Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time Free Audiobook Download by Dava Sobel


Longitude is the story of John Harrison and his lifelong quest to find a method to determine longitude. His skill set was in making clocks, so he made a clock that did not need any sort of mercury or moving parts. The clock worked for two years, but it was never tested correctly. His clock was eventually deemed unreliable and ignored by maritime leaders, so Harrison's quest for finding the best way to measure longitude came to an end after about 45 years.

Longitude is the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time. Commissioned by King George III, British astronomer John Harrison made and tested more than 1,000 water clocks over three decades in the hope that he could determine longitude at sea. The invention of the chronometer made possible sailors' navigation, but Harrison's struggles to keep his work secret received little recognition during his lifetime.

Longitude is the story of John Harrison, a British clockmaker who single-handedly solved the greatest scientific problem of his time. The day will come when the sun sets in the west and rises in the east. This is called 'longitude' and to measure it you need a clock that keeps perfect time. In order to do this, Harrison designed a machine that made use of gravity to tell time by swinging pendulums. However, he was not satisfied with simply making clocks - he wanted to make them accurate, too. To do so, he needed better and more precise pendulum material than was available at the time and so began an obsessive quest for ever-tighter standards in metrology that eventually led him to creating one of history

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time is the story of John Harrison, an obscure clockmaker who transformed the world's timekeeping. In 1761 he built a watch that kept time as accurately as any that had ever been made. For decades no one paid attention to his extraordinary clocks, but then James Watt and Matthew Boulton hired him to make precision steam engines, which were crucial components in the Industrial Revolution. Sobel tells this true story in a very entertaining way and highlights Harrison's determination to solve the problem of longitude.

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time is an audiobook written by Dava Sobel. It tells the story of John Harrison's creation of a marine chronometer which was used to solve the longitude problem and how it transformed the world, but Harrison's life had many challenges that he overcame as well.

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel download is a riveting lecture about the history of science, and how it all began with one man, John Harrison, who discovered the solution to what would become known as the "longitude problem."

Published Date 2005-10-11
Duration 4 hours 20 minutes
Author Dava Sobel
Narrated Kate Reading, Neil Armstrong
Reviews
(6 Reviews)
Abridged No
Is It Free? 30-days Free
Category Science & Technology
Parent Category General, History, Science & Technology

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