Just finished Longitude by Dava Sobel. Man, if there were ever an inventor who got totally screwed out of due credit by the established scientists of his day, it was John Harrison. Harrison created the first accurate clocks that could be taken on board ships to help calculate longitude. Degrees of longitude translate to time, which translates to distance, which tells you where the you are on the globe. Without proper longitude, ships wandered aimlessly at sea for unheard of amounts of time or ran into things they didn’t even know were there. Using the moon and stars to navigate was the only known method, but what happened on cloudy nights? And how does one make angular measurements on a ship pitching every which way at sea? Harrison responded to this problem not with more astronomy, as was the establishment’s method of choice, but with specially designed clocks lacking the components making clocks useless on ships. Standing as an obstacle were various questionable characters running the Board of Longitude, a body more focused on astronomical than mechanical solutions to the longitude problem.

This book is short, the writing is clear (unlike Harrison’s), and the story will make you look at your watch with new appreciation.

Next book on the list: Crossing California.