NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Dava Sobel
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 Apr 30, 06:52 EDT
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 Apr 30, 06:52 EDT
Fred H., you wrote: "It's clear from Sobel's book, if nothing else is clear from that book, that the quest for the prize was a major motivating factor for Harrison. I believe without the prize, a chronometer might have taken another 50-100 years; it was clearly a work of genius by one man, highly motivated. The Act and Prize also emphasized the importance of this quest to the lunarians, although I agree they would have achieved their objective without them. However, it's unclear whether the laborious calculations of the distances for the almanac would have been undertaken without the additional importance contributed by the Act and Prize." I agree with that. And it's worth remembering that Tobias Mayer offered a complete solution for the longitude problem including a reflecting circle. He was after the prize. The 3000 pound reward delivered to his widow after Mayer's untimely death was something like ten times the astronomer royal's annual salary. Big money. -FER 42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W. www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
