Best Quotes from The Illustrated Longitude by Dava Sobel with Page Numbers

The bronze orb that Atlas held aloft, like the wire toy in my hands, was a see-through world, defined by imaginary lines.

The placement of the prime meridian is a purely political decision.

Here lies the real, hard-core difference between latitude and longitude— beyond the superficial difference in line direction that any child can see.

Every great captain in the Age of Exploration became lost at sea despite the best available charts and compasses.

As more and more sailing vessels set out to conquer or explore new territories, to wage war, or to ferry gold and commodities between foreign lands, the wealth of nations floated upon the oceans.

The active quest for a solution to the problem of longitude persisted over four centuries and across the whole continent of Europe.

In the course of their struggle to find longitude, scientists struck upon other discoveries that changed their view of the universe.

The search for a solution to the longitude problem assumed legendary proportions, on a par with discovering the Fountain of Youth.

He invented a clock that would carry the true time from the home port, like an eternal flame, to any remote corner of the world.

To unravel them now—to retrace their story in an age when a network of orbiting satellites can nail down a ship’s position within a few feet in just a moment or two—is to see the globe anew.

They that go down to the Sea in Ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep.—Psalm 107

The pathetic state of navigation alarmed the renowned English diarist Samuel Pepys.

It is most plain, from the confusion all these people are in, how to make good their reckonings, even each man’s with itself... that it is by God’s Almighty Providence and great chance... that there are not a great many more misfortunes and ill chances in navigation than there are.

The sudden loss of so many lives, so many ships, and so much honor all at once... underscored the folly of ocean navigation without a means for finding longitude.

The souls of Sir Clowdisley’s lost sailors—another two thousand martyrs to the cause—precipitated the famed Longitude Act of 1714.

...the longitude question into the forefront of national affairs.

Long voyages waxed longer for lack of longitude, and the extra time at sea condemned sailors to the dread disease of scurvy.

...scurvy all the while whittled away at the crew, killing six to ten men every day.

He knew that if he failed, and if the sailors continued dying at the same rate, there wouldn’t be enough hands left to man the rigging.

...the ship had to retrace her course. On June 9, 1741, the Centurion dropped anchor at last.

The rotating, revolving Earth is a cog in a clockwork universe.

When mariners looked to the heavens for help with navigation, they found a combination compass and clock.

That was the noon siren.

If, for example, a total lunar eclipse was predicted for midnight over Madrid, and sailors bound for the West Indies observed it at eleven o’clock at night their time, then they were one hour earlier than Madrid.

The idea was way ahead of its time.

Galileo later named these last the Medicean stars.

He allowed himself dreams of glory, foreseeing the day when whole navies would float on his timetables of astronomical movements.

Galileo himself conceded that, even on land, the pounding of one’s heart could cause the whole of Jupiter to jump out of the telescope’s field of view.

Galileo stuck to his moons the rest of his life, following them faithfully until he was too old and too blind to see them any longer.

The success of Galileo’s method had mapmakers clamoring for further refinements in predicting eclipses of the Jovian satellites.

Time is to clock as mind is to brain.

Even when the bulbs of the hourglass shatter, when darkness withholds the shadow from the sundial, when the mainspring winds down so far that the clock hands hold still as death, time itself keeps on.

The most we can hope a watch to do is mark that progress.

Timepieces don’t really keep time. They just keep up with it, if they’re able.

The shortcomings of the watch, however, failed to squelch the dream of what it might do once perfected.

Timing the motion of the lamp by his own pulse, Galileo saw that the length of a pendulum determines its rate.

Huygens, best known as the first great horologist, swore he arrived at the idea for the pendulum clock independently of Galileo.

Huygens published another book in 1665, the Kort Onderwys, his directions for the use of marine timekeepers.

Once again, Huygens found himself under pressure to prove himself the inventor of a new advance in timekeeping.

As far as they could see, the answer would come from the heavens—from the clockwork universe and not from any ordinary clock.

The College will the whole world measure; Which most impossible conclude, And Navigation make a pleasure By finding out the Longtitude.

Every Tarpaulin shall then with ease Sayle any ship to the Antipodes.

Whether this longitude solution was intended as science or satire, the author points out that submitting 'a Dog to the misery of having always a Wound about him' is no more macabre or mercenary than expecting a seaman to put out his own eye for the purposes of navigation.

A much more humane solution lay in the magnetic compass.

The method seemingly answered the dream of laying legible longitude lines on the surface of the globe.

This so-called magnetic variation method had one distinct advantage over all the astronomical approaches: It did not depend on knowing the time at two places at once.

In a long afternoon of pleasant conversation, this pair hit on a scheme for solving the longitude problem.

Mr. Whiston, concurring heartily, recalled that the blasts of the great guns fired in the engagement with the French fleet... had reached his own ears in Cambridge.

Thus assured, he worked with Ditton on an article that appeared the following week in The Guardian, laying out the necessary steps.

Despite their scheme’s insurmountable shortcomings, Whiston and Ditton succeeded in pushing the longitude crisis to its resolution.

This was of course a gross understatement.

The fact that the government was willing to award such huge sums for 'Practicable and Useful' methods that could miss the mark by many miles eloquently expresses the nation's desperation over navigation's sorry state.

The Longitude Act established a blue ribbon panel of judges that became known as the Board of Longitude.

The board... exercised discretion over the distribution of the prize money.

The concept of 'discovering the longitude' became a synonym for attempting the impossible.

After 1714, with their potential value exponentially raised, such schemes proliferated.

In a word, I am satisfied that my Reader begins to think that the Phonometers, Pyrometers, Selenometers, Heliometers, and all the Meters are not worthy to be compared with my Chronometer.

He had also taken the precaution of suspending the whole machine in gimbals, like a ship's compass, to keep it from thumping about on a storm-tossed deck.

To prove worthy of the £20,000 prize, a clock had to find longitude within half a degree.

A good watch may serve to keep a recconing at Sea for some days and to know the time of a celestial Observ[at]ion.

Harrison educated himself with the same hunger for knowledge that kept young Abraham Lincoln reading through the night by candlelight.

He went from, if not rags, then assuredly humble beginnings to riches by virtue of his own inventiveness and diligence.

Harrison started out as a carpenter, spending the first thirty years of his life in virtual anonymity before his ideas began to attract the world’s attention.

No one knows when or how Harrison first heard word of the longitude prize.

Longitude posed the great technological challenge of Harrison’s age.

A good mechanical clock had to be reckoned with the clockwork universe, and this was done through the application of some mathematical legerdemain called the Equation of Time.

Harrison understood these calculations in his youth but also made his own astronomical observations and worked out the equation data by himself.

Harrison’s intimate knowledge of wood is perhaps better appreciated in modern times, when hindsight and X-ray vision can validate the choices he made.

A clock without oil, which till then was absolutely unheard of, would stand a much better chance of keeping time at sea than any clock yet built.

The only thing more remarkable than the Harrison clocks’ extraordinary accuracy was the fact that such unprecedented precision had been achieved by a couple of country bumpkins working independently.

Harrison knew the identity of one of the most famous members of the Board of Longitude—the great Dr. Edmond Halley.

Harrison pointed out the foibles of H-1.

Harrison had everything to gain.

Harrison took the board’s proprietary interest as a positive incentive.

Despite the hoopla, the Admiralty dragged its feet for a year in arranging the formal trial.

What did it matter what the Royal Society thought of H-2, if its mechanism did not pass muster with him?

Harrison wrote this assumption prominently, a bit pompously, on the face of the second timekeeper.

But it wasn’t good enough for Harrison.

His brother James helped, though neither one of them signed the timepiece, strangely enough.

Now, H-1 had elevated the whole subject of finding longitude from the status of a joke to the highest level of combined art and science.

The broad expanse of sky served as dial for this celestial clock, while the sun, the planets, and the stars painted the numbers on its face.

It took about four hours to calculate the time from the heavenly dial— when the weather was clear, that is.

Perfection of the two methods blazed parallel trails of development down the decades from the 1730s to the 1760s.

Even if the ship pitched and rolled, the objects in the navigator’s sights retained their relative positions vis-à-vis one another.

The quadrant quickly evolved into an even more accurate device, called a sextant.

A good navigator could now stand on the deck of his ship and measure the lunar distances.

The mapping of the heavens, after all, was merely a prelude to the more challenging problem of charting the moon’s course through the fields of stars.

Each one doing his small part on a project of immense proportions.

Clearly, a man who mastered the mathematical manipulation of all this arcane information, while still keeping his sea legs, could justly congratulate himself.

John Harrison offered the world a little ticking thing in a box.

"Rome wasn’t built in a day, they say."

"But Harrison declined. He asked that the membership be given to his son William instead."

"Although he still wasn’t altogether thrilled with its performance, Harrison deemed H-3 small enough to meet the definition of shipshape."

"In a retrospective review of his career milestones, John Harrison wrote of H-3 with gratitude for the hard lessons it taught him."

"I think I may make bold to say, that there is neither any other Mechanical or Mathematical thing in the World that is more beautiful or curious in texture than this my watch or Timekeeper for the Longitude."

"H-4 enjoyed something of the status of a sacred relic or a priceless work of art that must be preserved for posterity."

"The messy oil used for horological lubrication mandates scheduled maintenance... which would require the complete dismantling of all parts—and incur risk that some of the parts, no matter how carefully held with tweezers and awe, would be damaged."

"It bears a stronger resemblance to the Jefferys watch than to any of its legitimate predecessors, H-1, H-2, or H-3."

"This watch proved remarkably dependable. Harrison’s descendants recall that it was always in his pocket."

"H-4 may look forward to a well-preserved life of undetermined longevity."

For the great donor of the prize is just, as Jove who rules the skies.

Maskelyne took up, then embraced, then came to personify the lunar distance method.

He kept records of everything, from astronomical positions to events in his personal life.

Nevil was always and only Nevil.

He worked his way through college, performing menial tasks in exchange for reduced tuition.

Maskelyne set out for St. Helena in January 1761 as part of a small but global scientific armada.

Masked by a cloud, Maskelyne missed the end of the transit.

This work, coupled with his prowess on the longitude frontier, more than made up for his problems in viewing Venus.

William suspected that Dr. Bradley had deliberately delayed the trial for his personal gain.

Whatever the cause of the delay, the Board convened to take action shortly after William returned to London in October.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; For now hath time made me his numbering clock; My thoughts are minutes.

Sir . . . you are the strangest and most obstinate creature that I have ever met with.

I will give you my word to give you the money, if you will but do it!

Adding to the tension of these developments, Nathaniel Bliss broke the long tradition of longevity associated with the title of astronomer royal.

Harrison had cause to cringe at the casual manner in which his case was opened and aired.

The Watch proved to tell the longitude within ten miles—three times more accurately than the terms of the Longitude Act demanded!

I stormed out of more than one board meeting, and was heard swearing that I would not comply with the outrageous demands.

What a time to sit for a portrait.

He wore a gentleman’s white wig and has the clearest, smoothest skin imaginable.

Even seated he assumes an erect bearing and a look of self-satisfied, but not smug, accomplishment.

By adding generous portions of the German staple to the diet of his English crew, the great circumnavigator kicked scurvy overboard.

Cook made it his oceangoing vegetable, and sauerkraut went on saving sailors’ lives.

Indeed, Mr. Harrison’s watch cannot be depended upon to keep the Longitude within a degree in a West India voyage of six weeks.

Meanwhile, H-4 would indeed 'be of considerable advantage to navigation'.

It would not be doing justice to Mr. Harrison and Mr. Kendall if I did not own that we have received very great assistance from this useful and valuable timepiece.

Harrison charged that the ex-sailors were too old and wheezy to climb the steep hill up to the Observatory.

I must here take note that indeed our error can never be great, so long as we have so good a guide as the watch.

King George had promised William, 'By God, Harrison, I will see you righted!'

The board viewed H-4 and K-1 as identical twins.

Cook called K-1 'our never failing guide, the Watch.'

When John Harrison died, on March 24, 1776, exactly eighty-three years to the day after his birth in 1693, he held martyr status among clockmakers.

It became a boom industry in a maritime nation.

Indeed, some modern horologists claim that Harrison’s work facilitated England’s mastery over the oceans.

For it was by dint of the chronometer that Britannia ruled the waves.

The marine timekeeper had to provide more than ease of use and greater accuracy. It had to become more affordable.

Kendall tried to topple Harrison with a cheap imitation of the original Watch.

His own economic need may have inspired him in this pursuit.

By sticking to a single basic design, Earnshaw could turn out an Earnshaw chronometer in about two months.

The chronometer’s credibility grew and grew.

The infinite practicality of John Harrison’s approach had been demonstrated so thoroughly that its once formidable competition simply disappeared.

I am standing on the prime meridian of the world, zero degrees longitude, the center of time and space, literally the place where East meets West.

At night, buried lights shine through the glass-covered meridian line, so it glows like a man-made midocean rift, splitting the globe in two equal halves.

Greenwich mean time, by which the world sets its watch, is indicated far more precisely, to within millionths of seconds.

Sailors all over the world who relied on Maskelyne’s tables began to calculate their longitude from Greenwich.

In 1884, at the International Meridian Conference... they declared the Greenwich meridian the prime meridian of the world.

Day begins at Greenwich. Time zones the world over run a legislated number of hours ahead of or behind Greenwich mean time.

The ceremony of the ball continues on a daily basis in the Meridian Courtyard, as it has done every day since 1833.

It seems only proper that more than half of Gould’s repair work... fell to H-3, which had taken Harrison the longest time to build.

...I nursed myself back to health and peace of mind.

With his marine clocks, John Harrison tested the waters of space-time.