Longitude

Written by Dava Sobel

This was a very cool book detailing the journey and eventual success of John Harrison, the man who invented a clock that could work at sea, which helped solve the problem of keeping track of longitude. This was crucial for navigation, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, when naval travel was tantamount for both military and trade prowess.

What I think this book did a very compelling job of was showing the scale and importance of the problem, from bringing in famous historical figures such as Galileo and Newton, to highlighting the creation of the Royal Society for the very purpose of determining potential solutions to this mystery of the longitude. It was an entertaining read, compounded by the cool tidbits I learned about the surrounding developments in astronomy and culture (creation of the Royal Society, the idea of named and funded professors like the Lucasian professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, which is one of the most legendary tenured positions in the academic world, once held by Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, George Stokes, Paul Dirac, and Stephen Hawking at points in time.)