What does the title suggest about scientists? How might a scientist be similar to other heroes like Frederick Douglass or Odysseus?
Chapter One:
1. What is the difference between latitude and longitude?
2. Where is the Tropic of Cancer? The Tropic of Capricorn?
3. What is the Prime Meridian? Where is it located? WHY?
4. Longitude at sea was governed by time. A one hour difference (recorded at the sun's highest moment) from a point of departure marks one twenty-forth the spin of the earth or about 15 degrees, which is 1000 miles at the equator. As one moves towards the poles this distance decreases. WHY?
5. What is the problem with clocks on the open sea during this time in history? What is the problem with longitude in general?
6. What happen on October 22, 1707?
7. Renowned astronomers attempt to solve the longitude problem by looking at the heavens. Yet the challenge of longitude leads to many other significant discoveries. True or false?
8. What was the Longitude Act of 1714?
Chapter one ends with a declaration that the author will retrace the story of longitude from a contemporary perspective or "point of view" defined as the age of satellites and GPS. How is this an example of a bildungsroman? The author implies that the endeavors of scientists are themselves narratives with a beginning, middle, and end and that science--as an institution--reflects back on its younger more juvenile stages.
Chapter Two:
History--Sir Clowdisley Shovell makes the worst mistake of his naval career on October 22, 1707. The event underscores the folly of ocean navigation without understanding how to determine longitude.
1. Shovell had been approached by a sailor, a member of the crew, who claimed to have kept his own reckoning of the fleet's location. This was forbidden by the Royal Navy and Admiral Shovell had the man promptly hanged for mutiny. What do you make of this event? What might it signify about Admiral Shovell and what might he share with other authority figures in literary history?
2. The ignorance of longitude wreaked economic havoc on a grand scale. Many wished to discover secret routes to markets. This perhaps provides us with a better understanding of the forces that were driving Robert Walton. Explain.
3. Longitude was the secret that was to intervene between a world defined by disorder and chaos and a world defined by order and the rational mind. In a similar way, Greek Tragedy sometimes asked the same questions. Take Oedipus the King as example. His intervention into the chaos of Thebes was defined by his analytical mind and his ability to pursue truth and restore order through a process of inquiry and investigation. The Greeks called it the Theban cycle.
4. What is the point of the story of the Centurion?
Chapter Three:
1. In 1514 the German astronomer, Johannes Werner, studied the motion of the moon as a location finder. He suggested that astronomers should map the position of the stars along the moon's path and then predict when the moon would brush by each one. He wanted to publish a set of tables indicating such for navigation. What was wrong with the lunar distance method?
2. In 1610, Galileo thought that he found the clock of the heavens--the moons of Jupiter. He worked out a longitude solution. Consider what Galileo did. His observations were by design performed so as to create tables of each of the one thousand annual eclipses of the moons of Jupiter. He observed these moons until his death. After he died his system lived on as a primary way to map the land, but not the sea. His system was used to redraw the known world. The border of kingdoms hung in the balance. Thus mapmaking was an unexpected result of Galileo's work. What else came from his work?
3. How might Galileo's intensity or his meticulous observations be similar to the work the Grants have done on the Galapagos? What does this tell you about the daily work of scientists?
Chapter Four:
"Time is to clock as mind is to brain."
Good time keeping may solve the longitude problem or so some believed. The clocks of the time were not equal to the task. They were neither accurate nor able to run true against the assault of changing temperature on the high seas.
The story of Huygens and Hooke and the strife that dampened enthusiasm for the clock solution to longitude.
Chapter Five:
Details some of the most offbeat approaches to solving the problem of longitude. What do these stories tell you about the nature of science at this time in history?
Chapter Six: The Prize
1. It seems the monetary prize was enormous for solving the longitude problem. The two mains groups competing were the Astronomers and the clock makers. Sir Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley (of Halley's comet) were interested of course and the whole chapter here indicates that government and "funding" have a great deal to do with the way knowledge progresses. The source of knowledge is directly linked to funding. Does the world still operate this way? Explain.
2. What was the problem with Thacker's watch?
3. Flamsteed had spent forty years mapping the heavens. Who rips him off? What do you make of this event? How have things changed today?
Chapter Seven:
1. How much is known about John Harrison?
2. Describe the way the author, Dava Sobel, characterizes Harrison? What might we say is formulaic about this portrayal?
3. What was Harrison's first clock made out of?
4. Sobel writes, "We take no note of solar time today, relying solely on Greenwich mean time as our standard" (66). Consider the transformation from sundials to the mechanical. What might be some of the consequences to human perception?
5. How has the mechanical clock progressed as a symbol of our technological thinking?
6. What is the problem with the pendulum clock? What has the pendulum come to represent as metaphor in our culture?
7. What is the grasshopper?
Chapter Eight:
1. Harrison goes to London to see Halley, who received Harrison kindly but knew that the Board of Longitude would not welcome a mechanical answer to what it saw as an astronomical question. Why?
2. A man by the name of Graham finances Harrison--Harrison takes five years to build H-1, for short. The clock takes a voyage on the Centurion (remember this ship) and performs well. Harrison had every right to demand the West Indies Trial. He points out foibles however and perhaps blows his chance for the Prize. He returns home to build H-2, which never goes to sea. Harrison is a perfectionist and works on H-3 for twenty years. What does this tell you about the man?
3. In the mean time (ha, ha) the public took an interest in H-1 which was on exhibit in Graham's shop in London. The English artist William Hogarth takes interest in H-1. The satirical graphic work of William Hogarth (1697-1764) highlights a variety of eighteenth-century themes that are of particular fascination to a contemporary audience. Hogarth's range of inquiry was extremely wide, touching upon topics from everyday life as well as upon more theoretical debates. Hogarth had previously characterized the "longitude lunatic," but now with H-1 the idea of longitude solution as a joke of the insane had been transformed into a combination of art and science. How might Hogarth's initial "longitude lunatic" represent a shared and common portrayal of the scientist in art?
Check out "Scholars at a Lecture" and "Consultation of Physicians"
Physiognomics was the 'science' of interpreting human character, intelligence, and virtue by analyzing physical appearances. The practice was based upon the belief that exterior traits revealed a person's inner life. In addition to congenital physical characteristics, many physiognomists also considered gesture, facial expression, and disease as legitimate signs to be read. How might this play out in Mary Shelley's novel?
4. How might we regard "Physiognomics" today? Why?
Hogarth's work was instrumental in the development and popularization of physiognomics in the eighteenth century. Hogarth systematized and refined the vocabulary of physiognomy. He called his representations of people characters rather than caricatures, seeking to reveal the true nature of his subjects rather than simply mocking them. His sophisticated visual repertoire of physiognomic types greatly influenced eighteenth century physiognomy and was commented upon by Caspar Lavater (1741-1801) in his popular book, Essays on Physiognomy(1775-78).
William Hogarth website (excellent)
Chapter Nine:
Seamen cold not read the clock of heaven with a glance. The clock of heaven formed Harrison's chief competition for the Longitude prize. Suddenly to rival approaches seemed to be running neck and neck. What was Hadley's quadrant?
Harrison might have been accused of witchcraft--he stood alone against the vested navigational interests of the scientific establishment. He was subjected to many trials that began after the completion of his masterpiece, the fourth timekeeper H-4, in 1759.
Chapter Ten: H-4 like a rabbit out of a hat.
H-4 draws millions of visitors a year at London's Maritime Museum. Why doesn't the clock run today?
Chapter Eleven:
1. A story that hails a hero must also hiss at a villain. Dava Sobel opens the chapter with such words. Who is the villain of this story and why? And by the way, do stories always need a hero and a villain? Are there exceptions?
2. What were Maskelyne's achievements?
3. Dr. Bradley delays test of H-3 and H-4 for personal gain. Explain.
4. The test comes and the watch--H-4--performs admirable with losing only just under two minutes on the journey to Jamaica and back. Harrison should have been awarded the Longitude prize. What happens?
5. It seems Harrison however did possess a secret. An impasse results for Harrison refuses to give up the secret of the H-4.
Another trial takes place.
Chapter Twelve:
Harrison's portrait. Harrison receives half the money. The remainder of the prize is yet to be decided.
The saga goes on between Harrison and Maskelyne, Harrison's archenemy.
Chapter Thirteen:
1. Why was sauerkraut such an important triumph for circumnavigation of the globe?
2. The competition for the rest of the money places Maskelyne in charge of the tests with various stories as a result, some even saying that Maskelyne intentionally distorted the trial. Contradictions abound. Maskelyne goes on to say that H-4 has merit and should be used when the sun and moon are too close together to use what alternative method of measuring longitude?
3. The proof of H-4 reproducibility comes into play for the remaining money. A board examines K-1 which Cook eventually takes to sea. Harrison builds H-5. Harrison is getting old and cannot build yet another clock required for the prize--he takes his troubles to the King, who is interested in science. What happens?
4. Captain Cook eventually ends up in trouble in the Hawaiian archipelago. Explain. According to legend at the moment of Cook's death the K-1 also stopped ticking.
Chapter Fourteen:
The mass production of genius. Britannia ruled the waves. (page 153). This is an allusion to a song. As Britain entered the 18th Century, James Thompson (1700-1748) Rule Britannia, wrote jingoist poetry that would further the aim of expanding the British Empire. The poetry is a product of the age, seeking only glory, not understanding.
Still, even after Harrison's death the clock's fame continued, but it was very expensive to build. A seaman could buy a good sextant and a set of lunar distance tables for only a fraction of the sum of the clock.
1. What is the history of K-2?
2. What does John Arnold add to the craft of building chronometers?
3. And Earnshaw? The brouhaha between these two men?
4. The price comes down and naval captains purchase chronometers out of their own pockets.
5. And so what does longitude have to do with Darwin's Origin of Species?
Chapter Fifteen:
1. What kind of clock is at the Prime Meridian today? How accurate is it?
2. Who was Gould? What was his contribution?