'Longitude' - Science (well technology) with a human face

Longitude

The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

By Dava Sobel

I’ll say up front I enjoyed this book very much and I learned some interesting things.

However – I am amazed that a book entitled “Longitude” could make it to the New York Times Best Seller List and stay there a long time – but this one has. In fact, if it had not, I probably would not have read it.

Second, the subtitle is only half correct. It is the true story of a lone genius, but I have trouble accepting the idea that the problem he solved was “The Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time.” It was a very important commercial problem in the 18th Century and certainly attracted a lot of attention. But “scientific” is a stretch. What was interesting here is finding a solution was a competition between science and technology and in this case technology won.

The problem? How to determine a ship’s longitude. The scientific solutions were several – such as making accurate observation of the moons of Jupiter. But the problem with the scientific solutions were they were all very difficult to carry out on a moving ship and they depended on things like Jupiter or our own moon being in a convenient location in the sky which they are only some of the time. What was needed is a way to determine longitude on a daily – or more frequent – basis and it has to be reliable. Latitude is easy. Longitude, for reasons you’ll learn if you read the book, is not.

The solution, as every seafarer today knows is to have an incredibly accurate clock. (OK, today we have GPS, but not too long ago it was still a matter of clocks and I suspect they are still used.) But again the problem is the shipboard environment in which this clock is to be used. A sailing ship is beyond damp - it can be absolutely soaking where nothing dries out for days. And anything in a ship certainly gets banged around a lot, as the ship pounds from wave to wave and it has to operates in weather from sub-freezing to the sweltering tropics. Using early 18th-Century technology, just try to make a clock that can keep accurate time through that sort of hell and you’ll certainly be deserving of a great prize.

That’s what longitude is all about – but if it were just a geek story of describing elegant technical solutions, it would not have held my interest. It is the story of a lone genius and it’s his life and the unfair politics he faces in a science and technology community loaded with super egos, suspicion and bias, that make the story interesting. He also has a sort of tragic flaw – he’s more demanding of himself than others are of him. He can produce a satisfactory product that everyone think is great and refuse to deliver it for years because it doesn’t meet his own demanding standards.

So I enjoyed “Longitude.” It is entertaining, informative and brief – just the right length for the subject. But the best thing “Longitude” did was introduce to me to the work of this author, Fava Sobel. She’s special. I’m reading her “Galileo’s Daughter” right now and again, it is an excellent depiction of science as an activity carried out by humans amidst controversy, politics, and in Galileo’s case the same dumb conservative religious fanaticism we see alive and well today. What’s more, I find Galileo’s arguments regarding science and religion better than many I’ve herd today. But more on that when I finish the book and review it here.