Longitude

The human story of an epic scientific quest and of one man's forty-year obsession to find the solution to the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day—the longitude problem. It can be said that anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that the longitude issue was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day—one that had been so for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives and the increasing fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. One man—John Harrison—in complete opposition to the scientific community, dared to imagine a mechanical solution—a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. The chronometer is well known today as Harrison's perfect timekeeper.