Let'sgoflying!
Touchdown! Greaser!
Its the name of the book. By Dava Sobel.
Its all about the enormous effort that was placed into finding a solution to 'The Longitude Problem', the navigational conundrum facing (mostly) seamen who were navigating the oceans during the 1500s -1700s. It involves Gallileo, Newton, Hooke (of microscope fame), Halley (of comet fame) putting their brains on the problem.
Finding Latitude was always relatively easy. But Longitude not only eluded the most erudite of all scholars, astronomers, cartographers and mathematicians of the time....but it was sinking ships left and right, killing thousands of sailors each year. This was due to navigational errors that sent them either off-course and wandering for months or into rocks. No GPS back then. Not even a radio signal! Governments were putting up huge rewards to anyone who could come up with a reliable, repeatable way to ascertain longitude. The British government itself had instituted The Longitude Act which had a Longitude Committee whose duty was to find a solution and had millions (in today's dollars) available to solve the mystery.
I have not read the whole thing yet but it is great reading. I had no idea what a huge thing this was back then. I won't spoil it by telling the solution...don't you either. Get the book and find out. Nice to have a little history to something we all take for granted in aviation today but is a huge part of what we do - navigating.
You would not beleive the quackish ideas that were proposed at the time, encouraged by the reward moneys available. Cannons booming from fixed ships, stationed across the ocean? One involved wounding a dog, then carrying the dog on the journey. The home port would put a painful poultice onto an article of the dog's at a high noon each day and the dog, hundreds or thousands of miles away, was supposed to yelp in pain as the powder was applied, to indicate the time at home! Not very successful! Another involved a man who spent 40 years of his life cataloguing the stars!
Its all about the enormous effort that was placed into finding a solution to 'The Longitude Problem', the navigational conundrum facing (mostly) seamen who were navigating the oceans during the 1500s -1700s. It involves Gallileo, Newton, Hooke (of microscope fame), Halley (of comet fame) putting their brains on the problem.
Finding Latitude was always relatively easy. But Longitude not only eluded the most erudite of all scholars, astronomers, cartographers and mathematicians of the time....but it was sinking ships left and right, killing thousands of sailors each year. This was due to navigational errors that sent them either off-course and wandering for months or into rocks. No GPS back then. Not even a radio signal! Governments were putting up huge rewards to anyone who could come up with a reliable, repeatable way to ascertain longitude. The British government itself had instituted The Longitude Act which had a Longitude Committee whose duty was to find a solution and had millions (in today's dollars) available to solve the mystery.
I have not read the whole thing yet but it is great reading. I had no idea what a huge thing this was back then. I won't spoil it by telling the solution...don't you either. Get the book and find out. Nice to have a little history to something we all take for granted in aviation today but is a huge part of what we do - navigating.
You would not beleive the quackish ideas that were proposed at the time, encouraged by the reward moneys available. Cannons booming from fixed ships, stationed across the ocean? One involved wounding a dog, then carrying the dog on the journey. The home port would put a painful poultice onto an article of the dog's at a high noon each day and the dog, hundreds or thousands of miles away, was supposed to yelp in pain as the powder was applied, to indicate the time at home! Not very successful! Another involved a man who spent 40 years of his life cataloguing the stars!
