Christmas is over, so what to do? I thought it was time to blow away the cobwebs and get out of the house, so I spent my first weekend of the New Year doing something constructive. I was back in London so I decided to go to Greenwich, as there were a couple of exhibitions there I wanted to see.
Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude commemorated the 300th anniversary of the passing of the Longitude Act in July 1714. This Act was aimed at encouraging a solution to be found for the longitude problem – essentially, working out whereabouts you are when you are at sea. In these days of accurate maps and GPS systems it’s probably hard to imagine what it would have been like to be in the middle of the ocean not knowing where you were.
Finding latitude – your position relative to the equator – was comparatively simple, as this could be done by looking at the position of the sun. Working out your longitude – how far east or west you were – was much trickier.
The exhibition looked at the concept of longitude, doing a good job of explaining it to someone like me who honestly wasn’t quite sure what it was. It discussed the Longitude Act and those responsible for judging it, as well as various theories put forward by different individuals – some particularly outlandish!
It then went on to look at the two main theories that gained dominance – one involving clocks and one involving the Moon (apologies for the generalisations – my lack of scientific expertise is to blame!). It turned out that both theories would work, and proved effective in different ways. The exhibition then examined how travel by sea developed in later years.
I liked the interactive parts of the exhibition – there was a “coffee house” where you could read news articles about the Act, and towards the end there was a large table with an interactive surface where you could hear the judges discuss the different proposals. I did think some of it could have been laid out differently – at certain points there were long queues to look in some of the glass cases. However, overall the exhibition was really good.