| If you're everybody's friend you're nobody's friend. |
D Vautier
6/2019
In the early 1700s Two mathematicians, William Whiston and Humphrey Ditton proposed a chain of ships anchored 100 miles apart in the Atlantic Ocean (Cronin, 21). At exactly midnight Greenwich each would fire a cannon and the time between each flash could signal the next ship and relay time around the world.
The plan was totally unworkable but seriously significant because the interest it caused was substantial, enough to jolt the British Parliament into enacting the Longitude Act. the Longitude Act offered generous prize money to anybody who could solve the problem of global location.