“A good watch may serve to keep a recconing at Sea for some days and to know the time of a Celestial Observ[at]ion: and for this end a good Jewel watch may suffice till a better sort of Watch can be found out. But when the Longitude at sea is once lost, it cannot be found again by any watch.”

—  Isaac Newton

Letter to Josiah Burchett (1721), quoted in Longitude (1995) by Dava Sobel, p. 60
Board of Longitude

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Isaac Newton 171
British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern c… 1643–1727

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