Quotes about longitude (16 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Friendship , Missing You , Goodbye , For Friend

“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 (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

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

Time , Sea

“… spread on a plane the surface of a sphere in such a way that the positions of all places shall correspond on all sides with each other both in so far as true direction and distance are concerned and as concerns true longitudes and latitudes.”

Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594) cartographer, philosopher and mathematician

Legend on 1569 map

Way

“Her cutty sark, o' Paisley harn,
That while a lassie she had worn,
In longitude tho' sorely scanty,
It was her best, and she was vauntie.”

Robert Burns Tam o' Shanter

Source: Tam o' Shanter (1790), Line 171

“No map contains all the information about the territory it represents. The road map we get at the gasoline station may show all the roads in the state, but it will not as a rule show latitude and longitude. A physical map goes into details about the topography of a country but is indifferent to political boundaries. Furthermore, the scale of the map makes a big difference. The smaller the scale the less features will be shown.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport Science and the goals of man: a study in semantic orientation. Greenwood Press, 1950/1971. p. 85
1950s

Country , Indifference

“I don't know if men will ever journey again, as we journeyed, to that intersection of latitude and longitude where a shell hangs forever — forever and yet not forever, in space and out of space — on the axis stretching through time from beginning to end.
From the dawn of the nebulae to the twilight of absolute entropy, when the framework of the cosmos has broken down into chaos, still that axis will stretch from dawn to dusk, from beginning to end. For as this world spins on an axis through space, so the sphere of time spins on its own axis.”

Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) American author

Source: The Time Axis (1949), Ch. 1 : Encounter In Rio

Men , World , Time

“Mr. Parnell said the other night, that Ireland is a "nation". Well, if a nation only means a certain number of individuals collected between certain latitudes and longitudes, I admit in that sense Ireland is a nation. But if there is anything further necessary— if to make a nation you require a past united history, traditions in which you can all join, achievements of which you all are proud, interests which you share in common, and sympathies which belong to all— then emphatically Ireland is not a nation; Ireland is two nations.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Speech to the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in St. James's Hall, London (15 May 1886), quoted in The Times (17 May 1886), p. 6

History , Sense , Past , Night

“But before I proceed farther it may be proper to take notice, that since the time when I gave their lordships an account of the near agreement of Mr. Professor Mayer's lunar tables with the observations that had been then made at the Royal Observatory, I have compared several others, which concurred to prove that the difference between the observed and computed places nowhere amounted to more than about one minute and a half; and I find that the difference (small as it is) may yet be diminished by making alterations in some of the equations, whose true quantity could not be determined without proper observations; after making the needful corrections it appeared, by the comparison of above eleven hundred observations taken here since the new instruments were fixed up, that the difference did nowhere amount to more than a minute: it may therefore be reasonably concluded, that so far as it will depend upon the lunar tables the true longitude of a ship at sea may in all cases be found within about half a degree, and generally much nearer.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), To Mr. Cleveland Secretary of the Admiralty (April 14, 1760)

Appearance , Time , Dependency , Sea

“This fundamental and most important article being established upon such full evidence, it remained to be examined within what limits the errors arising from observations actually taken at sea could be contained.
In order to determine this point, I computed the ship's longitude from each of the observations made by captain Campbell, and, upon comparing the results of several that were taken near the same time and under the like circumstances, it appeared that in general the observer was not liable to err more than one minute in judging of the apparent contact of the moon's limb and the object with which it was compared. Now this being nearly the same error that would be found to obtain, if the like observations were to be made with the same instruments on land, it may hence be inferred, that in moderate weather the motion of the ship is no otherwise an impediment in this sort of observations, than as it renders the repetition of them more tedious and troublesome to the observer, which yet ought by no means to be omitted; because if each single observation be liable to an error of a minute only, by taking the mean of five or six, the error on this head may be so far diminished as to be of small moment.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), To Mr. Cleveland Secretary of the Admiralty (April 14, 1760)

Error , Appearance , Time , Weather

“I would by no means attempt to infer from hence, that the longitude found by observations of this sort may in all cases be depended upon within one degree; but I beg leave to observe, that whatever extraordinary circumstances may have concurred to produce so near an agreement in this particular case, the event is such as may give reason to hope, however great the difficulties of finding the longitude by this method seem to be, that they are not insuperable, or such as ought to deter those whom it most nearly concerns from attempting to remove them.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), To Mr. Cleveland Secretary of the Admiralty (April 14, 1760)

Hope , Dependency

“Sir,
Having long deferred to make any report relating to the observations that were taken at sea by captain Campbell, in the year 1757, which you transmitted to me by order of the lords of the admiralty, I think it necessary to acquaint you, that, upon examining those observations, I perceived that they were not in all respects accompanied with such circumstances as are requisite for forming a right judgment of the accuracy and certainty with which observations proper for finding the longitude at sea by the moon can in fact be taken; for which reason I delayed giving my opinion upon this point till I could have an opportunity of comparing a greater variety of observations, made at different times, and with different instruments: such an opportunity having lately been given me by captain Campbell, who has favoured me with a copy of several observations that were made by him in 1758 and 1759, I now beg leave to lay before their lordships the result of the comparisons which I have made.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), To Mr. Cleveland Secretary of the Admiralty (April 14, 1760)

Thinking , Time , Sea

“At a certain age children are greatly intrigued by the possibility of locating themselves on a map. It appears strange that one's familiar life should actually have all occurred in an area delineated by a set of quite impersonal (and hitherto unfamiliar) coordinates on the surface of the map. The child's exclamations of "I was there" and "I am here right now" betray the astonishment that the place of last summer's vacation, a place marked in memory by such sharply personal events as the ownership of one's first dog or the secret assembling of a collection of worms, should have specific latitudes and longitudes devised by strangers to one's dog, one's worms, and oneself. This locating of oneself in configurations conceived by strangers is one of the important aspects of what, perhaps euphemistically, is called "growing up". One participates in the real world of grown-ups by having an address. The child who only recently might have mailed a letter addressed "To my Granddaddy" now informs a fellow worm-collector of his exact address – street, town, state and all – and finds his tentative allegiance to the grown-up world view dramatically legitimated by the arrival of the letter.”

Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) Austrian-born American sociologist

Source: Invitation to Sociology (1963), p. 81

Life , Children , Secret , Age

“Immediately after his majesty's restoration Mr. Boyle was pleased to acquaint the lord Brouncher and Sir with it, who advis'd me to get a patent for the invention, and propounded very probable ways of making considerable advantage by it. To induce them to a belief of my performance, I shewed a pocket watch, accommodated with a spring, apply'd to the arbor of the ballance, to regulate the motion thereof, concealing the way I had for finding the longitude.”

Robert Hooke (1635–1703) English natural philosopher, architect and polymath

As quoted by John Ward, The lives of the professors of Gresham college (1740) p. 171. https://books.google.com/books?id=jp5bAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA171
Context: About this time, 1655, having an opportunity of acquainting myself with astronomy by the kindness of Dr. Ward, I apply'd myself to the improving of the pendulum for such observations, and in the year 1656, or 1657, I contriv'd a way to continue the motion of the pendulum, so much commended by Ricciolus in his Almagestum which Dr. Ward had recommended to me to peruse. I made some trials to this end, which I found to succeed to my wish. The success of these made me further think of improving it for finding the longitude; and the method I had made for myself for mechanick inventions, quickly led me to the use of springs, instead of gravity, for the making a body vibrate in any posture. Whereupon I did first in great, and afterwards in smaller modules, satisfy myself of the practicableness of such an invention; and hoping to have made great advantage thereby, I acquainted divers of my freinds, and particularly Mr. Boyle, that I was possessed of such an invention, and crav'd their assistance for improving the use of it to my advantage. Immediately after his majesty's restoration Mr. Boyle was pleased to acquaint the lord Brouncher and Sir with it, who advis'd me to get a patent for the invention, and propounded very probable ways of making considerable advantage by it. To induce them to a belief of my performance, I shewed a pocket watch, accommodated with a spring, apply'd to the arbor of the ballance, to regulate the motion thereof, concealing the way I had for finding the longitude. This was so well approv'd of, that Sir Robert Moray drew me up the form of a patent, the principal part whereof, viz. the description of the watch so regulated, is his own hand writing, which I have yet by me. The discouragement I met with in the management of this affair, made me desist for that time.

Way , Spring

“To a given right line to apply a parallelogram equal to a given triangle in an angle which is equal to a given right lined angle.
According to the Familiars of Eudemus, the inventions respecting the application, excess, and defect of spaces, is ancient and belongs to the Pythagoric muse. But junior mathematicians receiving names from these, transferred them to the lines which are called conic, because one of these they denominate a parabola, but the other an hyperbola, and the third an ellipsis; since, indeed these ancient and divine men, in the plane description of spaces on a terminated right line, regarded the things indicated by these appellations. For when a right line being proposed, you adapt a given space to the whole right line, then that space is said to be applied, but when you make the longitude of the space greater than that of the right line, then the space is said to exceed; but when less, so that some part of the right line is external to the described space, then the space is said to be deficient.”

Proclus (412–485) Greek philosopher

And after this manner, Euclid, in the sixth book, mentions both excess and defect. But in the present problem he requires application...
The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements Vol. 2 (1789)

Men , Books , Problem , Parting

“The success of these made me further think of improving it for finding the longitude; and the method”

Robert Hooke (1635–1703) English natural philosopher, architect and polymath

As quoted by John Ward, The lives of the professors of Gresham college (1740) p. 171. https://books.google.com/books?id=jp5bAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA171
Context: About this time, 1655, having an opportunity of acquainting myself with astronomy by the kindness of Dr. Ward, I apply'd myself to the improving of the pendulum for such observations, and in the year 1656, or 1657, I contriv'd a way to continue the motion of the pendulum, so much commended by Ricciolus in his Almagestum which Dr. Ward had recommended to me to peruse. I made some trials to this end, which I found to succeed to my wish. The success of these made me further think of improving it for finding the longitude; and the method I had made for myself for mechanick inventions, quickly led me to the use of springs, instead of gravity, for the making a body vibrate in any posture. Whereupon I did first in great, and afterwards in smaller modules, satisfy myself of the practicableness of such an invention; and hoping to have made great advantage thereby, I acquainted divers of my freinds, and particularly Mr. Boyle, that I was possessed of such an invention, and crav'd their assistance for improving the use of it to my advantage. Immediately after his majesty's restoration Mr. Boyle was pleased to acquaint the lord Brouncher and Sir with it, who advis'd me to get a patent for the invention, and propounded very probable ways of making considerable advantage by it. To induce them to a belief of my performance, I shewed a pocket watch, accommodated with a spring, apply'd to the arbor of the ballance, to regulate the motion thereof, concealing the way I had for finding the longitude. This was so well approv'd of, that Sir Robert Moray drew me up the form of a patent, the principal part whereof, viz. the description of the watch so regulated, is his own hand writing, which I have yet by me. The discouragement I met with in the management of this affair, made me desist for that time.

Thinking , Success

“Men are like May-flies. The most of them see things only during the brief breath of a day. The ages of history and biology are unknown and unconsidered. No wonder the universe is misunderstood. The human mind is without longitude. Even a cannonball, photographed with an exposure of one-five-thousandth of a second, seems suspended in mid-air.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Discovering Darwin", Proceedings of the International Anti-Vivisection and Animal Protection congress, held at Washington, D.C. December 8th to 11th, 1913 (1913), p. 152

Universe , Age , History , Men