Longitude found: the story of Harrison's clocks | Hacker News Reader

Longitude found: the story of Harrison's clocks

rmg.co.uk

26 pointsmrtedbear9 comments

If you're interested in this, read Dava Sobel's book, "Longitude". Harrison was the archetype of the stubborn, self-educated genius that stuck to his ideas, fought the system for most of his life, and then changed the way the world worked. Seriously entertaining read. You'll walk away with an appreciation for timekeeping and knowing how to find your latitude and longitude with an accurate watch, a chart of times at high noon in Greenwich, and a few odds and ends (like a stick, a nail, and a clouded view of the sun).

Paul Nahin's biography of Oliver Heaviside is a find, too. Nahin and Sobel between them have sewn up the historical science biography field. Heaviside's own books are available to buy, and are filled with neglected gems.

While I'm here, Don Eyles's account of the Apollo program and his role programming the moon landing, "Sunburst and Luminary" is notable. Ordered directly from his website https://www.sunburstandluminary.com/SLhome.html , it was delivered with gratifying alacrity.

Further afield, I read "Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth", by Marcia Bjornerud aloud to my kids. Their attention did not wander. Mine either. https://bookshop.org/books/reading-the-rocks-the-autobiograp...

Heaviside is buried near where I live. Minus the talent I empathize with his journey somewhat so I should really go and pay him a visit.

I liked Longitude and would recommend Galileo's Daughter, also by Dava Sibel. It's a biography of Galileo supplemented with letters he exchanged with his daughter, who was a Catholic nun.

My wife and I listened to that on a road trip and enjoyed it as well! The part that really sticks with me is how people were trying to drop weights off of the Tower of Pizza and use classical philosophy to figure out why the balls wanted to accelerate. Galileo pointed out that the reason why doesn't matter in experiments, it's the outcome that comes first and everything else follows. I was shocked that something like that was a huge breakthrough at the time.

As an aside, if you're ever in Florence, Italy, pay a visit to the Galileo museum. You'll get to see his desiccated fingers and a huge collection of medieval astronomical instruments that were as much art as science. Galileo's experimental devices looked a lot like things you'd see in a high school today, except made from beautiful wood and brass. It really blew me away.

His thought experiment was eye-opening, for me: what should happen if you drop a light and heavy ball connected together? Should the light ball hold back the heavy one? But the two together weigh more than either.

> It's a biography of Galileo supplemented with letters he exchanged with his daughter, who was a Catholic nun.

Note: he had two daughters, both nuns. (Which was really the only option for unmarried women at the time.)

It's just that the letters were only with one of them.

I read that book 20 years ago and absolutely loved it. When I went to visit relatives near London I went to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich (where the Prime Meridian is) to see Harrison's clocks.

There is an excellent British TV movie version with Jeremy Irons and Michael Gambon.

Longitude, 3h 20m, 2000.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192263/

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