Paperback. Cream cover with black title. Portrait on front board.

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Longitude from Dava Sobel is a fascinating account of how a virtually unknown watchmaker named John Harrison conquered one of the oldest and thorniest problems surrounding the ocean voyages – the problem of accurately measuring longitude -, which stumped even the best of scientific minds for centuries.

Review: A simply brilliant book. If you never realised what a really big deal longitude is, you should read this. It’s not overly technical, and a very accessible piece of written history that isn’t even a tiny bit as dull as the title might seem to suggest. I can recommend the companion piece, which is a beautiful book with illustrations and detailed pictures of Harrison’s amazing and beautiful machines. You can see these things for yourself in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in London, the home of the prime meridian.

Dava Sobel (born June 15, 1947, The Bronx, New York) is an American writer of popular expositions of scientific topics. Her books include Longitude, about English clockmaker John Harrison, and Galileo’s Daughter, about Galileo’s daughter Maria Celeste.