Oh, thank you for reading this and summarizing it for us! I've seen this book around but never read it.
Hilariously, one of the reasons I never read it is because all I knew about the longitude problem I learned from Carry On, Mr. Bowditch which is a Newbery Award winner which is a fictionalization of the life of Nathaniel Bowditch, an American mathematician/navigator. I'd forgotten most of what I learned from it, but I did a bit of browsing and Bowditch's contributions were all in the "astronomy" way of doing things (since even after Harrison, chronometers were pretty expensive) -- he figured out a better way of taking/computing the lunar measurement needed to get Greenwich/London time, and even more importantly he redid all the computations of the mathematical tables that are needed to get the time from the astronomical measurement, because the tables had many errors in them. So basically this was a HUGE deal at the time, but isn't particularly today because once good timekeepers were a thing, no one really needed these huge tables anymore. (I actually bought a real biography of Bowditch a while back which I never got all the way through, but this might be a good impetus.) Anyway, I once picked up Longitude many years ago, and on seeing there was no Bowditch, put it back down and wandered away :P (Yes, indeed, all I know about history comes from historical fiction and SF/fantasy novels.)
Me: Well, I know why I think the longitude problem is interesting, but why does mildred think it's interesting? I don't think it has anything to do with Fr-- Mildred: Now, if you're me, the words "Lisbon with Admiral Norris in 1736" is a magic phrase that means "Peter Keith." Me: Welp, guess that one's answered!
But instead of advertising how great his invention was, Harrison proved himself a true engineer by pointing out its defects and talking about how he knew he could make a better one, and make it smaller, if they just gave him £500 and some more time to work on it. Once it was up to his standards, he'd submit it for a trial run, but not now. (I laughed so hard in recognition and knew I immediately had to share with [personal profile] cahn. Engineer mentality at its finest!)
LOL! YUP.
Euler gets a cameo in the book for winning a prize for his role in furthering the cause, by reducing certain celestial motions to elegant equations and corresponding with an English astronomer who was able to apply those equations to the longitude problem.
This may be a different thing from what you're talking about, but when I was browsing today to remember about Bowditch, I found that Euler made the calculation of astronomical time (vs. chronograph time) possible by inventing Euler's method, which is basically a very simple way (at least, in these days of computers it's simple) to numerically approximate the solution to a differential equation (here, to predict the position of the moon for those lunar calculations, which is a complex earth-sun-moon three-body problem that one can't generally solve analytically). In the age of computers, this is basically Baby's First Numerical Method, but I'd never known the historical context behind why it was formulated in the first place!
Ha, so I had also read Carry On, Mr. Bowditch and was approaching this book with that as context. Which is one reason I'm side-eyeing the author's severe downplaying of the role of astronomical calculations after Harrison had solved the chronometer problem, because last I checked, both Bowditch and, a hundred years later, Worsley in 1917 in Antarctic waters, were doing the "taking sightings, looking up tables in a book, doing calculations" thing that she disparages. The book briefly mentions that astronomical measurements and calculations continued to be necessary, but wow is the treatment one-sided.
That said, because I knew a few things about the astronomical aspects of navigation, and none at all about the engineering problem of chronometers, this book was valuable for that. But I'm very glad I went in with even the little background I did!
Incidentally, her take is that astronomy had more prestige than engineering (legit), and the fact that the longitude problem was hard meant to some people that only a hard solution was acceptable, and so the fact that taking measurements on a ship that moves up and down, having to compensate for your own height plus that of anything you're standing on, looking things up, trying to keep the book dry, etc. were all really hard were a feature rather than a bug. She says that a century or so earlier and Harrison's devices, which incorporated all the calculations into the hardware and made working them out unnecessary (except for taking local time, which I feel like she also downplays), would have been witchcraft! Since it was the 18th century, he was just dismissed as "It couldn't possibly be that easy," and that was why people kept pursuing the astronomical approach.
All of this comes with a big "Maybe these were factors, but I wish I trusted the author more, because I feel like there was more to it." Since like you said,
(since even after Harrison, chronometers were pretty expensive)
Me: Well, I know why I think the longitude problem is interesting, but why does mildred think it's interesting? I don't think it has anything to do with Fr-- Mildred: Now, if you're me, the words "Lisbon with Admiral Norris in 1736" is a magic phrase that means "Peter Keith." Me: Welp, guess that one's answered!
Hahahahaa, well. It was a major factor in me deciding to buy and read this book after I'd gotten to the 1736 Lisbon part in the Kindle sample. (Amazon rec is how I stumbled on it.) I also, and this is kind of crazy, impulse bought a book on the warship that the chronometer was tested on, solely because Google preview didn't have the page with the footnote showing the original source for the discussion of the English fleet and conditions in Lisbon after they arrived. I was joking to my wife that you know you've gone over the top in your fandom when you're impulse buying a biography of a warship! (It was $3.99! It was readable! I couldn't resist!) I might actually read more chapters someday, right now my list is a little long (50% thanks to Selena :P).
LOL! YUP.
Right? :DD
ETA: Oh, and the author says he was the *only* one who said anything negative about it at the meeting. Honestly, I think he would fit in the Engineer Trilogy really well. "This is an abomination! It departs from specification!" Everyone else: "It's amazing!"
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Longitude
Date: 2021-08-04 05:23 am (UTC)Hilariously, one of the reasons I never read it is because all I knew about the longitude problem I learned from Carry On, Mr. Bowditch which is a Newbery Award winner which is a fictionalization of the life of Nathaniel Bowditch, an American mathematician/navigator. I'd forgotten most of what I learned from it, but I did a bit of browsing and Bowditch's contributions were all in the "astronomy" way of doing things (since even after Harrison, chronometers were pretty expensive) -- he figured out a better way of taking/computing the lunar measurement needed to get Greenwich/London time, and even more importantly he redid all the computations of the mathematical tables that are needed to get the time from the astronomical measurement, because the tables had many errors in them. So basically this was a HUGE deal at the time, but isn't particularly today because once good timekeepers were a thing, no one really needed these huge tables anymore. (I actually bought a real biography of Bowditch a while back which I never got all the way through, but this might be a good impetus.) Anyway, I once picked up Longitude many years ago, and on seeing there was no Bowditch, put it back down and wandered away :P (Yes, indeed, all I know about history comes from historical fiction and SF/fantasy novels.)
Me: Well, I know why I think the longitude problem is interesting, but why does mildred think it's interesting? I don't think it has anything to do with Fr--
Mildred: Now, if you're me, the words "Lisbon with Admiral Norris in 1736" is a magic phrase that means "Peter Keith."
Me: Welp, guess that one's answered!
But instead of advertising how great his invention was, Harrison proved himself a true engineer by pointing out its defects and talking about how he knew he could make a better one, and make it smaller, if they just gave him £500 and some more time to work on it. Once it was up to his standards, he'd submit it for a trial run, but not now. (I laughed so hard in recognition and knew I immediately had to share with [personal profile] cahn. Engineer mentality at its finest!)
LOL! YUP.
Euler gets a cameo in the book for winning a prize for his role in furthering the cause, by reducing certain celestial motions to elegant equations and corresponding with an English astronomer who was able to apply those equations to the longitude problem.
This may be a different thing from what you're talking about, but when I was browsing today to remember about Bowditch, I found that Euler made the calculation of astronomical time (vs. chronograph time) possible by inventing Euler's method, which is basically a very simple way (at least, in these days of computers it's simple) to numerically approximate the solution to a differential equation (here, to predict the position of the moon for those lunar calculations, which is a complex earth-sun-moon three-body problem that one can't generally solve analytically). In the age of computers, this is basically Baby's First Numerical Method, but I'd never known the historical context behind why it was formulated in the first place!
Re: Longitude
Date: 2021-08-04 01:13 pm (UTC)That said, because I knew a few things about the astronomical aspects of navigation, and none at all about the engineering problem of chronometers, this book was valuable for that. But I'm very glad I went in with even the little background I did!
Incidentally, her take is that astronomy had more prestige than engineering (legit), and the fact that the longitude problem was hard meant to some people that only a hard solution was acceptable, and so the fact that taking measurements on a ship that moves up and down, having to compensate for your own height plus that of anything you're standing on, looking things up, trying to keep the book dry, etc. were all really hard were a feature rather than a bug. She says that a century or so earlier and Harrison's devices, which incorporated all the calculations into the hardware and made working them out unnecessary (except for taking local time, which I feel like she also downplays), would have been witchcraft! Since it was the 18th century, he was just dismissed as "It couldn't possibly be that easy," and that was why people kept pursuing the astronomical approach.
All of this comes with a big "Maybe these were factors, but I wish I trusted the author more, because I feel like there was more to it." Since like you said,
(since even after Harrison, chronometers were pretty expensive)
Me: Well, I know why I think the longitude problem is interesting, but why does mildred think it's interesting? I don't think it has anything to do with Fr--
Mildred: Now, if you're me, the words "Lisbon with Admiral Norris in 1736" is a magic phrase that means "Peter Keith."
Me: Welp, guess that one's answered!
Hahahahaa, well. It was a major factor in me deciding to buy and read this book after I'd gotten to the 1736 Lisbon part in the Kindle sample. (Amazon rec is how I stumbled on it.) I also, and this is kind of crazy, impulse bought a book on the warship that the chronometer was tested on, solely because Google preview didn't have the page with the footnote showing the original source for the discussion of the English fleet and conditions in Lisbon after they arrived. I was joking to my wife that you know you've gone over the top in your fandom when you're impulse buying a biography of a warship! (It was $3.99! It was readable! I couldn't resist!) I might actually read more chapters someday, right now my list is a little long (50% thanks to Selena :P).
LOL! YUP.
Right? :DD
ETA: Oh, and the author says he was the *only* one who said anything negative about it at the meeting. Honestly, I think he would fit in the Engineer Trilogy really well. "This is an abomination! It departs from specification!" Everyone else: "It's amazing!"