Reddit Reddit reviews Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

We found 20 Reddit comments about Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
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20 Reddit comments about Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time:

u/TomTheNurse · 10 pointsr/todayilearned

There is a book written about John Harrison and his incredible work. It's a very good read. An aside. I was in a small museum in Bermuda and they had one of his original clocks on display. It was cool to see.

https://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-Problem/dp/080271529X

u/rabuf · 6 pointsr/news

The DOE did not write Common Core. Common Core is one standard, among a few others, that was in the works when Obama (early in his administration) set out some requirements to make some funding available. The requirement was, essentially, that the states that wanted the funding had to adopt some standard that met certain requirements, Common Core was one such standard that was in development. Many states chose to use Common Core, some developed their own (specifically Texas and Virginia).

It has pros and cons. Pros: Gets some things right about integrating cross-subject learning into the curricula. What does this mean? Students should exercise their reading, writing and math schools in a variety of areas to both reinforce the knowledge and skill set, and to demonstrate its utility beyond just passing English and math classes. How's this supposed to be done? Well, history gets reading and writing for free. Integrating math may be more difficult (IMO, if it's not an intuitive segue, it should be skipped). Sciences demonstrate math by default, so they're encouraged to add more reading/writing (writing is easy, have the students write up experiment reports, science fair projects, etc; reading - make it topical, in middle/high school give them books like Longitude to read or something).

Cons: No science standard. Standard may be overly ambitious for some grade levels. Standard was hastily constructed with little feedback. Rolled out to all grade levels rather than introduced over a period of time (most sensible approach, K-3 jumps in, expand it each year for 9 years until all of K-12 is under the selected standard). Testing requirements each year, which really ties back to things like No Child Left Behind, that affects school funding and the employment of educators and administrators (a huge pressure using dubious metrics).

u/GreyFox422 · 5 pointsr/Watches

[About Time](About Time: Celebrating Men's Watches https://www.amazon.com/dp/0764349058/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_mUazzb1CZSCQ7) is a great coffee table book and a great read.

[Longitude](Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time https://www.amazon.com/dp/080271529X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_OVazzbZN0WWP2) is about John Harrison and the invention of modern time keeping. This should be on everyone's list.

u/Wilawah · 4 pointsr/askscience

Good book on longitude

u/PLJVYF · 3 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

If you've taken high school trigonometry, you have the basic skills to make a pretty accurate map. You measure the angles between fixed points (where you're standing now, that tree over there, and the peak of that mountain), and measure the distances between them by walking and stretching out a chain of known length. This kind of laborious surveying is how borders were measured, inland maps made, and property measured. With a series of triangulations, it's easy to measure exactly a coastline or the course of a river, and to place mountains relative to them.

With a little more math (spherical trigonometry) and the right tool (a sextant), you could learn to measure the angle of the sun, moon, and stars relative to the horizon. With this information and a book of reference calculations (put out by an observatory, most famously the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in London, England), you could find with accuracy your latitude (distance north or south of the equator). This information is useful for placing features onto the map when you don't have a known starting point (like if your ship arrives at a new continent).

East-west measurement of Longitude was an especially hard problem, which explains why terrain features were often depicted on maps at the right spot north-south but off in the east-west axis. The solution was highly accurate clocks, so you could measure when local solar noon was, relative to solar noon in a fixed place (the Greenwich observatory, through which the Prime Meridian runs). This story is told famously and well in a short book called Longitude.

u/a_reluctant_texan · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook

I'm going to suggest a non-fiction book based on his sailing and piloting background. Longitude by Dava Sobel.

For some fiction , try James Michener. Lots of historical research went into his books. Maybe start with Alaska

u/adrienc · 2 pointsr/sailing

More on the longitude problem in Longitude, a great book by Dava Sobel.

u/peppermind · 2 pointsr/books

Dava Sobel writes about science in history, and she's fantastic. Longitude, in particular was great!

I also really like Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary

u/Cutlasss · 2 pointsr/AskHistory

Naval science back in the day was about cartography, charting the stars, the tides, and figuring out how to keep track of time and distance. There's a short book called Longitude that you may want to take a read of. As to the building of ships, that was more the apprenticeships of master craftsmen then a scientific approach. What we think of as a science and engineering approach to shipbuilding is more of a 20th century thing. You may see the start of trained engineers getting into it in the 19th century with the rise of the iron ship and steam power. But even at the start of the 20th century there were ships built which were failures, just because no one had really thought through what they were trying to do.

u/99trumpets · 2 pointsr/askscience

There's a fantastic little book about this ("Longitude"). A quick read and a great story - highly recommended for anybody into the history of science & the age of exploration.

I notice you can pick it up used from Amazon for forty-eight cents. Worth it.

u/mrbarky · 2 pointsr/booksuggestions

I don't know if this would work, but how about Longitude by Dava Sobel? It's about the development of a clock that could be carried on ships for navigation.

I know, it sounds dull, but it's actually a good story. And if you do find it boring it's really short (like 200 pages or so).

u/cepheus42 · 1 pointr/booksuggestions


A story about the development of accurate clocks so ships can tell their longitude: Longitude


A novel written in the style of Cervantes about the life of Cervantes (which was really an interesting life). The Death and Life of Miguel Cervantes

u/geekuskhan · 1 pointr/pics

I meant longitude in my previous comment. You might enjoy this book if you are interested in such things.

http://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-Problem/dp/080271529X

u/Peralton · 1 pointr/todayilearned

The book Longitude is a fascinating description of the search for accurate Longitude that surrounds the creation of this watch.

Harrison clearly had the right tech with the H4 watch, but lacked the political clout of the Lunar Distance crowd and was shut out from official recognition for having solved "The longitude problem".

u/ziatonic · 1 pointr/AskReddit

It should be known that ALL sea explorers (including Magellan) before the late 18th century were sailing willy nilly and were all essentially lucky idiots. They had no means of calculating longitude. They knew how north they were, but not how far east/west they were. Think about it, you can tell how far north you are by the stars and the length of day, but the since the earth rotates, how do you know how far west you are? The length of day at 40N for example, is the same length of time off the coast of Spain, as it is in the middle of the Atlantic, and also off the coast of New York.

With the increased amount of sea travel in the 1700s, losses from not knowing Longitude were becoming catastrophic. After losing thousands of men to shallow seas, The King of England issues a bounty on discovering longitude. And that's how the accurate pocketwatch (chronometer) was invented (it was the size of a dvd). With a proper clock sailors could FINALLY keep track of where they were. The clock was set on GMT, and by knowing what time sunrise and sunset was in London, however much later the sun set for them was how far they were away from the Prime Meridian and GMT. This is why lat and long degrees are giving in minutes and seconds.

Check out this book if you wanna know more. I love nautical history. http://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-Problem/dp/080271529X/

u/sdbear · 1 pointr/todayilearned
u/rpresser · 1 pointr/todayilearned

Available to read for free right now in Kindle Unlimited.

Also dramatized into a 2-part TV movie in 2000.

u/gatsler · 1 pointr/Cortex

Longitude by Dave Sobel

A book about how modern navigation was made possible through solving a seemingly impossible problem namely determining the longitude. At the time the solution was thought to be astronomy and the scientific community ignored the simple solution through watchmaking developed by a single man. A nice David vs. Goliath story about a guy fighting to be recognised for a simple mechanical solution to a problem thought to be impossible.