longitude - History Lab https://historylab.es Tue, 10 Jan 2023 17:55:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 https://historylab.es/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-icono-historylab-32x32.jpg longitude - History Lab https://historylab.es 32 32 The second voyage of James Cook https://historylab.es/the-second-voyage-of-james-cook/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-second-voyage-of-james-cook Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:33 +0000 https://historylab.es/the-second-voyage-of-james-cook/ The new Larcum Kendall K1 marine chronometer to be tested on Cook's second voyage

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]]> During the 18th century, British and French expeditions ploughed the great Pacific Ocean to carry out missions with both colonial and cognitive intentions, thanks to the scientific and technological support of their respective National Academies of Science. From the second expedition (1772-1775), which aimed to verify the existence of the southern continent, the Terra Australis Incognita, Captain Cook was able to take advantage of technological progress, represented by the new Larcum Kendall K1 marine timekeeper, which proved to be very reliable for measuring longitude: since half a degree of longitude is equivalent to about fifty-five kilometres on the equator, it is clear that calculation errors caused enormous problems for the certainty of the route and the safety of the voyage and prevented the exact location of a place from being determined

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