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Talk:Longitude rewards

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He used very accurate clocks and measurements of the height of the sun. However, the Longitude Board set up to administer the prize refused to beleive that longitude could be determined without astronomical measures.

How are "measurements of the height of the sun" not "astronomical measures"? (Furthermore, how does that help when you're in fog and can't measure the sun?) Brion VIBBER

Maybe because measuring the height of the sun was everyday work on a ship while measuring the positions of the moon and various stars, the unsuccessful longitude method, was normally only done in observatories. About the fog, though? Perhaps fog isn't normal at noon at sea when the measurement was made. And having an accurate measurement every few days would be better than never having one until you reached land.--rmhermen

I was under the impression that measurements of the positions of fixed stars was already the standard method for determining latitude, so would be a quite normal shipboard activity. Would anyone have bothered to measure the height of the sun on a ship prior to finding it useful in determining longitude? Nonetheless, the crux of the matter is that as far as I know the sun is an astronomical object, and I'm confused by the apparent distinction between "measurements of the... sun" and "astronomical measurements". If the sun doesn't count, what does "astronomical measurements" mean? The moon? The planets? Just fixed stars?

As far as fog; the article is unclear on whether there was no way at all to measure longitude prior to this particular invention, or no way to do so when encountering fog; the problem is introduced couched in terms of fog reducing visibility, which would obviously also reduce the ability to take "astronomical measures". I would have expected e.g. the rising times of fixed stars at a known latitude to be an obvious way to measure longitude, once you get clocks involved, though of course this wouldn't be doable with fog blocking the stars. Is that the point? Brion VIBBER

The National Maritime Museum/Royal Observatory at Greenwich website refers to the Longitude Prize, with to capital letters like the Nobel Prize. Is this normal? Why did we move it to Longitude prize? --rmhermen

I could go either way, I suppose. It was a unique event, and therefore is something like a title. The operative question is this: will it be used in running text without capitalizing? In other words, would one prefer to write "When Harrison won the longitude prize in..." or would one write "When Harrison won the Longitude Prize in...". If the latter, then it's OK to leave the title capitalized. I think the former reads a little better though. -- Lee Daniel Crocker

Galileo first observed the moons of Jupiter 1610, see "Great Physicists:The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking by William Cropper". It would seem then that "16th Century" should be changed to 17th century AppealToReason (talk) 22:15, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed a lot of stuff on the history, since it was not consistent with the redundant history info on similar pages. A new article, History of longitude is an amalgam of the various other articles' history sections with some cleanup.

This article should concentrate on the specifics of the prize. --Michael Daly 17:40, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How much are the total prize amount and individual awards worth in today's (orsome date's money? How does the £1 million prize in David Cameron's new "Longitude" challenge compare? 78.149.25.6 (talk) 13:42, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If one looks back at the 18th century bills they do indeed refer to a reward rather than a prize. The habit of calling it a prize may date from the enormous popularity of Dava Sobel's book which almost always uses the word prize rather than reward. So I'm happy with changing the name of the article. Having done that, I think one can stop using the word "anachronism" or redundant phrases like "inducement prize awards". The words are very close in meaning. One advantage of the Move procedure is that all of the above phrases now point to this article. Chris55 (talk) 08:40, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, this is the recently-added sentence that Chris55 has principally removed (diff), per the above:

(The term Longitude prize is anachronistic: the rewards were never described as a "prize" in the 18th century, and the Act in fact offered a range of sums depending on the accuracy achieved.)^[1]

Use of the term "Longitude prize" was one of the things the curators at the National Maritime Museum particularly highlighted their discomfort with, when we went along for an expert-review editathon session on Wednesday. Yes the article does now consistently use the word "rewards" rather than "prize". But given the entrenchment of the phrase "Longitude prize" in the consciousness, I do think there is a case for explaining at least somewhere in the article (either in the main text, or in a footnote) why the article is instead talking about "rewards" rather than a prize. (@Chris55: ?) But having offered the change, I am happy to let others make the final call. Jheald (talk) 06:55, 17 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ah, I wondered about the flurry of activity.:) I'm happy about restoring a reference to Rebekah's blog if you want. The acts use the singular not plural but I'm easy on that. I was looking at some of the other issues in the article. e.g. She points out that the total was about about £52,000 not £100,000 as stated and we should probably nuance the statement that the award wasn't awarded. Most of the discussion is in the History of longitude article so doesn't need to be repeated here. Chris55 (talk) 08:00, 17 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]