 Check out the bookstore at IRBS.com |
|
|
|
|||||
|
||||||
Subject: Re: Longitude Books
From: Steven Wepster (wepster@XXX.XXX)
Date: Fri Feb 16 2001 - 06:23:07 EST
In my opinion JED Williams makes very inspiring reading and I believe
he has some very sharp and original thoughts. Cotter describes the
mathematical techniques quite extensively but, speaking as a
mathematician, sometimes I think there is more to it then he tells
you.
The Quest for Longitude focuses mainly on the technical
development of the chronometer (understandable because the symposium
was organised around the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific
Instruments). As a result it underrates the lunar distance method. The
same can be said of Sobel's Longitude (besides being prejudiced and
romanticised). Greenwich Time by Derek Howse has more on the lunar
disances; he also wrote a biography of Maskeline ("Nevil Maskeline:
The Seaman's Astronomer", Cambridge University Press, 1989).
Many interesting articles in Vistas in Astronomy, especially Vol. 28
(1985) dedicated to the Longitude Zero symposium that celebrated the
centenary of the adoption of the Greenwich Meridian.
If you read French this might be ineresting: F Marguet, "Histoire de
la Longitude a la Mer au XVIIIe siecle, en France", Augustin
Challamel, Paris 1917.
_Steven.
|