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On Apr 28, 2006, at 9:44 AM, Alexandre E Eremenko wrote:

> George,
>
>> which led indirectly to the Longitude Act and the Longitude Prize and
>> then to the Nautical Almanac and to Harrison's chronometer.
>
> Do you really think that these things would not be invented without
> the
> Longitude Act? Maybe 10 years later, at most:-)
>

Alex,

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.

Fred

   

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