Roman Mars

Getting longitude, on the other hand, is a completely different story.

The reason calculating longitude is so much harder is largely down to the fact that the Earth doesn't stay still.

It spins.

Calculating longitude is like trying to keep track of all the horses on a carousel.

No matter how hard you try, they'll just keep spinning out of sight.

Sailors did manage to get around without knowing their longitude, but not very well.

They were forced to make do with depressingly bad methods.

Which might have been a great idea if it weren't for the fact that pirates also knew these routes, and so they could just sit around doing basically no work and pick off whatever ships they wanted.

This is actually where we get knots as a unit of speed.

One knot equals one nautical mile per hour.

If you remember nothing else, remember that.

For centuries, everyone from seamen to astronomers struggled to figure out what became known as the problem of longitude.

And so much time passed without a solution that people put longitude in the same bucket as finding the philosopher's stone or turning lead into gold.

Basically, you'd go mad before you'd ever figure it out.

Still, that didn't stop the big colonial powers of Europe from trying for longitude.

There was just too much riding on a solution.

In other words, it was just a lot safer to know where you were going.

Global powers of the time knew that there was an ill-gotten fortune to be made if your kingdom's ships were the fastest, most efficient, and safest ones on the ocean.

The Longitude Act of 1714 dangled a massive prize in front of anyone who could come up with a workable solution.

Parliament was trying to motivate the great scientific minds of the time, for the love of God, to finally figure out where the f*** they were.