Amazon.com
How did they make long ocean voyages before satellite tracking? Mostly by sheer luck and guesswork, until a secure method for establishing position by the stars was discovered.
NOVA traces the roots of this discovery in
Lost at Sea: The Search for Longitude, showing how one unschooled carpenter, John Harrison, proved the best minds of his generation (including Sir Isaac Newton) wrong by building a clock accurate enough to keep time on the high seas. This was all that was needed to accurately track one's position, locking in England as the dominant naval power for years thereafter. Dramatic re-creations, interviews, and demonstrations of antique naval instruments add up to a spellbinding hour as the story of longitude unfolds before our eyes.
--Rob Lightner
Product Description
Navigation in the 1700s was both unpredictable and deadly, until one man solved the mystery. Richard Dreyfuss narrates the riveting story of a humble, ingenious country carpenter named John Harrison who discovered that the secret to navigation lay not just in the stars, but in the mastering of time. Climb aboard an authentic tall ship and go back in time to see history, and the quest for longitude, unfold.
