Penguinlady's Full Review: Dava Sobel - Longitude: The True Story of a Lone G...
As a child, I used to read of the great explorers and discoverers with awe - how on earth could they find their way around the globe, when I could hardly go around the block without getting lost? Latitude was no problem, as long as you could identify Polaris. But longitude...
This book addresses the major component of that problem - how travellers established longitude. Turns out that they didn't - and that led to some terrifying adventures as sailors tracked back and forth across the oceans with no idea where they were. Because of its ramifications in commerce and warfare, the problem was so important that a competition was established to solve it.
The book focuses primarily on the efforts of one man, a clockmaker, to solve the riddle in the face of considerable competition and political infighting. He spent 20 years perfecting his timepiece - you'll have to read the book to understand what time has to do with it - building and then improving on several versions before coming up with a reliable instrument. He was so involved in his project, in fact, that he passed his passion on to his son, and never got around to claiming his prize, which had been withheld due to political pressure.
I found the scientific aspects of this book fascinating, but was a little disappointed in the impersonal way the story was told. I know the best non-fiction is written transparently, but I wanted to know more about Mr. Harrison, the person, and what drove him. How did he get involved in this? What drove him to abandon his clockmaking business and devote himself entirely to this problem for two decades? I didn't feel that I had any insight into these questions when I finished the book.
Also, the version I read, published in 1996, had no diagrams or schematics or drawings or photos of the existing instruments, which reside in Greenwich, England. I could have used some illustrations - trying to reconstruct the instruments in my mind from the descriptions takes a bit more imagination than I possess! However, I understand that the new edition of the book has rectified this lack, and it does include illustrations.
This could have been a GREAT book about a fascinating subject. It's not, and that's frustrating, but it certainly is a GOOD one, and I don't hesitate to recommend it to anyone with any interest at all in scientific development, exploration, history, or (somewhat limited) biography.
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Sobel presents the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of John Harrison s 40-year obsession with building the perfect timekeeper, kno...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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