Looking for Longitude : A Cultural History / Katy Barrett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barrett, Katy, author.

Series:

Eighteenth-century worlds ; Volume 12.

Eighteenth-Century Worlds Series ; Volume 12

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Longitude--Measurement.

Longitude.

Navigation--History--18th century.

Navigation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (312 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, [2022]

Summary:

Why make a joke out of a niche and complex scientific problem? That is the question at the heart of this book, which unearths the rich and surprising history of trying to find longitude at sea in the 18th century. Not simply a history on water, this is the story of longitude on paper, of the discussions, satires, diagrams, engravings, novels, plays, poems and social anxieties that shaped how people understood longitude in William Hogarth's London. We start from a figure in one of Hogarth's prints - a lunatic incarcerated in the madhouse of A Rake's Progress in 1735 - to unpick the visual, mental and social concerns which entwined around the national concern to find a solution to longitude. This sheds new light on the first government scientific funding body - the Board of Longitude - established to administer vast reward money for anyone who found a means of accurately measuring longitude at sea.

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (viewed on May 30, 2023).

Previously issued in print: 2022.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781800854338

1800854331

9781802070972

1802070974