Customer Reviews

Latitude: How American Astronomers Solved the Mystery of Variation

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Like many good books, this one works on several levels. Its primary focus is the story of Seth Carlo Chandler, an amateur astronomer who discovered the variation of latitude now called the Chandler Wobble. In a larger sense, it explores how a group of American scientists attempted to raise American science up to the standards and practices of Europe. But what makes this an especially good read is that the authors make the scientists come alive. We learn not only what these scientists did, but also why. The authors penetrate the minds and motives of the scientists, creating a story that is both historical and imaginative

Although this book should appeal to a general audience, it is especially of interest to professionals who work in geodesy, surveying, astronomy, geophysics, and related disciplines requiring precise positioning. These readers will find a wealth of information about the foundation and structure of present scientific organizations, Today, the Global Positioning System and related technologies are capable of providing a precise positioning capability quickly and easily. But these technologies owe much to the work of Chandler and other scientists of the late nineteenth century. This vivid telling of Chandler's personal and professional life provides perceptive insight into a world that eventually brought America to the forefront of science and space exploration.

Latitude presents an issue in geodesy and astronomy that perplexed scientists, astronomers, and surveyors for years. Early surveys and measurements of latitude exhibited a certain amount of error; the real question was, how much error is acceptable and what are the causes of such error. Latitude discusses in great detail the history and science behind these errors and one aspect of error in particular - polar motion.

The authors of Latitude, a Father and Daughter combination, Bill and Merri Sue Carter both have a strong scientific background in astronomy and geodesy. With this understanding of their backgrounds I fully expected Latitude to delve deep into the science behind the phenomenon of variation in latitude; however, instead I found that they spent more time discussing history. The Carters did a remarkable job in depicting the history and lives of the scientists that made the discovery but they also went further and portrayed the lives of the scientists before them that shaped the way to making the discovery. The historical items discussed range from letters to parents while at sea, family photographs, locations of actual instruments used by scientists, to the homes where they resided.

In the opening the Carters grab your attention with fictional prologue about a commercial airliner having to make a no visibility emergency landing. This landing was to take place several years ago when GPS landing systems were not commonly installed in planes. This introduction serves many purposes. First, it demonstrates what the GPS technology provides to its users and how today we take the highly technical system (that takes into account a huge amount of factors) for granted. This GPS technology is shown to give within a meter accuracy of the location of a receiver and as the book later goes on to show for a long time such accuracy was difficult to achieve. Secondly, it captivates the reader. I think the authors could have done a better job of explaining why this introduction is particularly relevant to the purpose of the book, but it comes out eventually.

One topic of discussion that caught me by surprise was religion. Religion is discussed in different places throughout the book, but the entire first half chapter on Newcomb deals with his conflict with religion It does appear clear that the authors seem to share the beliefs of Newcomb on the subject by the way the topic is discussed. There exists an enormous amount of interest in this topic that would spark emotions across the spectrum and the Carters present a pretty good case in the brief time it is discussed. This particular topic, while widely disputed by the masses of the public, would potentially be an interesting book and if published would undoubtedly spark the interest of a wider populace than that of Latitude.

During the course of the book the Carters show how Chandler was able to determine the shifting of latitude caused by the polar "wobble." It goes on to discuss how Newcomb assists in explaining to the scientific community how the expected value of a 10 month period for the shift to go full circle could actually be the 14 month period detected by Chandler. The authors point out that Chandler most likely had no clue that the expected period for the shift was 10 months and may contribute to why nobody was able to accurately detect a validated variation of latitude before him. It is an interesting point on how even the smartest people can be blinded by expectations of truth as opposed to looking at the evidence and facts behind research and hard data.

The only distraction I found while reading the book was that in a book of about 200 pages the discovery (the main point of the book) was not discussed until about page 120. For a historian this would not be a big deal; however, as a person interested primarily in the science behind the earth, I found myself anxious to get further along into the discovery of the phenomenon and on occasion asked myself: is this (topic) noteworthy enough to delay getting to the point?

Throughout the entire book I found no real negative issues with the book Latitude. While the authors will probably never receive a literary award for their style of writing, they did a great job taking into account the historical perspective of the accounts leading to the discovery of the variation of latitude caused by polar motion. The book also does a good job in discussing the science behind the discovery and how complicated all the effects and factors make this subject.

I bought this book after seeing the advertisement for it in Sky and Telescope. I'm an amature astronomer and enjoy reading about the history of science. I had never heard this story before, although I knew about many of the men (Newcomb, Gould, Airy, etc) who are included in it. I thought it was very easy to read and interesting. The authors (Father and Daughter, both scientists in this case!) clearly know a great deal about this subject and give plenty of detail. Nice pictures, plenty of good background material. I came away with a much deeper understanding of the problem of the variation of latitude as well as the problems faced by American scientists in the late 1800's.
A true inspiration to an "amature" like me to keep plugging away and looking for answers that the "professionals" may have missed.

Then why only four stars? I'll get to that later.

This book is a masterful synopsis of one of the most intriguing stories of nineteenth century astronomy. I found the narrative compelling and read the entire book in a single sitting, something I almost never do. The authors bring real passion and thorough technical competence to this subject. (Unlike the author of a similarly titled work, who at least brings passion and an elegant style to her task.) After reading it, I was hungry for more. It is obvious that the authors worked very hard to produce a concise treatment, so I refuse to fault them for lack of detail. The book is very successful in achieving its stated goals.

The excerpts from historical documents, photographs and illustrations are well chosen and serve to further the narrative and illustrate the thinking and life of Seth Carlo Chandler. I only wish there were more of them.

I fear that unlike a similarly titled work, the authors may have unintentionally aimed too high - a good deal of technical sophistication may be required to thoroughly enjoy this fine book, although I hesitate to discourage anyone who might find it interesting from tackling it. I don't know how much I would have enjoyed the book if I did not know what a least squares fit or transit circle was and dozens of other such details.

The story brings to mind Twain's observation that truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction is constrained by probabilities, truth is not. The authors successfully convey a sense of the personalities involved and the spirit of the times. More important, the narrative unfolds like a detective novel, with clues sprinkled in the beginning foreshadowing the brilliant deductions that tie the loose ends together. It's much more exciting and better than a detective novel, because it pertains to actual events that are unfolding even today. Unto the present day, no adequate theoretical explanation for the persistence of "Chandler Wobble" exists, nor Chandler's assertions that it contains at least two harmonic components, in addition to the annual component. (Scientists are at a loss to explain the current six year leap second drought going back to 1999. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio....)

Will the years around 2010 vindicate Chandler's bold predictions, will we find Chandler's two components? I can't wait to find out.

Why only four stars? I hate to quibble, but...

I found the nationalistic tone a little off-putting. I am a very patriotic American, a veteran and a registered Republican and like Chandler, a New Englander to boot. That having been said, in my appreciation of the history of ideas and especially the history of science, I am more of an internationalist than Kofi Annan. (I have sympathy for the authors, who in their quotidian professional lives may have to deal with superciliously nationalistic Europeans. I noticed that in a recent public opinion poll in Germany, Copernick made the list of top 50 historically important Germans, even though their grandparents would have considered his descendants to be Untermenschen. Ditto in spades for Einstein.)

Another quibble is with the lame prologue that almost made me give up before I got started. I think you can safely skip the prologue entirely and enjoy the book even more. (If you enjoy the prologue, skip this book and read a similarly titled book instead.) More annoying is their précis of the history of astronomy in Chapter I. They go beyond oversimplification to actual misstatement. Copernicus was not the first to propose a heliocentric universe, Aristarchus of Samos preceded him by almost two millennia. Copernicus did not model orbits as perfect circles, he had more epicycles that Ptolemy. The treatment of Galileo by the Vatican follows dramatic lines laid down by Arthur Miller. In doing so they misstate the position of the church. I don't want to defend censorship or the Renaissance Vatican, but the story is more complicated than the simple allegorical conflict between truth and superstition that it has been reduced to today.

We have learned how Global Positioning Systems affect our lives in astonishing ways, from directing smart bombs onto thugs in Iraq to turning Texas hunters into space shuttle accident investigators.

GPS has hundreds of other uses, too, including keeping airliners on course, but none of it would be possible without an understanding of the variation in latitude, and there's a story behind that.

That latitude varies, with respect to the distant stars, was suspected by the middle of the 18th century, but the measurements to prove it were almost impossibly delicate. Some of the finest scientific minds of the age considered it, including Leonhard Euler, but the actual solution did not come about until the 1890s, finally nailed down by Seth Chandler, a typical example of a New England Yankee tinkerer.

Chandler was better educated than most boys in the 1850s, going to high school in Boston, but he never attended college.

At age 15, he was hired by the leading American mathematician of the day, Benjamin Peirce, to be a "computer." That is, he ground out equations for astronomical summaries, work that today is done electronically. In those days, such solutions were done by mere stubbornness with pencil and paper.

The Carters, father and daughter, are well qualified to tell this recondite story. Bill Carter is a former chief of the geosciences laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Merri Sue Carter is an astronomer at the National Earth Orientation Service of the Naval Observatory.

Together they manage to make understandable some very complicated geometry, and almost -- but not quite -- impart some of the thrill of reading a murder mystery into the hunt for variation of latitude.

Drama there was, but mostly of a rather rarefied kind.

It is not a simple story.

European scientists on the hunt for proof of variation decided to set up observatories on opposite sides of the globe, and they chose Berlin and Waikiki. But though the Waikiki observatory was built, Chandler beat Europe's best to the answer, using marvelously sensitive instruments of his own design, and a feel for the wobble of the Earth that perhaps has never been surpassed.

Chandler, scanning his pages of numbers, discovered that the variation of latitude has more than one component.

In fact, he came to believe that Earth has three subtle wobbles that impart a complex behavior to its axis (and, consequently, to the apparent latitude, as measured against the fixed stars).

With better instruments and vastly greater resources, modern scientists have confirmed two of Chandler's wobbles. The third is so subtle that even today, researchers are not sure it exists. If it does, evidence may become available by around 2010.

For a few bucks, you can buy a cellular phone with GPS as one of a dozen features. There's a whole lot more to that feature than most of us imagine.

Some times a great story belongs in a book, and sometimes it just doesn't have the heft to sustain a full book and should be relegated an extended magazine article. This is one of the latter.

The story is interesting and worth knowing. The dedication of Seth Carlo Chandler to his avocation is inspiring, the theory behind the solution is elegant, and the political intrigue is evocative. But to stretch the story to booklength required a trivial prologue, superfluous biographical details for secondary characters, and technical details that were rather opaque to the lay audience, this writer included.

I'd still recommend the book to a friend with an interest in astronomy, but I'd rather recommend a streamlined 80-page version of the story.

John R. Herman [...] , a retired geophysicist., 12/23/2002
For centuries astronomers have been concerned with mapping the stars and determining their motions across the sky. Their main purpose in the old days was to obtain information needed to cast accurate horoscopes for their sponsors, usually an emperor or a king. It soon became apparent that by comparing his observation of the position of the stars at a particular moment in time with a catalog of star positions, a navigator could fix his ship's latitude anywhere on the ocean. For a complete determination of location the longitude also had to be known, but the solution to this problem is described in the book "Longitude," by Dava Sobel. To provide an accurate star catalog to fix the latitude at any point, the astronomers of Europe spent years nightly observing the stars and recording their positions. Long term observations at a fixed location seemed to show that relative to the stars the latitude of the observer seemed to change with time. These variations were largely dismissed as measurement errors introduced by temperature and pressure effects on the observing instruments, yet they were observed at astronomical observatories throughout Europe in all seasons. The new book "Latitude" by Bill Carter and his astronomer daughter Merri Sue, gives a fascinating account of how an American amateur astronomer named Seth Chandler, Jr. showed that the variations are real and have a rational explanation. The book describes how Chandler painstakingly analyzed and re-analyzed mountains of astronomical data from English and German star observations, as well as those from the US Naval Obsrvatory in Washington DC. He argued that the Earth is not a rigid body because not only do the oceans move along with atmospheric highs and lows, but also the land itself is elastic. Thus, as the Earth rotates on its axis the crust slops around and disturbs the circular motion. The motion is further disturbed on a seasonal basis due to heavy winter snow covers in Siberia and North America and the foliage and moisture of summer. This introduces a complex wobbling of the axis causing the poles to shift in latitude relative to the position of the stars. He discovered there are several frequencies in the time-related variation which sometimes lead to a zero departure from the true latitude, a fact which for years had driven the European astronomers to distraction to the point where they refused to believe there was a true wobble. The Carters chronicle Chandler's struggles with the international astronomical community as well as some of his American colleagues who did not believe his results.They go to show how he overcame their opposition to be finally vindicated by being awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society of London for "his discussion of the variation of latitude...." This book also gives us a revealing look at the difficulties scientists have encountered in trying to get funding for important scientific work and to establish national laboratories in the United States, especially in the early years of the Republic. Many scientists will find curious parallels in today's struggle to maintain adequate funding for their projects, and the general public may gain some interesting insights into the interplay between science, government and politics. As our navigational and positioning needs have progressed from ship navigation to aircraft to spacecraft and then to ICBM's where pinpoint positioning is required, the necessity to account for the Chandler wobble in latitude variation has become critical. The Global Positioning System (GPS) provides positioning accuracy of a meter or two because it takes into account the Chandler wobble. "Latitude" has a lucid discussion of the development of the GPS, first under military screcy wraps but finally avalable to the general navigating public for their boats and Cadillacs. The book ends with explanatory notes on each chapter and a substantial bibliography for those who wish to further investigate the subject. It also has an excellent index -- for example, it is easy to find out who the Lazzaroni were. I highly recommend this excellent book to everyone who has ever wondered how the latitude of their location came to be defined, but it must be read with care to gain the full import of the story. The only criticism I could find in the whole book concerns a typographical error; on page 152 Edmund Halley's name is spelled incorrectly, but the index has it right.
Also recommended: Longitude by Dava Sobel

This book fails badly in 4 categories:

1). The book's authors say, in essence, that if Europeans get credit for solving Longitude, Americans deserve to get credit for helping to understand latitide. This childish attitude ought to be left on the playground. They should prove their case from an unbiased start. It is obvious that the authors never considered any other perspective other than the America first one.
2). Unlike Longitude, there is no real story with Latitude. No prize, no interesting characters, no excitment.
3). Thetitle is a shameless rippoff of the very successful "Longitude". It seems that the authors deliberately picked the title with the hopes that people would mistakenly buy their book when they really wanted "Longitude". Google searches for one word brings up the other.
4). As other reviewers pointed out, the writing style is painfully ackward. Big publishers have manuscripts edited by professionals. It is obvious that this never happened here. I would like to submit some of the passages to the annual bad writing contest.

In summary, Latitude is not a good scientific or history book because it is highly biased towards an American perspective. It is not fun to read because of the remarkably poor writing style.

Save your time and money and get Longitude. Well written, accurate and there is actually an interesting story to tell.