History of longitude

Common card · No. 258120

The history of longitude describes the centuries-long effort by astronomers, cartographers and navigators to discover a means of determining the longitude (the east-west position) of any given place on Earth. The measurement of longitude is important to both cartography and navigation. In particular, for safe ocean navigation, knowledge of both latitude and longitude is required, however latitude can be determined with good accuracy with local astronomical observations. Finding an accurate and practical method of determining longitude took centuries of study and invention by some of the greatest scientists and engineers. Determining longitude relative to the meridian through some fixed location requires that observations be tied to a time scale that is the same at both locations, so the longitude problem reduces to finding a way to coordinate clocks at distant places. Early approaches used astronomical events that could be predicted with great accuracy, such as eclipses, and building...

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