Maybe the Longitude Act was issued also because of the disaster occured in 1707 due to a navigation error: the Royal Navy fleet lost 4 of its 15 ships.
On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 5:50 PM, Azelio Boriani <azelio.bori...@screen.it>wrote: > Yes, the first real push was the Longitude Act (1714) and the Harrison's > clocks. > > > On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 5:36 PM, Chris Albertson < > albertson.ch...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 3:16 AM, Attila Kinali <att...@kinali.ch> wrote: >> > On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:04:08 +0000 >> > "Poul-Henning Kamp" <p...@phk.freebsd.dk> wrote: >> > >> >> In message <20120124115848.312d60bd4fccce4f3e71c...@kinali.ch>, >> Attila Kinali w >> >> rites: >> >> >> >> >All this talk about telling the time using stars or the sun made me >> wonder >> >> >how did people tell what position their telescopes had back in the >> days >> >> >before GPS? >> >> Sailingships and trade was what pushed this. At the time of Columbus >> he was able to know his latitude within a few 10s of miles but even >> after returning to Europe he did no know how far around the world he >> had sailed. Was it 1/3rd or 2/3rds? They had no way to know. The >> problem was that on one had a clock that should keep time well enough. >> They used hour glasses on board ship for short duration time keeping >> but those were of no use on a longer ocean crossing. >> >> Later they discovered the idea of common view of the moons of Jupiter >> and they could measure the time from local noon some even on Jupitor >> while a person back home did the same thing. Later when he got back >> home they compare notes and then know the difference in longitude. >> Good ocean going clocks were still centuries away. But in the >> 1500's they could only know the location after the fact when they >> returned >> >> -- >> >> Chris Albertson >> Redondo Beach, California >> >> _______________________________________________ >> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com >> To unsubscribe, go to >> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts >> and follow the instructions there. >> > > _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.