adrift in a Clockwork Universe; label: 4
title: Time in a Bottle; label: 5
title: Power of Sympathy; label: 6
title: The Prize; label: 7
title: Cogmaker's Journal; label: 8
title: The Grasshopper Goes to Sea; label: 9
title: Hands on Heaven's Clock; label: 10
title: The Diamond Timekeeper; label: 11
title: Trial by Fire and Water; label: 12
title: A Tale of Two Portraits; label: 13
title: The Second Voyage of Captain James Cook; label: 14
title: The Mass Production of Genius; label: 15
title: In the Meridian Courtyard; title: Sources; title: Index