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The Quest for Longitude. Edited by WIT:rS.f.dxI J.H. ANDREWES.
Cambridge, MA: Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, 1996, 437 pp. 49.95. ISBN 0 9644329 0 0
This splendidly produced book is derived from a tricentennial celebration of the life of John Harrison, 1693-1776, held at Harvard University in 1993 to mark the triumph of his chronometers as scientifically sound and exquisitely 'engineered' solutions to the seafaring problem of finding longitude at sea - a challenge long seen as fundamental for astronomers and geographers alike.
This is the story of two rival methodologies. One, the lunar distance method, was first devised by Werner in 1514; the other was presaged in 1530 by Gemma Frisius when he envisaged taking to sea such a clock `that it...